THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 18th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Now we were just on about your dads toy business weren’t we?
R - Yes.
And talking about the workshop at the bottom of Wapping..
R- That's right,
When he employed five men.
R - Well he employed, when I say five, he had a boy and three men and I worked there occasionally even though I was in the orchestra at that time, so I was free in the day. So with me father it made the five. It sounds a lot when you say he employed five, it was an overstatement because he was employed himself. And he were doing quite well there, as I said they went down buying up, derelict, we'll not say absolutely derelict tables, but furniture, tables and chairs. Bentwood chairs, strengthen 'em up, put new wooden rollers in the wringing machines, re-plane a square table top and give it a coat of varnish. Had 'em outside just round the front of that place at the bottom of Westgate there. And they used to sell stuff like Billy-oh of a Saturday morning. Naturally, what I mean, the stuff were cheap enough. A couple were getting married they wanted a wringing machine and they wanted a dolly tub, you'd got the goods to offer and it were cash on the nail. And the other partner was the bookkeeper and he’d do painting and decorating. And time went on and it came the annual holidays and when father came to check up, he hadn’t enough money, no more no less than just pay his way. So with that, the other fella had gone away for a week’s holiday with his family and me father started to look into things and he found out inaccuracies. In other words the chap had been cooking the books you know. And, that's besides the point in a way, there's just one little thing. It shows the attitude of mind my father had. He had a fella working for him and he was a turner and a reasonable fitter and he went to the old man one day he says how about me having a rise? Well the old man, just at that time, he was straining at the leash, you know what 1 mean, he were just paying his way, just a little bit above the odds, but keeping his head above water. He says to this chap “I can’t give you a rise at the moment Albert, we're just about holding us own.” This chap was a bit uppity, got a larger value of his own importance and his remark to my father was “Well, you couldn't manage without me.” So the old man studied a minute and he says “Well, suppose tha deed (If you died) we’d have to manage without thee wouldn't we?” He says “Oh well, I suppose you would.” So the old man says “Well, tha can consider thee self bloody dead! Tha’rt finished!” [Arthur laughs] That was the old man.
[Stanley laughs]
(5 mins)
R- No sooner the word than the blow. But anyway, I think he tried everything, but his enemy always was drink and not paying his bills. Oh he got a very unenviable reputation in the town which I think I found the family as a whole, when I say the family, all the branches of the family. He put a certain amount of discredit on the name of the family in the town but that's been lived down and proved otherwise because I mean to say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. And one bad egg doesn’t make a basket full of bad eggs.
You were saying something about your dad and Isaac Levi?
R - Oh this was during the war, actually during the war. My aunt Annie who was a maiden lady, a spinster if you like, a young woman and she had her mother living with her, my grandmother of course, and..
Is this on your mother's side or your fathers?
