KNOWN as the Strathspey King, he played in front of Queen Victoria. But at one point, James Scott Skinner was so poor he wrote his iconic tunes on the back of envelopes.

It is now 100 years since Skinner, below, last recorded his compositions but his memory lives on in a new CD called the Strathspey Queens, being launched during Edinburgh Tradfest.

The National:

The tribute to Skinner, who became one of Scotland’s most influential fiddlers, is from talented young Scots Alice Allen and Patsy Reid, the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Glenfiddich Fiddle Championship.

Allen, from Banchory, is a cellist, as was Skinner when he first started out, even though he later made his name as a fiddle player.

In the 18th and 19th centuries the cello was central to dance music, but from the 20th century onwards it had disappeared from traditional music in Scotland. Only in the past three decades has it been revived by the likes of Natalie Haas and other North American trailblazers.

Skinner began his playing career accompanying tunes on the cello for dances, playing repetitive basslines for hours on end at the young age of eight and wearily trudging across the Aberdeenshire countryside lugging his cello in tow.

Born in Banchory in 1843, he was the youngest of six children. His father William made a living as a dance teacher but died when Skinner was just two years old. It was his brother Alexander who taught him cello and violin and Skinner was soon good enough to start playing at local dances.

His talent was eventually spotted by a Manchester-based touring orchestra who recruited him and he performed with the group for six years, including in a command performance before Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace when he was 15. During this period, he learned to play classical tunes and took a year’s dancing tuition so he could become a dance master like his father.

He returned to Aberdeenshire to teach and burnished his credentials by winning dance competitions, until his growing reputation came to the attention of Queen Victoria who requested him to teach the royal household at Balmoral.

He continued to compose tunes, publishing his first collection in 1868. Three more collections were published in the 1880s before he toured the US with renowned dancer and piper Willie MacLennan.

Returning to Scotland in the early 1890s, he gave up dancing and concentrated on the fiddle, writing some of his best work during that period. His first cylinder recordings were made in 1899 and in 1903 he wrote Hector The Hero which became one of his best known tunes. It was a lament for his friend, Scottish Major-General Hector MacDonald, who killed himself following allegations of homosexuality.

Despite the popularity of Skinner’s tunes, he had so little money at this time that he could not afford to publish any more so wrote them on scraps of paper for friends who played them to try to create a market.

By 1922 enough money had been found to record a collection of tunes called The Strathspey King and two years before his death in 1927 he was still the top billing on five tours of the UK.

However an attempt to enter a reel and jig competition in the US in 1926 apparently ended in disaster when Skinner had “musical differences” with the pianist and walked off stage without finishing. He died on March 17 the following year without giving another public performance. He was buried in Aberdeen where his gravestone was unveiled by Sir Harry Lauder.

Reid and Allen hope their new CD, which will be launched at the Traverse Theatre on May 5, will breathe new life into his tunes so that they last for another 100 years.

“Skinner sounded like such a character, self-proclaiming himself as The Strathspey King,” said Reid, who has been playing his tunes since she started to play fiddle music at about the age of 10.

“Since embarking on this project with Alice, I’ve loved revisiting his recordings and he really had style and great charisma in his playing, which I think is important to hear alongside the many publications of his tunes.

“Unfortunately, the nature of competition and writing music down means that things can become stale and ‘samey’ and to a certain extent, there is lots of cloning going on, where people have aspired to sound a certain way.

“My realisation through listening to Skinner again is that he in fact played as an individual and that is what should not be forgotten when we put these players and their music on a pedestal. The tradition must continue to evolve and we are so lucky to have these old recordings to refer to, as well as the ability to record ourselves and add our snapshots to history.”

Edinburgh Tradfest runs from Friday to May 9 and is returning to live performance after the pandemic. https://edinburghtradfest.com/