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By Root 155 0

was tenor saxist Charlie Ward; something of a dry comedian and older than the rest of us. Used to do one vocal, I’m Gonna Get Lit Up When the Lights Go On in London. The there was George Wilson, trumpet man from Huddersfield in Yorkshire, who had but one lung left after being wounded in North Africa. I saw him several times after the war. He was not in the best of health and had not played a note since getting out of the army. When he was with us he had a wonderful look of resignation when you, Spike, would be unable to play lead (he greatly enjoyed playing second to you). There were a few times in the Naples area when we would be playing for dancing, when into the hall would glide a rather attractive ATS girl, who, I remember, would not give you any encouragement at all, and yet you were very keen on her. Maybe she was playing games, but she wouldn’t give you a tumble and seemed to take delight in being there, with you sequestered on the bandstand. Anyway, it got to the point where you had ‘lip trouble’ each time she appeared; George would see her enter the hall and begin to take bets on just how many minutes it would be before he had to take over lead owing to your emotional ‘lip’.

At one time we had a trumpet player named ‘Judy’Garland, from Nottingham. When there were three trumpets he’d play the trombone part on his horn. He was a slight, bespectacled and cheerful lad.

We had other fellows in the band from time to time, but the ones mentioned above are the musicians best remembered by me.

Of course, at Maddaloni, as things got more organised after the fighting stopped in Italy, there were other activities. One of these was the drama group run by a fellow named Lionel Hamilton. This group did Mary Hayley Bell’s play, Men in Shadow as an early effort, and you wrote a satire on this play, calling it Men-in-Gitis, that was staged a week later for a week’s run. It was billed as “The Doons in Men-in-Gites’. I helped you to prepare the script for this show (but didn’t provide any creative input, I’m sure) in your little cubby-hole room near the gate of the Maddaloni barracks building. I remember the room well; it had on the walls pictures of all the ‘birds’ you had known during your Army days, stretching back to Bexhill-on-Sea. That was my first contact with your ‘Goons” concept, and I recall the opening scene and offstage spoken line: “As our play opens we find Old Pierre, slowly chopping wood by the mill.” This line was in the straight version, and was repeated in yours; but in yours, as the curtain was raised, Old Pierre was chopping wood so franctically the the pieces were flying out into the audience, hitting the backdrop and whizzing into the wings. Great stuff. I’ll always remember it.

Also recalled is a gag that was pulled, at your behest, in a concert for a British outfit near Naples. You had the compere announce that as a special treat we had secured the ‘San Carlo Trio’ from the Opera House - and the tabs went up to reveal three of us in fright wigs, with backs to audience, ready to play some feeble jazz. The audience, that included some straight aficionados of the opera, registered delight at the announcement and absolute dismay when they saw what we really had for them.

I remember some really joyous times with the band, and with you. Ever since those days I have remained convinced that being in the band saved my sanity in the war years, and I guess that you feel similarly. Also, I have always been certain that dance musicians, and jazz musicians more especially, are really the salt of the earth. As a class they are blessed with a sense of humour (see how many prominent comedians, British and American, were origionally in the music business), and are warm and friendly human beings.

The comradeship experienced by men during those years was something most difficult to explain or define in ordinary terms, at least for me. It is a feeling, a connection, hardly understood by woman, and I am grateful that I experienced it. But philosophy is not really my line, and so I will not dwell on this aspect of our army