JIM Crawford is a musician who is not inclined to hide his light under a bushel. At the grand old age of 90, he says he is playing ''better than ever''.
So well, in fact, that he has just recorded his first long-playing album (or, as they are apt to call it these days, CD). Asked to select his favourite cut on the disc, he humbly declares: ''They're a' braw.''
Mr Crawford, who was inspired by his old friend Sir Jimmy Shand, is a master of the melodeon. Despite his age, he still plays his squeezebox every day and continues to perform in public when the notion takes him.
After only a few weeks in the shops, his debut 21-track disc, aptly entitled Matured to Perfection, is selling out in Perthshire and Fife. Burnside Studios in Cupar, where the recordings were made, is currently producing more copies to keep up with demand.
Mr Crawford, who comes from the village of Ladybank in Fife, puts much of his success down to his late wife, Ella. A music lover (though not a musician herself), she was a stalwart supporter of her husband until her death 19 years ago.
''The kind of music on the album, traditional Scottish country dance music, has almost disappeared now, and it was Ella who was responsible for me doing this. She just encouraged me every minute of the way,'' he said yesterday.
So far as Jim Crawford is concerned, his musicianship just gets better with age. ''My playing improves every day. Sometimes I sit down and play for three hours at a time. I'm playing better than I've played for years and years. It's just something that I got dedicated to and if people enjoy you playing, it keeps you going.''
A railway worker in Perth until he retired, Mr Crawford first took up the melodeon at the age of six, when he would watch his amateur musician father playing in the house.
He recalled: ''He used to sit and play at night and I'd just hang about and listen. Then he said 'Bring that chair over, watch what I do, and then try it yourself'. And that was just about it. I played every night after that.''
It was when he travelled (by bicycle) with a chum to Dundee as a teenager to buy a melodeon of his own that he first met Jimmy Shand. The legendary accordionist was to become his hero and close friend.
''We went into Forbes's music shop in the city to look at melodeons. The shop assistant told us to wait for five minutes because there was a young man who would be in very shortly and he'd give us a demonstration,'' Mr Crawford recalled.
''And he did just that. It was Jimmy Shand, who was working in the store as a salesman/demonstrator in those days, and he was as shy as you could make them. But my goodness, could he play. It was beautiful. That was on the Saturday. The following Monday, Jimmy went off to make his first recording,'' said Mr Crawford.
On the strength of Sir Jimmy's performance in the shop, he bought the instrument and took it home, with the then unknown demonstrator pro-mising to come to see him in a fortnight.
''When I played it at home, it didn't work. I was sure it was a different melodeon. It just didn't sound nearly as good. Then, as promised, two weeks later Jimmy Shand came to the house.
''He asked how I was getting on and I said not very great. So he got the melodeon out and started to play. The moment he did I knew it was the same instrument that he'd played in the shop. Tears were running down my cheeks,'' said Mr Crawford.
It was the start of a friendship which endured until Sir Jimmy's death in 2002. So close were the pair that Mr Crawford appeared as a guest in the accordionist's This is Your Life programme in 1977.
For 25 years, Mr Crawford played with his own five-piece country dance band every Saturday night in Ladybank's Giffordtown Hall. However, he was forced to give up the regular old-time and country dancing gig eight years ago when, suffering from cancer, he had surgery to his shoulder.
''I am thrilled to bits at still being able to play after the operations,'' he said.
He still performs regularly at accordion and fiddle clubs across north-east Fife and attends a monthly musical gathering at Letham Village Hall, organised by Jimmy Shand Jnr.
Mr Crawford has performed at many charity fundraisers and Burns suppers, and made regular appearances on BBC Radio Scotland's Scottish dance music programmes. He won the Jimmy Shand Shield at the Perth Accordion Festival in the early 1950s and was crowned champion of the melodeon at the recent Musselburgh Music Festival.
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