Background

Well, I guess I must have been three or four years old when I first started taking an interest in music.

I was living with mum, dad, grandma and uncle Les, at 20 Rendle Street,London W.10. The year would have been around 1950.

I was sitting in the back room listening to a record on an old 1940s record player, just like the one on the left.

To make the turntable rotate, you had to wind it up with the handle. If you wound it up too much, the singer would begin as tenor/soprano, and as the record slowed down, he/she would become bass/contralto.

The very first record I played on that old machine was “Tell Me A Story” by Frankie Laine and Jimmy Boyd.I played that record so many times, I think I must have worn a hole in it.

As time moved along, I began following country stars like Burl Ives, Hank Locklin, Slim Whitman and Hank Snow.

At age 11, I learned to play guitar and, at 14, I took up playing bass guitar and joined a band called “The Arrows”.

We began as an instrumental band and emulated “The Shadows” but, with the emergence of “The Beatles”, we became a rhythm & Blues vocal band.

We were resident band at “The Carlton Ballroom”, Slough, which hosted stars including “The Rolling Stones”, The Searchers, The Swinging Blues Jeans and many, many more top names.