Shining Trumpets and Mouldie Fygges

This whole music thing…

How did all this music stuff get started? I was in the third or fourth form at school in Muswell Hill. In the Public Library, I came across a volume called "Shining Trumpets", written by an American critic named Rudy Blesh. Mr Blesh was a fundamentalist, preaching the gospel of New Orleans jazz, in that peculiarly po-faced way that fundie Xians employ to excoriate evolution. He told many fascinating stories that were new to me, at the age of fourteen — the closing of the Storeyville red-light district in 1917 and the resultant exodus of musicians (and, presumably, hookers) northward to Chicago — the un-recorded Buddy Bolden, who was the first trumpet star in New Orleans, and his habit of playing through a hole in the fence, so that he cold be heard many miles away, For some reason this was known as "calling his children home". I was a born-again jazzer — what was later known in UK as a "Mouldie Fygge". I had all the answers! I knew it all! What my mother and father had called jazz was nothing of the kind, I thundered. The saxophone has no place in the jazz ensemble, I asserted, and as for the guitar…! Words failed me. What a load of cobblers…

These daft ideas were all part of the revivalist movement which was in full, if you'll pardon the expression, swing at the time. Ken Collyer was the High Priest in England, having actually been to New Orleans, and — wow! — been in jail briefly there. His band eschewed the solo in favour of one of Mr Blesh's shibboleths, Collective Improvisation. Jazz of any kind was in short supply in the early '50s: there was perhaps one jazz record a month issued, and one weekly radio programme — Mark White's Radio Rhythm Club, which I think metamorphosed into Jazz Club, on the BBC. I bought my first jazz record. It featured a band recorded in someone's garage on portable equipment, or if not it certainly sounded that way. The label bore the Jazz Man imprint, and the title was “Weary Blues”, featuring William Geary 'Bunk' Johnson.

Bunk Johnson was a link with the past, if an unreliable one owing to his penchant for telling whoppers. His musical career in New Orleans was thirty years behind him, and he was keeping body and soul together driving a tractor in the Louisiana rice fields of New Iberia. Discovered there by enthusiasts, he was handed a trumpet and a set of false teeth, and let loose with other old New Orleanians of a similar vintage, and recordings were made. Poor old Bunk's chops would give out about halfway through a three-minute side, and the clarinet player, George Lewis, would come to the fore. I copied Lewis note for note, which wasn't that difficult because he stuck pretty close to the notes of the basic chords of the tune and everything was in easy keys.

The nearest source of live jazz music for me was Wood Green, in North London. Run by a couple, Art and Viv Saunders, who seemed permanently wreathed in cigarette smoke, the Wood Green Jazz Club sessions took place in a hall attached to a pub, the Fishmongers Arms (today an "Irish" pub, so-called). On my very first visit I heard the Geoff Kemp Jazz Band — whatever happened to them? — featuring a banjo player who sang hill-billy songs. His name? Lonnie Donnegan… I was more impressed by the number of rubber bands it took to keep the clarinet player's instrument working. Some months later I plucked up courage to ask if I could sit in. The band on that occasion was run by Terry Lightfoot, and he was good enough to say yes. “What do you know?” I appeared to consider this question before selecting “Weary Blues” from my extensive repertoire of one tune. I have no idea how it sounded to the listener — but I loved it! I had lost my jazz virginity!

Eventually and gradually I shed the purism, having realised that Traditional had become Trad, and was now a commercial proposition, with bands in uniforms and, of all things, funny hats. The stolid clanging of the ubiquitous. and mandatory, banjo was getting me down, too. By the way, my picture shows me with the old simple system clarinet drooping a little, and a band, not one of whose names I can recall! I was probably sixteen or seventeen at that time.

My record collection, all 78s of course, was small but growing, and now included Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and even Buddy de Franco. I still couldn't hack bebop. Actually I remember mentioning Benny Goodman in the presence of a Trad clarinet player who spat on the floor in disgust. When I went to the Empire Pool, Wembley to see the great Louis Armstrong on the first tour of an American jazz artist permitted by the Musicians' Union and the AFM, there were bearded blokes in sandals shouting “Play jazz!”, presumably because Louis had had the effrontery to develop from what he had been playing in 1926…

Rock 'n' Roll 'n' me… (why?)

The worst thing to happen to my hopes and aspirations as a musician (such as they were) was the advent of the dreaded Rock 'n' Roll (as it was all too often spelled). By the time it arrived on the shores of this sceptered isle I was 17 — the ideal target you might think. Ah, but, by that time I had already happily mis-spent much of my early teen years in smoky jazz clubs, playing on my father's old simple-system clarinet, and this new stuff sounded far too tame… later, when I was playing dance-band gigs with the MEAF Band in Cyprus and East Africa, it mostly came down to making a lot of noise, squealing and honking, while doing silly things, like riding on the shoulders of another saxophone player — I have no idea why, but it seemed popular with the punters, so… Music as such didn't have a great deal to do with it.

