The 'Why'
In the beginning
Going to RAM
The career begins
The swan song
The career ends
For Jane
At the end
At the ripe old age of 75 it is perhaps not the best time to record one’s first album! So a brief explanation is required before you find yourselves listening by default to the seven or eight tracks which follow. This endeavour simply represents my wish to leave a record and some memories for my two children and their families of some of the songs I learned to sing in my short singing career some 50 years ago, many of which are seldom heard today along with some memories of this long past ‘slice of my life’. I was first encouraged to sing solo as a tenor at St Paul’s School London as it happened that there were at that time no other tenors available. In fact I was always a baritone! So started my short singing career which spanned five short years from St Pauls through National Service on the Bandstands with the Royal Marines to three years at the Royal Academy of Music from whence I decided on graduating that a teaching career with young children was perhaps my best chance of making a living after a year spent as a ‘call boy’ on tour with the Carl Rosa Opera Company How I came to be singing gigs with the Royal Marines is a story for another day. So let’s begin with a song I sang often in a tea-room called Elizabeth’s in Deal Kent when I was stationed there at the Royal Marines School of Music as resident bandstand baritone. As part of the ‘Meet the Local Community’ programme promoted by the Royal Marines Band during this time musicians were sent out into the community to perform at various venues – mine was to do the the teatime Palm Court thing. Picture if you will a fully trained Royal Marine Commando (me) singing ‘My Lovely Celia’ by George Munro arranged by Lane Wilson to a tearoom filled with Deal’s renowned gentlefolk, little fingers well extended.