Moment 3

The Gobbi Jobbie

Moment 5

The Crucifixion

Moment 6

Pearlfishers in Verona

I spent most of the summer of 1955 during my last year of National Service with the Royal Marine School of Music as their resident bandstand baritone. Sir Vivien Dunne, the then director of the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, had produced a list of suitable songs for the summer seaside bandstand programme. Two of these were the subject of notable musical ‘moments’ – Drake’s Drum and John Ireland’s ‘Sea fever’ both of which were performed from bandstands from Plymouth to Portsmouth and back. Imagine then this wonderful old bandstand on the Hoe at Plymouth with its unique round seating area for hundreds of deck chairs with a lone Royal Marine in No2 Blues struggling valiantly against all odds in the continual wind that always blows there to render ‘Drake’s Drum’ – Stanford’s wonderful setting of Henry Newbolt’s iconic poem with the sensitive backing of the Royal Marine (Plymouth) band and no microphone of course. This ‘moment’ should have been numbered amongst my favourite memories but due to the wind I doubt anyone else heard anything at all to remember! So here instead, is my preferred musical ‘moment’ from out there on the windswept Plymouth Hoe Bandstand during the Summer of ’55. Ironically that afternoon I managed a reasonable rendition of ‘Sea Fever’ despite John Masefield’s call for “a wind like a whetted knife”!

MOMENT - 3 On The Bandstand - Sea Fever

Listen to - ‘Sea Fever’ John Ireland

Harvey accompanied by Mike Dixon

Recorded in The Old Chapel Studio Shotesham Norfolk 2014

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