After de-mob from the RAF Music Service, I found myself in a pro dance-band, as mentioned elsewhere in these pages. After about a year of it, half of which was spent in provincial Mecca halls, I got the hump, partly with the job and partly with myself, and decided to 'get a proper job' back in London. And I did… but then came a telephone call, from a chap who was managing a group. He happened to mention that said group had secured a DECCA recording contract, which sounded interesting. So I went along and had a blow with them at his home. The manager was one Frank Maher, and you will most likely have seen him, without necessarily knowing it, if you have watched The Prisoner, or perhaps The Avengers, among other shows. Frank was a stunt performer and arranger, and was Patrick McGoohan's favourite double.

The group was called The Cannons. Why? Who knows… Somehow a set of matching Fender guitars was procured; only the second, I believe, to arrive in the UK. Some outfit called The Shadows got the first (and I think most of the available strings, too). I was still doing the day job, although it wasn't working out too well. The idea had been that I would chase up export orders on the factory, but instead I spent my days writing conciliatory letters to the poor sods of agents waiting for goods in the far-flung outposts. I wasn't allowed to harrass the factory, who were six months behind with the orders, in order not to cause industrial unrest… So when it was decided that The Cannons were to go pro., it wasn't too much of a wrench to relinquish respectability and lob in my notice.

The first pro gig was… wait for it… a week each in two parks in Birmingham! We were to back Johnny Worth, a songwriting singer who had written hits for Adam Faith, and play our own set. Also appearing, were a double act called Christmas and King, and The Dagenham Girl Pipers!

The beat goes on…

That DECCA contract I mentioned earlier saw one record released: An old Andrews Sisters hit, 'I Didn't Know The Gun Was Loaded', backed with 'My Guy's Come Back' written by Benny Goodman, Ray McKinley and Mel Powell. Class material… Decca's Studios in West Hampstead had recently acquired an Ampex four-track tape recorder, and a control desk lashed up from Dexion and gaffer tape, which was all pretty new to the engineers. This was several years before EMI at Abbey Road moved on to multi-track. The picture, sent to me by Bob Burnard, shows the famous five coming to grips with the early 60s technology of Decca's No. 2 Studio.

One critic wrote 'Good sound, good beat, good chance for the charts', which just showed how much he knew about it. After one or two plays on Radio Luxemburg it rocketed into obscurity. Later we played an audition of sorts, in Norrie Paramor's office, and subsequently made 'Bushfire' written by our two guitarists. Someone knew a chap from Bahrain, named Mizra Alsherif (I think!) who played industrial strength bongoes on the session, giving it a fair head of steam. A few years ago I heard it on Brian Matthews's “Sounds of the Sixties”, and it didn't sound all that terrible. Still, the sheet music was published, which must have meant somebody thought it worthwhile. That someone was bandleader Denny Boyce, and when I worked for him later I wrote an arrangement of Bushfire for his band.

We began a weary routine of schlepping out to USAF bases at RAF Bentwaters, RAF Woodbridge, and all the other US enclaves, where we played four hour sessions in enlisted (I originally typed "enlusted" which was pretty apt) men's clubs. It was at one of those gigs that we opened with Duane Eddie's 'Dixie' — and the club erupted. Whites on one side of the room, blacks on the other and knives drawn… we had no idea that there was bad racial tension on the station… it was the only number we played that night, which suited us, as we stilll got paid! We tried it at the next club gig, but it didn't work. Obvously things were more harmonious there, and we had to play the whole evening.

A welcome break in all this was a three-day stint on a film set. The film was a run-of-the-mill police v. racketeers would-be film noir, called 'The Frightened City', and was partly set in a night club managed by Alfred Marks, who gave, I thought, by far the best perfomance in the flick. The club band's numbers had been recorded using Fender guitars, a sort of pseudo-Shadows sound, and we had those matching Fenders — so we were hired to be the band seen on screen. There was no sax on the track, so they rented a vibraphone, and yours truly mimed on that! At eleven quid a day, as 'special extras' we made more than we made in a month on the US bases, and we got to rub shoulders wih Alfred Marks, Olive McFarland, Herbet Lom and a young hopeful called Sean Connery. Wardrobe gave us hawaiian shirts, made, I noticed, from the same material as the knickers the show dancers were wearing! It was worth getting up in the middle of the night to get to Shepperton, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The bells, the flashing lights, the cries of 'Action!', the poker games going on behind every part of the scenery, the evening-dress extras playing nightclub customers, dancing in their socks and stockings, because two of the stars were recording dialogue on the dance floor — all very exciting and a bit of a giggle for us.

