I don’t have many memories of my grandfather. I last saw him at my father’s funeral, and no doubt he took my hand at the end of the ceremony and I suppose he must have been at the funeral of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, my oma, six years earlier, although I have no recollection of him being there.
My grandfather, James Chalmers, was a trombonist, both a player and a teacher. He was born in 1890 in Kilbirnie in North Ayrshire where his father was a hecklemaker. (A heckle or hackle was, or is, a comb used to separate the coarse fibres of flax or hemp.) He served an apprenticeship in the Clyde shipyards to become a journeyman ship plater. That is still the description given on the certificate of marriage (to Elsie Sutherland) in 1913 and on the birth certificate of my father two years later. To begin with my grandfather will have learned the trombone in a Kilbirnie band. By the early 1920’s, however, he was a member of the Stonehouse Silver Band, at that time considered one of the best bands in Scotland. (Stonehouse was a rural and mining village south of Glasgow.) Not only that, he had won the title of British Empire Champion Trombonist. He was now a professional musician and featured on recordings. In 1933 he was filmed by Pathé Pictorial for their newsreel, playing as a soloist with the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Band. The band, the musicians resplendent in slightly fanciful uniforms (every one an officer!), are introduced by a title (there is no voiceover yet) informing audiences: ‘The Joker./The Scottish C.W.S. Band/ (Winner of many contests/North and South of the Border/and/James Chalmers/The celebrated Champion Trombonist/play this famous/Burlesque for us – ’. My grandfather subsequently went on to be a member of the Scottish National Orchestra – this was in the days before orchestra musicians were conservatory trained. Later, in semi-retirement, he continued teaching and played the summer season in dance bands in the more genteel seaside resorts like Scarborough.
Once, on one of the rare occasions when my father had to look after me on a weekend afternoon, he took me to see his father, whom I hardly knew. It was some time in the late 50’s, I was eight or nine and my grandfather was living in a flat in Scotstoun with his second wife. (My grandfather’s first married home, where my father was born, had also been in Scotstoun, in the west of Glasgow, close by the strip of shipyards and iron works then lining the north bank of the River Clyde.) He and my father didn’t look alike, James had a longer face with a long prominent nose, there was something coldly Presbyterian and remote about him, even if he wasn’t a believer, whereas my father’s more rounded delicate, one might almost say weaker features were inherited from his mother.
Without me knowing of it beforehand, this visit turned out to be a kind of audition, to see whether it would be worth my grandfather’s time to teach me to play. I remember we stood in the hallway, lobby, as it’s called in Glasgow, my grandfather took the big shiny golden-yellow instrument out of its case and helped me hold it. As instructed I blew into the mouthpiece of the trombone, but nothing came out the other end but the quietist of spitting raspberries. “Nae puff,” judged my grandfather dismissively and with that the subject of learning the trombone was closed. I have no idea whether my father was disappointed. My grandfather, I suspect, was rather relieved. I don’t think he had much patience with children, even though he had been the father of five. My father was always at a loss as to what to do with me and it may be that my grandfather feared that the trombone lessons were intended to take me off my father’s hands.
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