R - My mother’s paternal side, this is in Market Street incidentally. And she'd bought her furniture from, I think it was Isaac Levi, but it was one of the brothers. But we'll say Isaac and she used to pay with a little black book which he marked in and when she finished paying, she'd actually paid him for the furniture and a week or two elapsed and he sent her a letter that if she didn't pay for the furniture he’d bring it back you see. Well I don't know how or why or whether the book was lost or what but my dad happened to come home on leave at that time and he was in the Royal Field Artillery. Now whether he was officially allowed to carry a side arm, which was a revolver, I don't know but he had brought this revolver back with him on leave Of course aunty was in tears about this furniture being taken back because you can imagine, when you'd struggled and struggled. He [Isaac Levi] had a bloody bad reputation for bilking people like that you know. So the old man he went up
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to the shop and he says “Narthen. What about this bloody furniture of Annie Fishwicks?” Oh he blustered and the old man pulled his revolver out and said “Now look, tha knows as well as I know that that lass has paid for that furniture. Now, Before I leave here I want a bloody signed receipt from you absolving her from all debt 'cause she's paid for what she's got. Or I’ll put a bloody bullet through you.” Well he so terrified the Jew that he could have been in serious trouble, but never-the-less he pulled it off. She had actually paid for the furniture and of course as I said I was a school lad and this all looked a tremendous bloody thing to me and I wanted to hear it used, like you shot your gun tonight. So we went a walk down Butts beck way which were all hen pens then, below the model lodging house. And taking a careful look round he fired five bullets, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang just as quick as that into the beck. It seemed a terrifying noise to me. Anyway the end of that revolver was that Doctor Glen got it as a war souvenir, money passed hands of course. Funnily enough Doctor Glen sort of took a fancy to my old man. I think I told you earlier he did want to put money in as a sleeping partner, which might have been a good thing for me father. In other word he would have had a break from his ruthless and stupid activities. 'Cause I always say now, there's Broughton’s, the business on the new road there, he taught him all he knows which might not be a lot and he [Harry Broughton] got the title Pigeon Milk because my dad sent him out of the workshop to get some Pigeon Milk. The old man was literally running a school of wood turning and another of his pupils were Bobby Lambert, now they finished up with businesses and the old man finished up with nothing. Which is ironic when you think about it. I don't suppose that's really of any importance to this enquiry here but…
No. Don't be so silly Arthur, this is all pure gold. Knowing me, do you think I'd be sat here if I thought you were waffling? It's fascinating man, fascinating. Don't worry, if I think you’re going off the track I’ll drag you back on quick, or if I think you're getting bogged down. I mean this is far better than ‘did the family have grace before meals’ or owt like that. I know you did but anyway let's get on. What we were actually talking about was musical instruments and the polyphone.
(150) (10 mins)
R- Well the polyphone was almost an article of furniture. Possibly used in some emporium somewhere because it had a penny in the slot mechanism with it. It would be about four foot tall and today..
Your dad didn't by any chance make you put pennies in it did he? [laughs]
R- Well you put pennies in but the drawer wasn't locked at the bottom and you got your penny back....
Oh I see, aye.
R- You know, the penny just tipped in a tray, a lever that just allowed the mechanism to perform its cycle. Oh in trade he’d had quite a high powered microscope, gold rings, sovereigns, two pound pieces, five pound pieces..
Yes. Now just hold on a minute, I told you, you’re digressing now, we're on about musical instruments.
R - Ah musical instruments.
And this must lead in to your musical career.
R - Well the starting of my musical career, this might sound very silly, but before the war my dad came out of the Royal Marines and he was in the Royal Marines Artillery Band as a percussionist. And he was, I wouldn't say he was a virtuoso on the mouth organ but he could play the mouth organ, Ocarina and Tin whistle like nobody's business and he sort of got me interested. But his main object was to get me interested to take up the drums to join the local band, which mother had drummed into me as a youngster so much, the evils of drink and the old man getting drunk. Being a member of a band was synonymous with becoming a drunkard in my juvenile mind. Anyway there was a fella, I’m not digressing because this is part of the story, there was a fella lived down the Butts in those yards at the back of the Seven Stars. There's some yards isn’t there. And I never knew that he worked in all his life. He was an expert on the bagpipes, the violin, tin whistle, two tin whistle's together, ocarina you name it and he could knock a tune out of it
Who was this fella?
R - It was a chap called Dan Wellock a ne’er-do-well as I said, I never knew him work in all his life. And I believe from hearing the old man reminisce and him and Dan reminiscing they used to go busking. Dan went with the pipes and father went with the drum, side drum and they used to go busking up the streets and get beer money. This was before the war you know. He must have been newly married, probably before I was born. But he kept on and on at me about learning to drum and I kept putting it off,
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and shying it off until I was in bed in St. James Square. I was in bed and he brought the bass drum home from the brass band and he brought a side drum home and stand and he had mother, I nearly said the old woman, holding a mouth organ for him while he were playing a march on the mouth organ and giving it the old drum beats and the lot with it. Well to me it sounded fascinating and I was down those stairs like a bloody buck rabbit you know.