We were sent on a tour of US bases in Germany, under the auspices of the fearsome Gisele Gunther (Himmler in corsets) Kunstleragentur. Every act had to demonstrate what they did before a panel of service judges, before being despatched to various clubs. It was then we discovered that we had been sold as a comedy act. Since we obviously weren't, Gisele cut our money! In order to comply with the contract, I hastily cobbled together several gag routines, with the generous help of one or two of the comics who suggested material, and we went down very well, in Kassel, Bayreuth (where we stayed in what had been the Gestapo HQ), Mainz and Nancy (yes I know it's not in Germany!). Our money, cash being deliverable by postman, followed us around, and for three days at one point, we starved…

On the road again — and again…

I confess I had never wanted to go to Germany. Brought up during WWII, I had been subject to all the usual propaganda, and I had a mental picture of beefy great frauleins in blonde plaits and dirndl skirts… so it came as a great shock to see how elegant and frankly tasty the local girls were! Frankly they were streets ahead of what we saw at, say, the dreaded Rink ballroom, in Nelson, Lancs. I began to warm to the place right away… As we travelled around I marvelled at the beauty of the country, with its valleys and forests. And birds…

Frankfurt-am-Main still showed the traces of conflict. The imposing main line passenger railway station was pitted with bullet and shell marks (all of which had been filled in when I next went there in the early 1980s). We stayed at the Münchner Hof, a small hotel out at the end of the No 1 tram route, on the Ginnheimer Landstraße. Each night artists would return from various engagements and make straight for the bar, which seemed to be open at all hours. Show talk and gags flowed, as did the falling-down water, and a convivial time was had by all…

We also spent a week based in Kassel and another in Bayreuth. The Bayreuth accomodation was in what had been the Gestapo HQ, just behind the Festspielhaus. Our room had been the billiards room and you could still see where the players had chalked their cues, in the whitewash on the ceiling. Outside the window was a blood-stained, bullet pocked wall. It was the time of the Wagner festival, and we could easily hear the rehearsals from outside the opera house, which was a fascinating experience for me, although I don't know about the others.

After our month in Germany it was back to the US bases at home. We learned 10-pin bowling, poker and craps from GIs we got to know, and after playing snooker, we found their little pool tables pretty easy going. One troop in particular used to bum a lift to London with us, and we had some great card games with him in the back of the bus — I just remember him as 'Bart'.

We played several Rock-and-Roll tours, backing visiting performers from the US — these included Del Shannon, Dion (late of The Belmonts), Freddie Cannon, and Gene Vincent. Our vocalist, Dave Devon, took to doing 'Be-Bop-a-Lula' on our own gigs, as an impression of Gene, who was one of the original medallion men — Dave accomplished this aspect by suspending a dustbin-lid on a chain around his neck! Our first show with Del Shannon was at the Albert Hall, of all places. I had a recording session, and couldn't make the rehearsal, which put Del into a bit of a spin… I had the solo, originally recorded using a small organ, in 'Runaway' — and the relief on his face was almost funny when I breezed through it. He wasn't used to working with sight-readers! Del was a nice guy, as was Dion di Mucci. There were some spirited sing-songs on the tour coach — in particular a trio version of 'Money', a song that was new to us, belted out by Del, Dion and Buzz Clifford. Dion and his girlfriend liked to imitate the Hanna-Barbera cartoons (which hadn't reached here as yet) featuring a camp lion called Snagglepuss. As they got off the coach at night Dion would declaim 'Farewell! Exit left!' and she would lisp 'So long, even!' I suppose you had to be there…

Whistles & Flutes & Twists, oh my…

In the early 1960s, groups didn't wander on stage dressed up in the sort of clothes that they might have lifted from a scarecrow, as is now de rigeur — oh dear me, no. Matching whistles-and-flutes were the order of the day. The Cannons started out with five slightly sparkly dinner jacket outfits, supplied by Morris Angel, the theatrical costumiers.

I don't know what production they had been made for, but I do remember that mine had the name 'Anton Diffring' on the label. Diffring was a blue-eyed, blonde German, actor, very handsome, who played an awful lot of Nazi bastards in various films and TV shows. Ironic to think that he had fled Germany to get away from the blighters… The trousers led me to think that they had been made for a dance routine, since there was no fly, but a zip at the side, on the hip so to speak.

These served us well for a while, and then we were sent to visit a tailor in Streatham, who would make a set of suits for us, and these turned out to be pale grey mohair, very tasty! We wore them with maroon bow ties that went under the shirt collar. Sprauncy!

