Jim Hughes - boyhood scrapes and narrow escapes

Do you ever wonder about people who might have been great musicians, artists, scientists or leaders, but tragically died young? British harmonica legend Jim Hughes is not among them: he seems to have ‘nine lives’, as well as nine decades (and-a-bit) behind him. Jim’s friend, Suzy Colclough, recently found out that Jim almost had his life snuffed out three times within a couple of years as a boy. The influential chromatic player, international festival organiser and teacher could have become a war statistic, many years before he ever thought of picking up a harmonica.

Jim’s narrow escape number one

The 2022 war in Ukraine reminds us of the JIM HUGHES - dangers faced by civilians during times of conflict. Born in 1929, Jim was approaching his BOYHOOD SCRAPES tenth birthday when the news was filled with unsettling talk of war. His family (he had an aunt AND NARROW in Canada) had booked tickets for a passage on SS Athenia, a transatlantic steam turbine ESCAPES ship that plied the Atlantic between the UK and Canada. All ready to go, the family were told that only Canadian nationals were now allowed on By Rowena Millar board. Two days after setting sail and just hours after war had been declared, SS Athenia was the first UK ship to be torpedoed by a U-boat, with the loss of 117 civilian passengers and crew. Jim was in Birmingham, but he wasn’t safe.

Jim’s narrow escape number two

Young Jim found himself in the middle of the blitz, in a city that was being heavily targeted. Every night there were bombs, and he and his family had to take cover in an Anderson shelter buried under the earth in their garden. One night, Jim heard a bomb coming down. When the family emerged from the shelter, they saw that

Jim Hughes presenting a harmonica competition award to duo Colin Mort and Rowena Millar in the 1980s.

Jim with Roger Trobridge

the back half of their house, just four metres away, was standing, but the front half had completely gone.

Jim’s narrow escape number three

On a drizzly, murky day when he was about 12, Jim was walking through a field on his way home from school for lunch, his new house being at the far corner of the field. All of a sudden, a Messerschmidt plane appeared. It burst through the clouds and started machine gunning him. Jim said, “I ran like mad”. He managed to get inside the house without being hit. There was a news item in the local paper about the plane, which had been seen hanging back and firing at civilians. Jim’s mother, who had seen the whole incident from the back door, gave very dramatic renditions of the story afterwards. Jim says it was ‘scary at the time’.

Recent challenges

More recently, Jim has got through skin cancer and prostate cancer. He also went blind about four years ago – a severe blow for a professional musician used to turning up at recording studios and playing unrehearsed straight from the sheet music, often with an orchestra, in one take. The trauma of going blind stopped Jim from playing harmonica for a year, but speaking to him in April 2022, I found that he had the same zeal I remember from decades ago. Nowadays, Jim listens to music for 50% of each day and enthuses, over the phone, about brilliant musicians he has discovered. He describes the talent of the late American jazz pianist Bill Evans, for example, as ‘mind blowing’. Jim is playing harmonica again, and gave a workshop at HarmonicaUK’s Chromatic Weekend in June with Suzy Colclough, about teaching and learning the harmonica after becoming blind. We can be very thankful that Jim missed the boat, escaped the bomb, and dodged those bullets.