You just can't stop the music ...

James Edwards, better known as Jim, has been plucking away at the mandolin for almost 60 years.

The jovial 72-year-old self-confessed music nut took up the instrument when he was 14 after he badgered his parents to get him a musical instrument.

Since learning his first song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, he has barely put it down.

Mr Edwards and wife Dorothy moved to Albany from Perth in 1965 after spending their honeymoon in what was then just a town and falling in love with it.

In the 1970s and 80s he taught mandolin and guitar at Keynote Music, now Uptown Music, including the day tropical cyclone Alby hit in April, 1978.

“I was teaching mandolin upstairs when a lamp post came straight through the window and we had to evacuate,” he said.

But he said playing at various nursing homes for the past 21 years was what he has most enjoyed.

“The pianist of a band I played in, the Blue Stars Dance Band, used to play piano at nursing homes so I joined her,” he said.

“I also used to play with violinist Colin Brabazon too.”

These days Mr Edwards plays for residents at Baptistcare aged-care facilities Bethel, Gwen Hardy Lodge and Annie Bryson McKeown Lodge and Clarence Estate residential care on alternative Friday afternoons.

“I most enjoy the fun I have with the people who come along to listen,” he said.

“I often change the names in the songs to a carer or resident and they like that.”

Mr Edwards, accompanied by wife Dot — his roadie who sometimes chimes in with a pair of maracas — also visits Bethel’s dementia wing on the first Tuesday of each month, and plays at Albany Lion’s Community Care Centre.

“I also busk for about three hours on the first Saturday of every month in the Spencer Park IGA complex and donate half of whatever I raise to local charities … so far this year I have given $664 to various charity groups in Albany,” he said.

Not content to keep his mandolin repertoire entertaining Albany resident’s ears, the couple hit the road seven years ago for a tour of nursing homes in regional Wheatbelt towns.

“It was great fun,” Mr Edwards said.

“We had a four-wheel-drive with a caravan and we visited all these tiny, quiet towns and I played the mandolin.

“We went to Goomalling, Bruce Rock, Mukinbudin, Merredin and Harvey and the people in the nursing homes and caravan parks loved it.”

Despite being at retirement age, Mr Edwards has no plans to retire his mandolin.

Even a serious brush with cancer eight years ago couldn’t keep him away from it.

“I had to have my bladder removed in 2005 due to cancer,” he said.

“I missed playing it (the mandolin) so much after two weeks in Fremantle Hospital that I had Dot bring it in to me so I could play it in my bed in the ward.”

The passionate musician says he gets so much enjoyment from playing the instrument that he will play until his final days.

“If I couldn’t play the mandolin I would rather be dead,” he said.

“The only way I will stop playing is when they put me in my box.”