Music in the early '60s

My interest in music was both from the listening and the playing. I had better deal with the playing first I think.

Playing Instruments
I covered earlier my short stint at the flute. It taught me the basic fingering for most wind instruments but I never really took to it. Sometime around the age of 14 I went down to Ally's Owl Shop just next door to Streatham Bus Garage and bought myself a 2nd hand guitar. I think I mentioned earlier that the next thing I did was go up to The Swing Shop at St. Leonard's Church in the middle of Streatham and buy Bert Weedon's 'Play The Guitar in a Day' book.

We had a piano in the front room although no-one in the family could play but along with it was a book of traditional songs. Between picking out the tunes on the piano and plucking away, I got some tunes and chords out of the guitar. Although I don't have much of a voice, I began to really enjoy sitting in the front room and strumming chords and picking out tunes. I took a great interest in American Folk Music - especially when I found a book on American Railroad songs. I still have a fondness for 'The Little Red Caboose Behind The Train" and will play it properly on the concertina sometime.

Underlying my interest in music was a lifelong appreciation of 'Traditional Jazz' so I slowly moved towards getting a Banjo. As ever in my life I knew what I wanted but didn't quite make it - fingering on a tenor banjo is quite difficult - a tenor is what you hear in most Trad Jazz Bands - so I plumped for a 5 string - which is a folk instrument. A tenor has four strings - a 5-String has four strings and a drone string which stops halfway down the finger board. It would still be possible to play Trad Jazz but the other options were broader. I started to listen to Pete Seeger and finally bought his 10" LP on "How To Play The 5 String Banjo" - HA!!!! It should have been called "Let me show you how I play the 5-string banjo - you won't come close!". Still I tried, and as mentioned, took it to camp and played successfully for the camp fires. There was a memorable Scout Gang Show where us Senior Scouts put on a personal Act - Me Playing the Banjo, Roger playing the Drums and the others playing the Kazoo. I can't remember the whole sketch but it included "Close the door, they're coming in the window" and the theme tune to "Sunday Night At The London Palladium" Sadly, I can't find the closing credits but this is the opening of one show.

Two other instruments got into the act before I got married - an electric guitar, which I played through my tape recorder using it as an amplifier and a tenor saxophone. I have no idea why I went to the electric guitar because - apart from The Shadows - I had little interest in pop music by then. The saxaphone was one of my usual half assed ideas - what I really wanted was a soprano sax because of the way it was played on The Firehouse Five recordings but couldn't find one on the day I went looking down the Charing Cross Road - so what did I do - wait until I could find one - NO! I bought an Alto! I did play this for a while but because I had no real love of anything other than Traditional (New Orleans - Dixieland) Jazz it sort of faded and I finally sold it.

One big thing for me during the mid-'60s was Rhythm and Blues and I/we was/were very regular attendees at The Marquee. Having messed about with a Harmonica when I was in Junior School, I picked up on the Blues Harp and got really into the wa wa sound of bent blues notes. To my shame, when I was given a harp in later years, for some reason I was scared to pick it up in case I couldn't play it. Given that the form of a harmonica is that same as the concertina and I can play that quite well, I am not sure why I didn't give it a go. I will come back to one result of my playing the blues later in this piece.

I pretty much stopped playing a musical instrument once we were married - nothing to do with that but I just didn't seem to want to. Then a few years later, Valerie bought me a really nice guitar from Harrods for Christmas and I got back into it - but I am getting ahead of myself.

As my next piece about recorded music is likely to be very long, I have split this topic into two parts.