The group was being booked by the Tito Burns agency, and they came up with an idea I wasn't keen on. The 'Twist' was breaking in New York, and they wanted us to back an American dancer who sang a bit, a chap called Peppi Borza. Pep was from a circus family, and had until recently had an act with his sister, working with Sammy Davis Jr. The plot was, we were to pose as 'Peppi and the New York Twisters', and I think it was the dumb name that put me off. Still, work was work, and for a while we alternated as The New York Twisters and The Cannons. As the former, we played some rather nice stage shows, and also appeared at somewhere completely unknown to us in Liverpool — The Cavern.

The Cavern is now the stuff of legend. In reality it was a ghastly hole, with condensation running down the brick walls. As we unloaded our equipment, now all impressively rack-mounted by Ken Bran, our roadie, later a leading light at Marshall Amps., clusters of girls quizzed us; what did we think of the beetles? Frankly we had no idea what they were on about. Later that evening we discovered theat one of the local groups was wittily entitled 'The Beatles', and they were on to finish the evening. I must say that there were several local groups playing that night, and they were all good and all different. While the rest of the country was still trying to play 'Apache' and sound like the Shadows here was a variety of different sounds, styles and approaches. I think it a pity that it was only the Beatles that really came to fame.

As usual, Peppi got a girl up on stage and showed her how to do the Twist. Years later, on a recording session at EMI, Cilla Black told me it had been she… I remember the little band room at the right hand side of the stage (left hand if you were looking at the stage) there was quite a press of people, including the Bob Woolley, the MC, the Beatles's manager, Brian Epstein, and the lads themselves. I remember chatting with their bass player, and his pointing out their new drummer, a diffident individual with a lot of rings on his fingers which he twisted nervously. Apart from that all I remember of the evening was after our set, we took those soaking mohair suits off — they were now dark grey — and dropped them on the floor with a resounding 'splosh'! Ken had to find a dry cleaner for them, first thing next morning, as we had sweated through every inch of the fabric!

Given a decent sized stage, Peppi could put his circus background to use, as he would return to take his call in a succession of somersaults and cartwheels, which shook everybody rigid. Where he is today I have no idea — I remember spotting him on a Two Ronnies show as one of a comic troupe of Morris dancers, but that's all I have seen of him in all the years since then.

Moving right along… 1963

One day I had a telephone call from a certain Tony Meehan. It seems he had heard the asthmatic saxophone noises I had contributed to The Cannons' record for EMI, and he asked if I would be interested in joining an endeavour he was putting together "to make records". This sounded more promising than the plans The Cannons had, which took them off to Israel , from which at least one of them never returned! Calm yourselves, my children, he wasn't brown bread, but had become rather well off, as the result of studying electronics and founding a company to make and supply amplifiers. He later built his own recording studio in Tel Aviv… and today lives in Florida with his trophy wife… lucky sod!

The first task resulted in the only record on which I ever worked that reached the Number One slot. A tune composed by Jerry Lordan, who was famous for the Shadows' 'Apache' (did you know he wrote that for Bert Weedon originally?) was to feature Tony's ex-Shadows colleague, Jet Harris, and was to be called, simply 'Diamonds'. As I recall it we recorded it at IBC Studios in Portland Place, London. The middle section was where I was to do my stuff, along with a small brass section. The honking and growling completed, I wandered around to the other side of a screen, where the Mike Sammes singers were stationed. One, a pleasant blonde lady, looked up from her knittng and smiled. 'Hello!' she said brightly 'was that you making that awful noise?' I agreed that, yes, yes it was… Tony asked me to dub on some piano chords, arpeggioso and I did that, so I was on that record twice! Even dafter, on the 'B' side, a very forgettable 'Footstomp' credited to Mr Meehan, I played Glockenspiel…

Promoting the record had its moments, not least of which was my brief membership of the Billy Cotton band! The Cotton band was famous through its BBC Sunday 'Wakey-wa-a-a-key!' programmes, and for the TV spectaculars, replete with wallopers in feathers and sequins. On the occasion of Jet and Tony's appearance, I was there to do my chicken-scratch stuff, and the wardrobe kitted me out with a jacket to match those of the band. I was to play on one of the existing saxophone section microphones — fine, but the previous band number was to segue (continue without a break) into 'Diamonds', so how was I to get on mic? I suggested I play the previous number as one of the sax section, as there was plenty of time before that to take my place. I replaced Eddie Spiegel, who doubled tenor sax with character comedy on the radio shows. They were all rather surprised that this honking, squealing rock-and-roll reprobate could fit into a section and sight-read — it was nothing new for me, after several years of doing just that, from Cyprus to London, Belfast and Nottingham… Bill Cotton peered at me: 'Where's Spiegel? On 'oliday?' and he wandered off…

The next course of events put together the stage group, for touring purposes. I knocked out some small group arrangements, and we met up at The Roebuck, in Tottenham Court Road to rehearse in their upstairs function room. A fine baritone sax player, Glenn Hughes, guitarist Joe Moretti and bass player John Baldwin completed the ensemble. Glenn and I got on famously, and dubbed ourselves The Hughes Sisters… strictly for grins. Joe had a great deal of experience and technical ability and John… well he was and is, just brilliant. You may know him better as Led Zeppelin's co-founder and fearsome bass player John Paul Jones, but then he was a quiet, seventeen-year-old potential monster.

