Harry Gold's vividly detailed reminiscences of his eight decades as a working musician conjure up lost worlds: London's poverty-stricken East End in the early 1920, the glamorous high-society life of great dance bands in the inter-war years, dodging bombs in the Blitz and life on the road with his own jazz band in the post-war decades. His musical experiences stretch from seeing the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919 to playing with his Pieces of Eight on tour in East Germany in the 1980s and gigs in Britain and abroad at the end of the 1990s. As he says: have sax, will travel.

His story is populated by royalty, gangsters, fearsome landladies and Irish publicans, but above all by the dozens of jazz and dance band musicians whose talents, eccentricities and often anarchic humour he celebrates. He tells also of struggles, in which he was involved, to unionise the popular music business and create decent working conditions for musicians. Harry's unique memoir is a panorama of the world of popular music in Britain through much of the twentieth century.

Preface by JOHN DANKWORTH.

CONTENTS:
Preface
Introduction
1. 'Beginners Please'
2. The Metronomes, Vic Filmer and the Famous Five
3. The Roy Fox Orchestra and High Society
4. The Union, the Rabin Band and the Blitz
5. Ambrose, Geraldo and a Band of my Own
6. Pieces of Eight: On the Air and on the Road
7. The Guys in the Band
8. Staying Put - Some of the Time
Index

Editor ROGER COTTERRELL has been writing about jazz for more than thirty years, for such magazines as Jazz Monthly, Jazz and Blues, Into Jazz, Jazz Journal, Jazz Forum, The Wire and Jazz FM. He edited Jazz Now: The Jazz Centre Society Guide (Quartet 1976).

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