- #Bunni how we first met not working anywhere full#
- #Bunni how we first met not working anywhere free#
Now, I was lucky enough to have two parents that were very, I suppose, forward looking really, because they used to let me go out and do these jobs, and the rest of it. So most of these theatres started opening up again, and dances started, and you did go out and play on these things and you took a chance when you come home, if a raid was on, you got so used to it, that you took a chance and you went out and did things. On a Sunday, they were mainly symphony concerts and religious music and that’s why Luxembourg came in, because people could listen to something light, and people wanted a laugh when the war was on, and they wanted to be entertained. What they tried to do in those days, they stopped entertainment, and then on the BBC, Lord Rees being what he was, he was a good officiator, he was a bit heavy.
#Bunni how we first met not working anywhere full#
I used to play at parties, but I did my first proper full time gig when I was 12 in 1940, during the Blitz period. It was a change to hear some of that, and from then on I started to get interested in Jazz. What a marvellous musician”, he couldn’t read or write his name, you know. And then I started getting interested in particularly when I heard the Hot Club of France, I listened to Reinhardt and I thought “What a genius. And bit by bit I got interested in Jazz, I used to listen to the radio, pre-war, Ambrose, Harry Roy all those, Mum and Dad let me stay up late on a Friday and Saturday night to listen. I always got something out of the piano, even before I went. But I got to a certain standard, not to a degree standard, because it was a private tutor, but I got enough, always having had feeling for piano.
![bunni how we first met not working anywhere bunni how we first met not working anywhere](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gy3WnpxC7nU/hqdefault.jpg)
So if I got over there, Mum and Dad didn’t want me out in the blackout, coming home with shrapnel coming down, so bit by bit I faded out. You could tell your time by the bombings: about half past six it would go, the siren, and they would start to come. So, I couldn’t really ride on my bike to Turnpike Lane. One night after another, except for one night I think. Then, the night-time bombing started, went on for 56 nights in row actually, it was a long time. So we used to spend some of our time downstairs, until they got a refuge room built up, and we all went to work in there. Came back to London, no school for a time, then bit by bit, more drifted back like I had, bit by bit, then more and more people, then at that time I was then going back to my piano lessons. No school when I got back again, because the same thing had happened, I went down there until they found out who we were, we didn’t go under the aeges of the government, we went privately, so they didn’t have any check on us it all sounds rather funny. Eventually I got homesick for London because nothing was going on there and so I came back to London in the Easter of 1940. And with another cousin, we went to live down there. Now Freddie and I, we come onto Freddie now, we were very close, both only children, both loved music, he played piano then, and I played piano. So I was evacuated privately down to Andover to my Grandmother’s Brother’s house along with Freddie, my cousin. I missed the 11-plus, and in those days, if you missed it or didn’t pass it, that was the end of it, that was it. So I started to learn piano, I went to a chap, who I was doing ok with, someone recommended a lady, Miss Staples who lived at Turnpike Lane, and I was living in Finsbury Park in those days, Stroud Green, between Finsbury Park and Crouch Hill, and decided to go and see her and she turned out to be a very good teacher.
#Bunni how we first met not working anywhere free#
I was born in the Old Royal Free Hospital, not the new one in Hampstead, the old one that used to be in the Grays Inn Road, which makes me a Cockney, as the crow flies. So I started when I was round about 10, 9 or 10, started to learn to play piano
![bunni how we first met not working anywhere bunni how we first met not working anywhere](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i39XxMULP8m4/v0/1200x-1.jpg)
And although I was an only child, had no brothers or sisters, it’s still money going out on something that wasn’t absolutely vital. So, he was never out of work, he worked for himself, had a little café at one time, used to make ice cream in the summer and chestnuts in the winter. For Mum and Dad to do that, Dad always worked after he’d been in the First World War and before that, he’d been in the First World War from 1908 in the Army, and he’d always worked for himself up to the Second World War. When I left school I was paid 18/6d a week as a telegram boy, went up to a guinea. Now, when I say 1/6d a lesson, money then and money today are nothing like the same. And so it started from there, and then I started going to piano lessons, which were about 1/6d a lesson. There was always a piano in the house instead of a television set because radio was king, so a lot of people used to make music, or try to make music, on an amateur scale, much more than they might do today. Music has always been an interest because I had an Uncle, Uncle Len, who I was named after, my name’s Len, who was a semi-pro musician.
![bunni how we first met not working anywhere bunni how we first met not working anywhere](http://www.freegamearchive.com/public/reviews/images/0/06/065/resized/3-bunni-how-we-first-met.jpg)
So Bunny, tell me about your early days of music, how you got interested?