Bob Murray - a short autobiography
Bob Murray There were no records in my house, as I was growing up through 40s and into 50s, until I purchased Hi-Fi equipment; a Goldring turntable and arm and a Quad valve amplifier. As a family effort we built a folded horn speaker enclosure that used an 8’x4’sheet of 1” chipboard! The first record I played was my brother’s 10” LP of the 1940 Ellington Orchestra. The sound of the orchestra, driven by Jimmy Blanton’s Bass, was so different from pre-1940. When I came home from school I played it while lighting a fire. Even now when I hear the Da Da Dah of muted trumpets in KoKo I can smell the fire getting hold! The first record I bought was Fontessa by the Modern Jazz Quartet. All my vinyls are long gone as well as the Quad amplifier (that was a big mistake!) but when i recently streamed (Apple Music) the MJQ, I could remember every track as clearly as yesterday. In the sixth form at school, I earned £1 a week as a laboratory technician and spent it going to the Flamingo Club in SoH