How old were you?
R - About fourteen. So anyway….
Just one thing Arthur. Fourteen, you'd be working then.
R – I was working yes. I was working and he prevailed on me, I finally gave in to take lessons.
Just one thing, I'm sorry to interrupt you, just so that I can get it straight in my own mind, so's we can keep this straight afterwards. Your first job actually was apprentice at the tinsmith's weren’t it?
R - I did so long at the tinsmiths. I started at twelve years old I remember.
Yes. But that was your first job wasn’t it?
R - That was my first job.
Yes. Well you go on with music Arthur. I've got it straight in my mind now, we can straighten it up after.
R- Yes, well that firm banked and me mother insisted I went to learn to weave so she said tha'll allus have a trade in thee hands.
(15 mins)
And I think I would be weaving at that time.
Aye, so you shot down stairs.
R- And my interest and enthusiasm, he must have sparked something off in the blood because I’d two uncles that were drum majors. As I said, our family was a military family actually mainly in India. Just to prove that back, great grandfather come from India well off with selling whisky to the natives which he shouldn't have done. He had his own yacht and the very thing he was selling killed him, the whisky killed him at the finish with drinking it. But anyway the family must have had at some time a good standing if you follow what I mean. I mean the family background basically, I'm not talking about my father. Anyway the old man prevailed on me to take up percussion but before that I'd been going down to Dan's, coming back to Dan Wellock and he were learning me how to play a flute and ocarina and learned me to play two tin whistles together, which I think was all part and parcel of the old man getting me interested in music in an elementary sort of a way. He was a drummer himself and he started to teach me and then he sent me to Blackburn every Saturday morning to an uncle of mine who had been a drum major in the army and who was a percussionist himself.
How did you get to Blackburn?
R – Train from Barlick. station. Change at Colne on to Blackburn.
So you’d have to change at Earby an all?
R- Well you had to change at Earby, we didn't count that as a change. You know it was commonplace changing at Earby. Well why I mentioned Colne was because Colne was the demarcation line between the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London Midland and Scottish so that you always had to change off one train on to the other at Colne.
Yea, now that's a funny thing because it was the London and Midland and Scottish that used to run the Barlick Light Railway weren’t it. [Midland railway up to 1923 when LMS was constituted]
R - That's correct, yes.
And yet the line at Earby then would in earlier days have been the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. [I was wrong here]
R- No it was the LMS, Colne is further on isn't it. You go to Earby and you go that way and you go to Colne and Burnley.
Yes but.. Ah, so the Skipton to Colne line was London Midland.
R- LMS yes.
Now how did, well the Lancashire and Yorkshire, did they have Colne. Were they at Colne, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway?
R- Well that was the, how can we put this, you could call it the boundary station if you like between the two locomotive companies. Although there was a joint, each used the station. But the Lancashire and Yorkshire train which was a different colour than the LMS didn't run to Earby or Skipton, it stopped at Colne. And you had to change to an LMS train that was going North shall we say. Anyway as I say, I had to go to Colne and on to Blackburn every Saturday morning by train and I'd to walk quite a distance in Blackburn and a female cousin used to come and meet me because I didn’t know the way. And I’d to have lessons on the drums and
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then I got proficient enough that I was taken on in the local band. Well if this is of any interest to you or to the subject I don't know, but I had peculiar experiences with this. There was a young fella in the Barnoldswick band who played the side drum. His father was the bass drummer and he was such a notorious liar and such a notorious romancer that he had the popular name of ‘Biscuit’. In other words, 'he takes the bloody biscuit'. You know what 1 mean, when he told you something, and he got the name Biscuit.
(20 mins)
What was his reight name?
R - Oh dear, dear, dear. You see that's the difficult thing. When you come to people that had nick-names and they used them all their life very often the surname disappears into the back of your memory.
