Please, Mr Custer

I missed my saxophone while I was away. It’s a huge surprise to a person not a million miles from here that I practise my sax manically everyday. This is because the person not a million miles from here knows that I learned the Spanish guitar, the violin and the double bass at school and I never practised any of them.

Maybe things would have been different if I’d had a big stack of attractive music that I could plunder (belonging to said person) as I do now. But I didn’t. And I loathed the dull exercises with trumped up names masquerading as genuine music that were in all the beginners’ music primers. The thought of a tune that was in them all – Lightly Row – still makes me shudder.

At the moment I’m practising a Gershwin tune called Someone to watch over me, which is so delicious I want to eat it.

Dave asked me why I didn’t buy myself some sheet music that I liked when I was a young teenager, if I hated the music the teacher gave me. But I had no money. And I only had a few records. My first two purchases were Apache by The Shadows, and Please Mr Custer by Charlie Drake. Just imagine, if I had had the music to Please Mr Custer back then, I might have practised obsessively and become a famous violinist.