Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Welsh violinist who learned at age four, played in the Pitt Orchestra for silent films, and later worked in the mines.
On the island
Eight records
CsárdásFavourite
No reason given explicitly; music not identified further in transcript.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:16Whereabouts in Wales were you born?
I was born in a little town called Ammonford in Carmarthenshire, where really all the great men come from, two of us, Jim Griffiths and myself.
Presenter asks
0:31Did you speak Welsh before you spoke English?
Well, really I hardly spoke English at all. 'Cause we spoke Welsh in the house, everything was Welsh.
Presenter asks
0:37Were your parents especially musical?
Yes, they they were musical. My sister May has a lovely soprano voice and I as a little boy of course I was in the choir, in the chapel. And I learnt all my choral music there.
Presenter asks
0:57What was your very first appearance in public? Do you remember?
Yeah. I've got a photograph in at home of a little boy … oh, it must have been four and a half, five. Plain … in the chapel.
Presenter asks
1:38What was your first job when you left school?
First job when I left school I went in the mines.
Presenter asks
1:43How long did you stay?
Two or three years. Then … it was too hard.
“I've been fifty years in the profession. done a tremendous lot of it with … I was a freelance and I haven't been a day out of work.”
“We live with gipsies. We knew the gipsies. I knew all the great gipsy players.”
“I think the music attracted me because … it's near Welsh [idiom]. There's a lot of it. And some of the Welsh tunes, if they had gipsy harmonies, they'd be gipsy tunes.”
“Never had ambitions because I think ambition clashes with my music. All I want is the music.”