C1940-?
When as a boy on VE day he heard local dance bands playing for outdoor dancing in Wetherby Market Place (there were four or five bands in and around the town in those days) he was fascinated and kept sneaking out of the Street Party which was in the ‘Albert Hall’, behind the Angel Hotel, to hear the bands.
About this time he started to learn to play the trombone in Wetherby Silver Band. It was not from choice that he found himself learning trombone (the hardest instrument in the band) but with the help of the other trombone players, Dennis Franks and Charlie Maxfield he made progress. Called up for the RAF at eighteen, he was posted to Melksham in Wiltshire where there was a good band and he spent three months playing almost every day either on the parade ground or for events around Wiltshire and Somerset. Eventually, he was posted to Yeadon (now Leeds/Bradford Airport) and soon began to play with the local Brass Band and from this began to play with local dance bands and some bigger bands from Bradford. This is why, until he retired, most of his musicians came from Bradford.
In 1953 when he came out of the RAF, none of the local bands wanted a trombone player – it was always the last instrument to be added to a band so he formed his own band called “The Encore Players”. They travelled in Yorkshire and then cruised with P & O and Cunard until retirement in 2009.