Don’t let that worry you, it'll come back to you. You’re all right.
R- But he lived in Calf Hall Road and I’ll just give you an idea of his romancing. Now they wanted to sack this bloke out of the band because he was unreliable.
The liar, Biscuit.
R – This Biscuit we'll call him from now on. In other words he’d have an engagement booked somewhere and Biscuit ud fail to turn up and then he’d turn up another time when he thought fit. Well when I was competent enough to take over he was sacked out of the band. Now here's a peculiar thing now, this is where a string of coincidences comes between this certain individual and myself. He got a job drumming with Tom Bolton's band which was the Victor Silvester of his day.
Tommy?
R- Tommy Bolton. And the same thing applied there very often, he didn't turn up. You understand what I mean, he was not only a liar he was unreliable and I followed him into Tommy Bolton's band.
Where did Tommy Bolton's band hang out?
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R- Oh, all round the countryside here, Con Club, Earby Con Club, Country dances like the local hops. He was the Victor Silvester of his day, strict tempo type. Then of course competitions between the cinemas started to become rife and they formed an orchestra at the Majestic Cinema. And this Biscuit got in the orchestra at the Majestic Cinema. Well the same thing applied there, he started to fail to turn up, and the beginning really of my musical career, what you might term professionally, was on Christmas Day of this particular year. I can’t just remember the year exactly but it ud be, it was in the twenty's anyway. We’d just had Christmas dinner when Fred Hartley who was the manager of the Majestic Cinema knocked at the door, and of course the old man asked him in and he wanted to know what was I doing that particular day. This was Boxing Day, I'm telling a lie, it wasn't Christmas Day because you weren’t allowed to open the cinema on Christmas Day. Boxing day, but apparently earlier on he’d failed to turn up and I’ll never forget the picture because to me, I was a musician, in other words I’d been taught to read in all the clefs, you know what I mean, apart from just the dots and dashes that you require for drumming. And in the silent pictures it wasn't only your duty to play music, the music was adapted to the theme or the scene. Say it was a wedding scene or a sick room scene, music appropriate to the scene had to be played, the result was that you'd play short passages of some pieces of music and then segue, that was a term we used, just straight into another and you had a cue sheet came with the film for the musical director.
Yes now, one thingy sorry. What did you say, segue?
R - Segway or segue, but I always pronounced it, being ignorant, SEGUE, but I think the correct pronunciation because it's Italian was ‘segway’.
Yes right.
(25 mins)
R- In other words straight away into the next piece.
Yes.
R- Anyway the drummer in those days, they used to say the orchestra comprised of ten musicians and a drummer. [laughs] Father, he wasn’t counted
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as a musician. So it became the drummer’s job to be the librarian of the band, put the music out before the orchestra came every night and see that it was all in order on the stand and you had the cue sheet, because you weren’t doing as much playing. There were lots of passages where the drummer and whatever weren’t required. So you had to watch the film and when you got a sub-title which could be a cue for the change of music or a particular action in a scene would be a cue for a sound effect. We'd boxes with broken glass in, we’d wind machines, we’d thunder sheets, cow calls, bird whistles, duck calls and all these used to be put in, with an efficient orchestra, the sounds. Anyway I'm overrunning again.
You're not..
R- I'm saying about this lad Biscuit, he exhausted all his potentialities locally, when I say locally I mean Barlick, Earby and Colne and just immediate locality and the last occasion I ever met him was, the bandmaster of Earby Band was Squire Firth who, incidentally, it's not commonly known now, but he was the composer of that hymn 'Rimington'. [Arthur was mistaken here. Rimington was composed by Francis Duckworth who lived for many years in the village of Rimington with Middop. He is buried in Gisburn churchyard and the tune is commemorated on his headstone.]
Did you say Squire?
R- We called him Squire Firth. Whether he was a squire I don't really know.
