12/6/2023 0 Comments Buck compton interview![]() What were you studying at the music college? And the last two years I was in the music school with Les, that’s where I met him and we became friends. I did my last two years at school at the Municipal College which was the 'tech'. You didn't mention earlier on that you went to music school. We'd do a gig with it and get it back early Monday morning before they all got in! We got caught one day, boy did we get into trouble. We were at music school together the last two years and we used to nick a double bass out of music school on a Friday and walk it down the High Street. He lived in Southend, he lives in New Zealand now. Yeah, I was 14, that’s with Dennis Hayward and Les Steele, the bass player. There's another photo there of when you were playing at the Ritz in Southend. Jack has still got his and I bought one and we only vaguely knew each other in those days and it’s a straight tune instrument built for jazz, which suited me down to the ground. Came over from America and Jack Embelow had bought one also, 2 or 3 of these came over from American in 1957. I subsequently bought an American Excelsior accordion which I still have to this day and it's a marvellous instrument. When we came out the car was gone and so was the accordion. I'd done a gig with Freddie Mirfield and I took him back to his flat in Hans Place, went in for a cup of coffee and I left the accordion in the car. I had it for 7 years and then it got stolen, and funnily enough when it got stolen I was with Freddie Mirfield. Anyway my Dad was struggling, my Mum was working, we were very poor but I had national savings certificates worth that money so my father said I could pull them out and buy the accordion, and we did. And Don, my teacher, had to come round and have dinner with my parents and persuade them I was worthy of such an instrument. I know this because in 1957 I bought my first really good accordion from them which was the princely sum of £250. He went into partnership with an Italian named Firmino Gaudini and they started importing accordions into London. At the age of 18 I acquired my first car and he was in business in Frith Street in the West End. He was playing with Max Jaffa, he was playing with Beniamino Gigli the singer, he did all Victor Sylvester’s broadcasts on television and I used to travel to Streatham every fortnight for an hour’s music lesson with him. Within a few months he got back on his feet and he moved back to London and he was living in Streatham and he was playing with well known people. But anyway, to cut a long story short: she rang him up and she sent me up to see him and I played for him and he said it was dreadful! But he said he would teach me and he did, he started teaching me. He was Italian and he'd been in 'Stars In Battledress' and was in ENSA during the war. And as luck would have it we found an advert in the Southend Standard for a gentleman named Don Destofano who had just come out of the Army. She being a very intelligent woman said “If you’re going to play that don't mess about with it, you've got to be taught properly”. Well two years afterwards when I was 13 my mother sent me into the staircase to get something under the cupboard and I found the accordion, pulled it out, stuck it on and in fact it's out there now on top of that bookcase and it was love at first sight. I started piano lessons at the age of 11 when we moved here.ġ944. When we moved to Southend for some unknown reason the accordion got wrapped up and it got chucked under the stairs. During the war both my mother and father played the accordion. Both my parents were very musical, my mother was a very good pianist and we moved to Southend. Well I hadn't had a music lesson or anything because the war was on. You started accordion at the age of 13.What made you take up that instrument?
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