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Following his time with "Dr Mark's Little Men", Skinner returned to Aberdeen where his mother was then living. Here he trained as a dancing teacher with "Professor" William Scott who was living at Stoneywood in Aberdeen, whom he met as a result of an introduction by Peter Milne. Skinner so admired the professor that he adopted the professor's surname as his own middle name. Skinner worked first in the Strathdon area as a dancing teacher, and in 1862 at a Highland Gathering at Bray near Dublin he won several prizes for dancing, including first prize for the Highland Fling where he beat the famous dancer, John McNeill of Edinburgh (Skinner, 1994:18). In 1863 he had another success, winning a major violin competition in Inverness. In 1868 he was teaching dancing in the Ballater area, and was requested by the Queen to start dancing classes at Balmoral for the children of her tenants. Skinner later married Jane Stuart, who was from Aberlour, and began teaching dancing there, and then the couple moved to Elgin where they lived for about twelve years. Although Skinner gives the impression that Jane died in 1883, she was in fact sadly admitted to Elgin Lunatic Asylum in April 1885. Skinner did not keep up the payments regularly, and Jane died a pauper there on 5 January 1899 (Hargreaves, 1993:41). Skinner married Gertrude Park shortly after Jane's death, but in 1909 Gertrude went back to southern Africa where she had lived previously (Hargreaves, 1993:41).
After an unsuccessful tour of America in 1893 with a Scottish concert party, in which the leader of the group, Willie MacLennan of Edinburgh, tragically died of meningitis, Skinner decided to become a concert performer and to wear the kilt for performances. One of the most famous of the concerts he gave was as part of "The Caledonian Four", a group brought together at the suggestion of Sir Harry Lauder, whose first engagement was at the London Palladium. Skinner, who was not given to modesty, notes that the following account was sent to a Scottish evening newspaper: "The triumph of the evening ... was left to Mr Scott Skinner, who treated the audience to a brilliant display on the violin. The appreciation of the audience reached its climax when the veteran danced a step or two to his own strathspeys and reels." (Skinner, 1994:66) Skinner was dubbed "The Strathspey King" for his skills as a performer. Junner (1960:98) writes: "It was his mastery of the unorthodox traditional style of bowing, allied to his immense fervour and patriotism, that justly earned him his proud title of 'The Strathspey King' from the editor of an Aberdeen newspaper."
Skinner's playing was issued on gramophone records and was available to a wide audience. An Aberdonian, resident in Los Angeles, for instance, picked up one of Skinner's records whilst visiting Toronto, and wrote to him: "This is the first real music I have heard in all those years, and though this is Sunday morning, that beautiful tune, The Miller o' Hirn, is in full blast. I have played this record over the telephone to all my Scotch friends and to more fully enjoy these fine Highland tunes I dress up in my kilt for the occasion." (Skinner, 1994:85)
Find out more about James Scott Skinner: James Scott Skinner homepage - Collections - Compositions
About the author - Acknowledgements - Banchory homepage - Bibliography - Celtic and Scottish Studies homepage - Conclusion - Homepage
Published by the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh
© University of Edinburgh 2001
Last modified Wednesday, 26-Aug-2009 13:33:34 BST by Katherine Campbell