I come from a musical family. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professional fiddle player and later a professor of music; my mother’s sister, Jessica, played the harp and their brother (my uncle) Terry, was the lead oboist with the Royal Philharmonic for many years. Also, my youngest son has a passion for music.
As a callow youth, I first picked up the harmonica and then the guitar. At school I joined a ‘skiffle’ band: two acoustic guitars, a washboard, and a repertoire of Lonnie Donegan songs. Puttin’ on the Style, My Old Man’s a Dustman, and the incomparable Does Your Chewing-gum Lose its Flavour (on the Bedpost Overnight)? We paid for studio time and cut a record, I recall. I never got a copy, as we could only afford two.
I took up the fiddle for a while, but everyone hated the sound I made, me included. To be honest, my musical prospects were never that great, as my hands were too small for the guitar or the piano. There was a time when I could have pursued a career with the triangle, I suppose, but my timing was never quite right.
*fades into the sunset signing
My old man’s a dustman,
He wears a dustman’s hat.
He wears gor-blimey trousers
And he lives in a council flat.
Just because you were born into a musical family JJ, doesn’t always mean you will carry on the musical heritage.
My paternal grandfather was a draughtsman working on the engine design for the R101 airship, but I can’t draw for nuts.
Don’t take it to heart friend. 😀
Thanks, Jack. Funny thing, I have a degree in Mathematics, but my mother and father were numerically illiterate. There’s no accounting for inherited skills.