Yes that's it. And he composed Rimington,
R - He composed Rimington and his son, who was unfortunately killed in world war one, was the worlds champion boy cornettist, his son. Of course I'm speaking now of the hey-day when brass bands were brass bands.
Yes there is just one thing, just to get it straight. When you speak about Barlick. Band, what was it's official title Arthur?
R - Barnoldswick Prize Brass Band.
Aye.
R - They had won prizes.
Yes.
R- And we became a more famous concert band afterwards but I will come back to Biscuit..
Yes.
R- The last occasion I ever met him before he disappeared from the scene of this locality was at the death of Squire Firth who lived in Earby and we had mass bands, we played the Dead March from Earby to Thornton church.
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With the massed bands and it was muffled drums along with, well the bands you know, you get your massed bands sort of joined together. That were the last I ever saw of him. The last 1 heard of him he went on the boats, now whether he actually did or actually didn’t, I did hear that he was drowned at sea but when I say he was a liar, he had a vivid imagination and as an instrumentalist he was thirty years ahead of his time, if you follow what I mean. He was thirty years in advance of what a tap drummer, as a dance band drummer was called then, was expected to do. He would have been on a par with at the time when Carol Gibbons Band came later on in the scene. I believe he was a marvellous drummer but he was so way out he didn't stick to the music in any shape or form But he was so far out that they considered him mad. And I think he was slightly mad because he buttonholed me one day on Church Street and he persuaded me to go up to his house.
(30 mins)
Now it was an ordinary working man's house like, and he was telling me the yarn that he’d got a Wurlitzer organ up in the loft, he’d got a full size marimba, Timpani, xylophone, Glockenspiel, Tubular bells all up in his music room. A Wurlitzer organ mark you, were just barely coming on the blinking scene. I think he lived in a dream world and that’s why. He used to romance so much he got the nickname Biscuit but
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anyway inadvertently he was responsible for launching me on my musical career.
One little thing, I'm not quite sure of the date, but when you were playing in the orchestra at the Majestic, oh no you'd be later, did you ever know Mrs. Clark? Billy Clark's wife, she played the violin in the orchestra at the Majestic.
R- It could have been the Majestic, the only outstanding thing about names that I remember at both the Majestic orchestra and the Palace orchestra was rather a peculiar thing. In the Majestic orchestra the conductor of the orchestral society was the flautist, Roy Trafford. He won the all England clarinettist award of the year. He played the clarinet, 1 can't remember the name of the woman on the violin. I remember the bass player, they called him Tommy Brown and there was Arthur, an Arthur somebody on the violin.
It wasn't Newsome was it?
R- It could have been but I can't swear to it. And Arthur somebody who played the piano and myself who was on the drums. And anyway I was on contract there, as young as I was, and I signed a contract at Steele & Son Solicitors office. Signed. stamped and sealed, and I think it was one of the occasions where the old man put a bit of pressure on Fred Hartley because the competition between the two cinemas was acute and I think he got a lump sum of money on the strength of my contract, you understand what 1 mean. To sign the contract but anyway.
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Now there’s one thing there I must just hold you up again. You say the competition between the two was acute, now I take it you mean between the Palace, which is now the Bingo hall and the Majestic Cinema. Now which was built first Arthur, the Palace or the Majestic?
R- The Majestic was built first.
Any idea when that was built?
R - Well 1 think, wait a bit, I think it was started to be built about 1912, but I think if you walk down Frank Street, I remember war had just started, the first film I ever saw there as a young lad, I think it was 1914 that it was opened and I remember the film was Charlie Chaplin. And I think it was Fred Hartley, that's the old man, the old Fred Hartley, who was the manager's father. There were four brothers of them, one was
the Hartley of the theatre, he literally built Barlick. He built all the shops on Church street, he built the Majestic cinema and what is the ballroom. And the billiard room above which I don't know whether it’s still there on not and all those shops on that block at the front, Fred Hartley built. He was an architect and he built Station Chambers across the road. He had visions of what Barlick might develop into. The sort of a place it might develop to be. Now he didn't build the Palace, but if you remember there's a stone built building across, I don't know what it's used for now, but it was built as a billiard hall.
across from?