Stage outfits had to be procured. We went to Dougie Millings, who later became famous (and fashionable and expensive) for the Nehru styled outfits he made for The Beatles. He made suits for us in black mohair — and I took the opportunity to have a couple of 'civvy' outfits made as he had the measurements. One of our final rehearsals took place on the stage of the Metropolitan Music Hall in the Edgware Road, where a lighting plot was finalised. I was most impressed, both by the venerable theatre, designed by the great Frank Matcham, and by this professional attention to detail. Shortly after, the place was demolished, but I'm pretty sure we had nothing to do with that…

Our general factotum was to be the redoubtable Sam Curtis, who had been roadie for the Shadows. He designed the lighting among other things, such as humping equipment, driving the band bus, and generally looking after us like a mother hen. Sam had started out in life as Schmuel Gurvitz, but found that, inexplicably, people were happy to do business with Sam C. while avoiding Schmuel G. Sam's son Adrian later formed the successful Baker Gurvitz Army, with ace drummer Ginger Baker. Anyway, suddenly it was back to the Rock and Roll touring shows, although now I was with an act that finished the first half and someone else backed the other acts. A bit of a leg up, I suppose…

You thought the Tour de France was tough…

The Rock and Roll touring shows were arduous affairs, particularly when you played three of them, back-to-back, as we did at one point — that meant six weeks without a day off, hurtling from one end of the country to another. Bookers have absolutely no sense of geography.

The coach call would be at Allsopp Place, a back street that connects Marylebone Road, by Madame Tussauds, with the northern end of Baker Street. It was the location for a London Transport canteen, which somehow we were permitted to use. Sometimes there would be as many as three coaches lined up, each carrying a different show. Somehow we usually managed to get on the right one…

The bill was roughly the same format on each show: a group (like the Cannons), there to back a variety of solo acts, and to play their own short set, a comedian to act as MC, a girl singer, or occasionally a girl duo or trio, several lip-curling, Presley-slouching male singers, and maybe an American star to close the show. Since little of what was played or sung could be heard, owing to the high-pitched squealing of the pre-pubescent female audience, it hardly mattered…

One bill of which I have a record, from October 1963, was:

• Gerry and the Pacemakers
• Jet Harris & Tony Meehan
• The Bachelors
• Del Shannon
• Duffy Power
• Cilla Black
• Bryan Burdon
• The Blue Diamonds

I have a feeling that was the tour on which, arriving in Bristol to play the Colston Hall, we discovered that a visiting conference had taken every last bed in the town, and we had to sleep in the coach, parked in a lay-by. Lovely…

Duffy Power was one of the best of the Larry Parnes mob, really a blues singer. Cilla was the 'bird' on the bill — I wonder what happened to her? She had not had a big hit at that point, and was promoting her first record, 'Love of the Loved'. Other young ladies who filled the 'bird' spot included Patti Brooke, Billy Davis, Helen Shapiro and Suzy Cope.

Bryan Burdon was our compere on that bill. Bryan was from a show-business family, and had been part of his father's hilarious knock-about comedy magic act, Albert Burdon and Company. He was an accomplished tumbler, and I have an odd memory of him showing me how he could fall off the top of a wardrobe in our digs, the resultant racket scaring the landlady witless in the process! Most of the comics who took on these tours tried a hip, ring-a-ding, hi-there-guys-and-gals approach, all very sophisticated and mid-Atlantic, but Bryan realised that the audiences were too young and naïve to respond to that, and stuck to childish, Crackerjack style jokes, and so was actually able to get the kids laughing. One I recall concerned the Oomeboomboom bird, so-called because it had very short legs,and when it came in to land would shoutl 'Ooh! Me bum-bum!' Seriously — they lapped it up.

Another, earlier bill featured:

• Dion
• Del Shannon
• Buzz Clifford
• Joe Brown
• The Allisons
• Wallace & Duval
• Suzy Cope
• Peppi & The New York Twisters

Buzz Clifford was known for Baby Sittin' Boogie but not, I think, much else. A bit of a bruiser, he had a punch-up on the coach with one of the double act, Wallace & Duval,as we travelled homewards on the last night of that tour. As a result we all spent a fair portion of the night finding a hospital to clean up the face of the loser — which wasn't Buzz.

