CHAPTER 4: Dulcimers in the British Isles since 1800 > Dulcimers in Scotland

War-time xylophone band

JIMMY COOPER - interviewed by Alan Ward - 8 of 11

It was during the War I bought it. It was a pure accident I bought the xylophone. We'd a fellow, one of the drivers. He was a drummer. And he said to me one day - somebody had told him I had played the dulcimer a few years back, 'Oh' he says 'I know a feller that's got a xylophone for sale'... So I went and had a look at it. And it was a 3 1/2 octave - it was a big one... it was a smasher; and I bought it...

I started a band and it went from there. We played in St. Mungo's for about four years with the band, with xylophone, piano, drums, trumpet. We'd Bob Busby playing the accordeon... we'd Jackie Hughes on drums, Johnny Brown on the piano, me on the xylophone. Busby, he was from Airdrie, Johnny Brown was from Airdrie, Jackie Hughes was Coatbridge.

The band was called The Cosmo... The Cosmopolitan, but we shortened it to The Cosmo.

We used to play at the sequence dancing in Airdrie during the War. That was the old time sequence dancing. We played there for a long time. Where we scored - where the buskers scored - there were some dances, they weren't 16-bar dances - we could break them up. See the buskers could always do that without interfering with copies you see, so we could always watch the dancers and fit the tune to fit the dance, whereas these blokes their eyes was on the music so they couldn't get on with it.