Nigel Gatherer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Do you know anything about the band,
> Jack? Was The Cavendish an Edinburgh establishment? I seem to remember
> reading something about it, possibly in a recent book about dancing
> history. (Memory's going dud!)
G. W. Lockhart's book, _Highland Balls and Village Halls_ (Luath Press,
ISBN 094648712X), has a 2,5-page chapter called `Tim Wright and the
Cavendish Band'.
The Cavendish was a former riding school and stables near Tollcross in
Edinburgh and must have been a rather fashionable place for dancing (not
country dancing) from the 1930s. Tim Wright and his band used to play
there (but not for country dancing), and at the end of the war Wright
bought the establishment, which in due course became a popular venue for
country dancing, with country dancing evenings being held there every
Tuesday and Thursday night. This went on till 1959 or so, when public
support started to flag. Wright died in 1960, and his band was taken
over first by the pianist Jimmy McIntosh and later by the clarinetist
Andrew Bathgate; the band's name was changed to `The New Cavendish Band'
in the process.
Tim Wright's band was peculiar in its time because it always gave much
more prominence to strings than other bands (who thought more of the
accordion and similar instruments, much to the chagrin of people like
the RSCDS co-founder, Jean Milligan, who preferred the fiddle for dance
music). At its heyday it was a ten-piece ensemble with no less than five
fiddlers, which made it feasible for them to play not only the Scottish
repertoire but also popular dances of the time such as waltzes and
foxtrots. Wright and his colleagues also did a lot of work to unearth
the then largely-unplayed tunes by the likes of Marshall and the Gows
and bring them back into circulation.
Anselm
--
Anselm Lingnau .......................................... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking.
-- General George S. Patton, Jr.
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