The Allisons were a couple of chaps with very little experience of the business. They had come second in the 1961 Eurovision Song Contest, with a song called Are You Sure. The Allison who would count the band in had an unfortunate tendency to go cross-eyed as he concentrated on the tempo, which inevitably set us off giggling, I'm afraid. Nice lads, but very green, although they did cop a gold disc for a million sales of Are You Sure, their only hit.

The venues were mostly cinemas, not designed to make communication with an audience easy, but as I said above, with the racket the kids kicked up it hardly mattered. More enjoyable were places like the Opera House, Blackpool and the Palace, Manchester. Some of those old theatres smelt a bit funny backstage, but were much easier to play.

Newly demobbed from the Royal Air Force, after three years in the RAF Music Service, I fell into my first professional music job. Nat Allen, the bandleader at the Streatham Locarno ballroom took me on to play clarinet and alto sax - although he was actually in need of a tenor sax player, having sacked his lead tenor sax player the previous night. The lead alto player, Tommy Plunkett, said he was in the process of buying a tenor, and I could borrow it until I could buy one for myself. Great! I had always wanted to play tenor, so I jumped at the opportunity. He brought the instrument in, a Selmer 'Cigar Cutter' model, and I embarked on trying to learn how to play it in tune — playing in a section of a dozen or so clarinets in a military band as I had been doing, tuning discrepancies got buried: playing with three or four other saxes was a different matter.

A scant week later, I was on my first BBC broadcast. Music While You Work had started up during World War II, for the workers in factories. The original brief called for "as little variation of tempo as possible, the ideal being to maintain the same beat throughout the whole programme. Artistic value must NOT be considered. The aim is to produce something which is monotonous and repetitive. Subtlety of any kind is out of place." — I've just realised that Radio One is still following those instructions! Anyway, they were to some extent ignored, but the programme was live non-stop music and so was quite hard work.

At the time when I did it, in the early 60s, the morning session was thirty minutes, played by a small combination. Most of these were night-club bands, and had been working until the small hours. They then had to be in the studio for a 7.00 am rehearsal, followed by an 11 o'clock broadcast, before dragging themselves home to bed. The afternoon programme was three-quarters of an hour long, non-stop, and featured a full band. So there I was, with an unfamiliar instrument, all set to churn through a cavalcade of crap for 45 minutes. My very first note in the signature tune, Calling All Workers (Eric Coates) was at the bottom of the instrument, a low 'C', followed by a low 'B ' — that part of the saxophone can be very temperamental, and I remember I dropped a cigarette lighter down the bell, to deaden the vibrations a bit and stop the note jumping up an octave, or 'wolfing' — producing a highly undesirable loud squeak! (In my RAF days, recording for FBS in Cyprus I had had the solo in Dvorak's Humoresque, and my very first note was a horrible squeak. Every time they broadcast that tape, the squeak seemed to get louder and nastier!)

At the end of each tune, the pianist would play a bridge, changing the key, leading into the next number. Meantime we would quietly pull the part we had just played onto the floor, revealing the music for the next arrangement, and off we would go again. At one point I remember alto player Joe McCleer pulling the part off, and dumping four more on the floor with it. He couldn't stop to pick them up of course — he did look funny, with his head bent over, reading the next number from the floor...

All in all, it was a bit of a 'roast-up', and we were all glad to get it over with. 'Music While You Work' was treated as a 'second class' broadcast, listed separately in the Melody Maker from other 'real' band broadcasts — it was paid at a lower rate, too! Still, it wasn't a bad apprenticeship. What the factory workers made of it I don't know.

In one of the articlettes above, I wrote about Peppi Borza, seen here underneath sister Nita, in the days of their youthful double act, with whom the Cannons had been paired, and packaged as 'Peppi and the New York Twisters'. I said that apart from spotting him as a Morris dancer in a Two Ronnies sketch, I had heard nothing of him since the New York Twisters (and how!) days.

Well, I dug and delved and discovered a few nuggets. In 1973, Pep had had a part as a Muleteer in the film version of Man of La Mancha although I'm pretty sure he would not have Sung the Unsingable Song, and Reached the Unreachable Note…

He is credited in 1979 on the original Broadway cast recording of Evita, and was one of the comedy vocal policemen “with cat-like tread”, in the 1983 film of Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

1986 cast lists for Doctor Who: The Trial Of a Timelord, episodes 11 & 12, have Peppi as First Vervoid — sounds like an amalgamation of vermin and a hemorrhoid, but I wouldn't bank on it…

In the meantime, he had participated in the composition of four songs with Dusty's brother, Tom Springfield: No Tears for Johnny, Chain Gang Blues, O Holy Child (which Dusty recorded) and The Skip, which I imagine would have been a dance novelty rather than a receptacle for rubble and old mattresses.

