From the CD Booklet " Matured to Perfection "

It is the 1920s, the event a harvest home. A boy sits beside the fiddler, his father, and takes a turn on the melodion.

Jim Crawford has been playing Scottish music ever since. After a career as a dance band leader from the 1940s through the 1970s, he has returned to the melodeon, the instrument he held on his knee at that harvest home. The instrument Jim plays on this album is a Hohner Double-Ray, the match of the one he bought in the 1930s at Forbes in Dundee, from a young man named Jimy Shand.

The melodion is a small, light instrument. Two sets of reeds, two rows of buttons, a thumb strap to connect the right hand to the box. But Jim says that you can play all Scottish music on it, and the distinctive sound, different from that of a modern accordion, is what he likes to hear himself.

For this CD, jim has selected tunes that suit the melodion. Some are old, of the era when young men took pride in ploughing a good rig. Jim has also included sets that will be new to you. His own composition " The July Fair " conveys the childhood memories of the annual Milnathort market, which he explored from his home at nearby Burleigh farm. Two of the " new " tunes are old waltzes Jim remembers his father playing.