R - It's a stone building. Say you are going on the square [St James] now off Church Street. You're going off Church Street towards St. James Square and the
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front of the Palace.
Is on your right, yes.
R - Well if you follow the road there's a building there on the top of the hill which was built as a billiard saloon.
Now in that on the same side as the Palace or on the other side?
R- Well the Palace wasn't in existence. He’d planned, he’d got plans in his mind that St. James Square ultimately would have gone and that ud have been a main street, but it was never concluded, war of course put an end to it and the billiard saloon became Phineas Brown’s garage. It were made into a garage and that was the first place I ever saw ice being made. He had a plant down there for making blocks of ice which of course the butchers, fishmongers, domestic people, you could buy a block of ice and break it up and well you know the system, packing things in ice to keep it. Phineas Brown was a very enterprising bloke. Motor mechanic, engineer, I don't know what the place is now.
Now then, so that’s the Palace and the Majestic in competition.
R- The Palace and the Majestic in competition after the war.
Now you'll know quite a bit about the Majestic won't you, you know little bits and pieces. There's something I'd like to know if you know anything about it. There was a liner called the Majestic.
R- Correct.
Now as I understand it that ship was broken up and Fred Hartley bought some stuff off it.
R- If you walk to the top of the steps now, to the entrance of the Majestic you’ll see some wood panelling and if you look at it carefully, a lot of people wouldn't notice it, it has the curvature of the decks and he bought a tremendous amount of the saloon, you know what I mean, the best saloon wall furnishings. Panelling and it was used extensively in the foyer and in the cinema itself. Old Fred Hartley, when he built it all. Now his son was artistic, when I say artistic I don't mean a decorator in the sense of the word of putting white wash on the wall, he was an artistic bloke and very talented. He changed the decor in that place several times and there were one of the pictures, as I said they were silent pictures where, what do they call them the proscenium arch. They had a false one because the screen was on a wall and the back of the wall was the engine house and dynamos to give power to all the building and the shops. He closed it for so long and when he reopened it he had like a minaret.. with windows and all the ceiling was stars, blue and stars and the décor, he’d done it himself you know, like murals as we call it today. And he was a very artistic fellow. I remember one picture where, it might have been the Desert Song or something similar if you can visualise it, he had a woman in one tower and a bloke in the other tower and at the appropriate times these two people were singing. He used to do all sorts of counter attractions to put a better show on than standard. But of course the Majestic was never able to put on a live show, like a variety or a pantomime or even the choral society, they couldn't even give concerts. Well of course the Palace..
Why not?
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R - Because it never had a stage.
Aye.
R- It never had a stage at all. He built a false stage with this arch and proscenium front. And for some reason or other, musicians are very temperamental people. It was my job, I was the youngest in the orchestra and I don't think 1’d be sixteen and with being the librarian and going there earlier I used to listen to all the gossip. Just to give you an idea, the clarinettist ud come in first and he’d tune his instrument up to the piano sit down and then, he’d say “If that bloody violinist plays my solo tonight I’ll hit him over the bloody head” this is back-biting. Then you'd get the pianist coming and held be back-biting against somebody else, “He took my passage last night I should have had that.” little
(40 mins)
bits of bickering that didn’t come out in the open but I was the recipient of it all. I got to be a bit morbid about this, I thought well if they’re talking about one another like that they must be talking about me. So anyway there were Arthur Harper, Arthur Nutter and Lizzy Daly, they were the trio at the Palace Theatre and they were advertising for a drummer, so I got so fed up with the Majestic business, plus with the Palace the prospect of live shows, which was opening my field of experience a bit more, I broke
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my contract and went to the Palace. Now Hartley never sued my father nor sued me for breach of contract and I can honestly say that popular sheet music was coming into the vogue in those days. Bye, bye Blackbird, and from the music publishers you had two versions of music. They had what was called the song edition and you had what was the jazz or dance band edition. Now at the Majestic we always had the dance band version which was more snappy, more alive. The Palace had the song versions which were insipid compared with the other. And I mentioned it to Arthur Harper, he was the leader of the orchestra, such as it was. He eventually became manager of the Majestic Cinema up to his death.