And finally I was reliably informed that he had died sometime in the later 1980s. Not the brightest outcome to a quest, but at least now I know… I shall always remember his bafflement with English accents, as when he had accosted a bucolic local to ask for directions. He returned with a very puzzled expression. 'The guy says we should turn right at The Ploo. What the f---'s a ploo?' We explained that that was how West Country folk pronounced things, and set off to look for a pub called 'The Plough', where we duly turned right…

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. (John Gaule)

It occurs to me that in my musical meanderings here I have been mentioning such arcane matters as the type of clarinet I was using at various different periods, referring to 'Boehm system' or 'Simple system', but not explaining the difference. Now there is no reason why you should give even the smallest toss about it, but I really should clarify the matter. So I will — it'll make me feel better, really…

'System' refers to the arrangement of keys and holes which the player uses to produce different notes. The 'Albert' system (left), known in the UK as the 'Simple system' was the standard instrument for many players in the 19th Century and early 20th Century. It is still in use in some Eastern European musical forms, including Klezmer and Bulgarian music, and with some players of earlier forms of jazz. It is emphatically not an inferior instrument, and was the choice of, among others, our own Sid Phillips, Sydney Bechet, Barney Bigard, Johnnie Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Larry Shields, Omer Simeon and Woody Allen. However, it poses technical difficulties for the player, some which were eliminated by the invention of what is known as the 'Boehm' system (right).

It's called the Boehm system not because Theobald Boehm had anything to do with it — he didn't. Boehm had invented a system for the flute, which is a very different instrument indeed, and certain mechanical principles used in that system were adopted by Hyacinthe Klosé and Auguste Buffet (jun.) in the mid 1800s, as they developed their clarinet system. In simple terms, the idea was that pressing a key could operate several other keys on a shared axle. The Boehm clarinet was laid out differently, so that the player's fingers were less stretched to cover holes, and 'cross-fingered' notes were ditched altogether (meaning notes like the low-register B flat, with two holes closed and one open between them, thus: + 0 +).

As can be seen from the two illustrations (neither being of typical specimens I'm afraid) there are many more keys on the Boehm instrument, offering the player a choice of fingerings, the alternatives making the awkward 'break' between the registers easier to negociate at speed. Usually on a Boehm clarinet you do not see a wrap-around speaker key at the top of the instrument, as on the one here, and the Albert A and A-flat keys are usually separate, the A key not passing over the A-flat.

Next time you see a German or Austrian orchestra, take a look at the clarinets — neither Albert nor Boehm, they use a development from the Albert clarinet, known as the Oehler system.

And you thought they were all just 'the old licorice stick'!

Like most blokes, in 1956 I received the dreaded call-up papers. I knew they would arrive eventually, of course but still it was a barrier that had to be surmounted, and it created a trench running right across one's life, cutting off what had been, and putting what was to come at a distance across a dark void…

My father had been concerned that, concentrating as I had been on early jazz I had not acquired much facility for reading music. He must have had a friend who was involved with a Territorial Army band — most probably the Bandmaster, although I don't know that for sure. Anyway, I was enrolled as a 'Boy Entrant' in the TA band of the Royal Fusiliers, and attended weekly rehearsals — at The Tower of London, no less. We had a bandroom in the Flint Tower, and I settled down to playing 'straight'. The only two titles I can remember are the Barcarolle, from The Tales of Hoffman, and the March from Handel's Scipio, but it did bring my reading on, which was just as well.

The first task, approaching full time service was the medical examination. It was just like the scenes you have seen in Carry On films, without Hattie Jacques but with the additional bonus of a dose of crab lice, picked up probably from a recently lain on blanket. You got all sorts…

I explained to someone that I would much rather join the RAF than an Army Regiment, blue being much more my colour, dear, despite my having been an ornament of the TA, and they put me down as a clerk, which could have been worse I suppose. On the appointed morning I showed up to become an AC2, and there I met someone who told me that the Music Service was desperately short of clarinet players, and was taking them on a three-year contract, I figured that an extra year, at twice the pay throughout doing something I liked might be a pretty good idea. The desk sergeant telephoned Uxbridge, and it was arranged that I should show up next day to be auditioned… and I had another night at home. My father muttered comments like 'what is this, a part-time job?', while I feverishly brushed up on the odd minor scale.

At the audition I managed to flannel my way through it, playing when requested, the A-minor scale I had learnt the night before… and I was in! They said they couldn't provide me with an instrument like the old Simple System one I was playing, and I told them I was keen to change onto the Boehm system anyway, so that was OK.

