New Forest

Jack Harvey
Originally uploaded by ezappy.

Jack Harvey was conductor of Chinnor Silver Band and was the guy who saw something in my playing and started me gigging. He would pick me up on a Saturday night at 6.30 after Dr Who, and (I was 14), drive me with my drums in the back of his Ford Corsair at top speed with the heater on full blast to some crumbling shack of a village hall in Winslow or Great Missenden!
I'd have a Mackeson or 2 during the evening, and he would deliver me home using the full width of the road with £4 in my pocket.. Marvellous!

He was a revelation to the band when he arrived and we won our first contest at Abingdon, by playing popular modern tunes we knew, not the old stuff from the First World War.

His wife Joan bred poodles. Jack was ex Guards for all his 5'4" and a lovely trumpet player, who had a way with 'Honeysuckle Rose' that I can still hear when I think about it.

I think the Merrows missed out on the first New Forest camp, but were there in force for the 1970 reprise, when Don Gomme thought we ought to have a campfire, and we found some old trees to burn, and out came Jean Smith's windup gramaphone with the 'Laughing Policeman'.