Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Blind jazz pianist from Battersea, known for his early work with Stephane Grappelli and his influential style.
On the island
Eight records
Guests 'first recording' with the quintet in early 1949.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:17How old were you when you started learning the piano?
I started really playing the piano when I was about three or four years of age and started taking lessons when I was five. Before that I used to hit it with a hammer.
Presenter asks
0:35George, have you been without your sight since birth or was it something that happened?
I'm glad you asked it in that way because I was asked once on the coast … Have you been blind all your life? and this was on television. I said, No, not yet.
Presenter asks
1:22When you left school, did you go to music college?
No, I started work in an English pub at the age of sixteen for the princely sum of twenty-five shillings a week and a box on top of the piano for any extra gratuity the customers care to donate.
Presenter asks
2:37When did you make your first broadcast [with the Bampton band]?
Uh, in about thirty eight, I suppose, and shortly after that I started to do solo broadcasts for Overseas.
Presenter asks
7:32What's the pattern of your life now, George? You said you were touring for eight or nine months of the year. Does that mean one night stands?
A mixture of one-night stands and clubs. We may do two or three weeks of one-night stands. We do a number of college concerts … And then perhaps we'll be at a club for a month … But the one night stands seem to be increasing every year.
Presenter asks
8:57George, is there any particular big ambition you haven't achieved yet?
Well, to cut down on the travelling and to study classical music a good deal further … And not to go into it exclusively, but just do pick and choose what I want to do every year as far as work is concerned.
“I'm glad you asked it in that way because I was asked once on the coast … Have you been blind all your life? and this was on television. I said, No, not yet.”
“I started work in an English pub at the age of sixteen for the princely sum of twenty-five shillings a week and a box on top of the piano for any extra gratuity the customers care to donate.”
“His glass eye had fallen out and rolled across the stage, and there were fifteen blind guys on the floor looking for this eye.”
“I was spending far more than I was making … And I wondered why I had given up my house and my car and my dog and my piano and everything over here. And if it had been left to me, I would have been back here in the first year. But my wife said: If you don't give it all the opportunity or the chance in the world you may regret coming back prematurely.”
“Jazz needs at all times social elevation … to have programmes where you have jazz and classical on the same program is very important to jazz.”
“I go through tremendous lazy periods … With the philosophy of why should any man work while he has to health inspector lie in bed?”