I reported again, and this time was processed through the sausage machine, and after three days getting kitted out at RAF Cardington found myself at RAF Padgate, which is now under a housing estate near Warrington. On the call of 'anyone play a musical instrument?' I crossed my fingers that they weren't looking for volunteers to shift a NAAFI piano, and put my hand up — and was put into Band Flight, the station Voluntary Band. And guess what? They sent me home again to pick up the old clarinet! More paternal mutterings…

Although we did all the marching drill, plus band drill on the square, with and without rifles, we had an easier time of it than those in the regular intake Flights. For one thing, since we arrived and later passed out in ones and twos, there was never a mass exodus, and so the billets were never trashed. This was done usually to give the incoming Flight members something to do… consequently our lino had a mirror-like finish. By the door there was a pile of blanket squares, and when you came in, you skated around on a pair of them, to save tearing up the surface. Even so, 'Bull Nights', officially known as 'domestic evenings'were pretty tiring, after a day on the square — I distinctly remember going to the Astra Cinema, to see the opening titles and the end credits of "Bad Day At Black Rock" and sleeping through everything else!

Easter cropped up while I was at Padgate, and that meant leave, with a Travel Warrant to get home. I was feeling under the weather, but was determined not to miss out on this. The journey was something of a nightmare, with me feeling worse all the time. I finally reached home and collapsed on the front doorstep. It turned out I had pharyngitis. After a shot of penicillin administered with a sawn-off drainpipe, and a 'tonic' of strychnine and iron that remains the most repellent thing I have ever tasted, and some welcome bed-rest, I rejoined the RAF, and after passing out was able to put up my LAC propellor on my sleeve - I was a Musician II!

RAF Uxbridge was the home of the Music Service and the Central Band, until very recently. This was good, because it was on the same Underground Line as my home! I sat around, practising on my newly issued Boehm System clarinet, until it was time to discuss posting. There were more established RAF bands in those days, including the WRAF band and one in Germany, one in Singapore and one in Cyprus. Singapore were OK for clarinets, and I didn't fancy German winters, so I opted for Cyprus. This did not go down well at home… There was the odd bullet flying around on the island, courtesy of Col. Grivas and his EOKA buddies, and it could be a dangerous place. Being eighteen years old, I was invulnerable, I thought, so to hell with it…

A nine-day voyage, from Liverpool to Famagusta, taking in stops at Gibraltar and Malta was a nice warm-up (although the storms in the Bay of Biscay were memorable!). The ship was the SS Nevasa, built in the previous year. After we left Malta, the fresh-water plant broke down, and eventually, having made a fatuous attempt to make tea with salt water, they brought up crates of oranges from the refrigerated hold — and we slaked our very real thirst with gob-fuls of those, a wonderful sensation!

Finally a sort of landing craft dumped us all ashore at Famagusta, and we Musicians found a bus to take us to our base, at Episkopi.

Episkopi was, and for all I know still is, the Headquarters of Middle East Land Forces, Middle East Air Forces, and the Royal Navy, Middle East… The whole sprawling conurbation, or 'cantonment' in service speak,. was set above the cliffs on the southern coast of Cyprus. The MEAF Band was accomodated in tents, which was fine by us — well, you really can't 'bull up' a tent, can you? So we resisted any suggestion of moving into the newly-built barrack blocks. The tents were more solid than you might think, with concrete floors, an electrical supply in the centre, and a framework of large pipes, to which the tenty bits were lashed. During the summer, we rolled back the front and sides, and had a cooling sea breeze, which was pleasant.

Our 'bandroom' was a rather tatty marquee, to comply with the general canvas theme. We did have corrugated iron structures that housed the showers, and also the deep, noisome pit that functioned as a latrine. All very cosy.We were also handily placed for the AKC Cinema (Army Kinema Corporation , in case you wondered). It was here that visiting Combined Service Entertainment shows were staged. Not long before I arrived, Jimmy Edwards had been the star of one such show. In my time we had Jimmy Wheeler, Jon Pertwee (with Yana), Nat Jackley and The Buddy Featherstonhaugh group, with Bill Eyden on drums and Bobby Wellins on tenor sax, in addition to Buddy himself on baritone. There was an open-air cinema elsewhere on the base that made for a good night out in the summer months, particularly when there were flares going up out at sea, adding to the spectacle.

We made ourselves quite comfortable, as you can see from this Christmas-time shot of me and several other chaps, complete with cats (which we had to hide when it was inspection time). We scrounged some furniture which had been declared no longer up to scratch for the married quarters, and used the wardrobes to create personal 'rooms'.

We rehearsed in the morning, after completing a bomb search of our area, and relaxed in the afternoons, when the heat was at its fiercest. The bomb search was necessitated by the activities of EOKA, under the leadership of Colonel Grivas, which were all very boring. On one occasion I was walking towards a building that exploded… it transpired that a civilian worker had been coerced into bringing explosives onto the base, and had done his best to minimize their effect by stuffing them into the insulation of a refrigerator. My favourite story was that of a civvy who was searched one day, and it was found that his sandwiches were filled with plastic explosive…

As the Autumn arrived, we were told to prepare to move temporarily to Nairobi, about which more…

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