Of the Majestic?
R - Yes, after the Palace closed down in the years after I’d left you know. And as I said we had quite a good little orchestra there and of course had the benefit of the live shows, variety, a different kind of presentation. The kicks when the chorus girls came on, the high kicks you know, you’d get the percussion effect of them hitting something.
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Well they do it today on TV. And then there was the talkies came in, and when I had to take my instruments home, I lived on the farm, I had to have a flat four wheeled cart because I’d a wind machine, thunder sheet, all sound effects, tubular bells, timpani, the full drum kit which it took a lorry to take my stuff back up to the farm. I stuck it in the spare room and for twelve month I never did anything. You understand what I mean. I wasn't a member of a band or nothing. A dance band I mean. Now at that time, in the thirties, jazz was becoming the thing and I thought after twelve month, I thought I look well, there's all this stuff in this room here wasting. So I formed a band. I got one or two lads but I couldn't got hold of a saxophonist for love nor money. Now a saxophone peculiarly enough was an instrument that had always fascinated me, you know what I mean. It was so different from any other instrument because all the pads at the side were, we used to call them like pan lids. You know what I mean and the sound of them. And it was an instrument that fascinated me. I couldn't get hold of a saxophonist so I had a pair
(S50)
of timpani upstairs that I'd only had twelve month before I was redundant and I'd got all my equipment from R S Kitchen and Company, Queen Victoria Street, Leeds. Oh, I’d spent hundreds of pounds with them literally. So I wrote to them saying that I had these timpani in mint condition and I was desirous of purchasing a saxophone, what would they allow me, you know. Course we were living with the wife's people at this time. The old man had the old Model T Ford and when I got the letter back to say yes bring the timpani in, we'll examine them and see what condition they are and we’ll
talk business, well he drove me to Leeds in the old Ford with no roof on. You
know what I mean, it had a canvas top folded back. Two timpani in the back
seat. Father in law and meself off to Leeds down Queen Victoria Street. Gets
in the shop, of course he knew me personally as soon as I went in. It were
a three storey high shop and he just opened the speaking tube, took the cork out
of the speaking tube, spoke upstairs to somebody. Two men came down with
aprons on, they made instruments and that there even in those days. Took
these two timpani upstairs and never looked at 'em. He said “Narthen Mr
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Entwistle, what were you interested in?” I said “Well actually I'm interested in a saxophone.” He said “What make?” Well of course to me a saxophone was a saxophone. I said “I’m not really certain. I want one like that’s modern with all the automatic keys on. So it was Wednesday and it was early closing and we’d got there about half past eleven. He said “Well, I’ve not got a lot of time to spend with you because I got done last week because I had the shop open a few minutes after twelve o’clock.” So he calls one of the assistants who brings a case, out comes this instrument, he shows it to me, puts it together, puts a tutor book in, he says “Now I can't give you a lesson!” He said “If you’re satisfied, that's it, that's a deal.” I thought well, fair enough, I'm quite happy with it. I’d got a saxophone far some instruments that I couldn't use. I mean to say, you couldn’t cart timpani about, they’re purely an orchestral instrument. And the saxophone I taught meself to play and branched out with me first dance band.
What did you call it Arthur?
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R- The first band was ‘The Rhythm Boys’. Yes, there's one or two members still living in the town who played with me at that day.
Well, we'll finish at that.
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SCG/08 May 2003
6,355 words.