About me...

As a young boy I used to go up the road to my grandparents' house where there were two attractions - a piano and a wind-up gramophone. My grandfather liked "light classics" and my aunt - who was then in her late 'teens - liked Spike Jones! Saturday nights would often end up as a sing-song around the piano. We had no TV in those days and the "wireless" was central to everyone's lives. I can still recall the first time I heard Django Reinhardt on a BBC Sunday afternoon request programme, and I'm sure that's when the guitar first entered my consciousness.

Pre-1956 music was pretty straight. My father, who had been in the Royal Air Force in World War 2, was a huge fan of Glenn Miller, and I can still whistle my way through trumpet solos on "String of Pearls" and all the riffs on "In the Mood". But there is no doubt that the watershed for me - the three records that changed it all for ever - were "Heartbreak Hotel", "Rock around the Clock" and "Bye bye love". Then when I heard British performers like Lonnie Donegan I just had to get a guitar. Eventually, at the age of 20, I bought a cheap one and was off and away. When I started guitar I also learned a little piano and lots of blues harp - I just wanted to play anything and everything! However, the first forum for my amateur efforts was in the 1960s folk scene in the north of England. Eventually, I upgraded guitars, ending up with a 1964 Epiphone Texan sunburst acoustic, in the days when these guitars were still made in Kalamazoo.

Me with Texan in 1968 - photos by photographer, clarinet player (and best man at my wedding) Barry Marshall.

My first bought albums were of Leadbelly, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Howling Wolf and other black American blues artists.

London, 1968-1975

When I moved down to London in the late 1960s, I fell into the folk and blues scene in venues such as Les Cousins and Bunjies. My "local heroes" at that time were doyens of the British folk & blues scene such as Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, the Pentangle - and also blues players such as John Mayall, Peter Green and Jo-Ann Kelly. I ran the BBC Folk Club ("Clanfolk") for a year or so, which was held in a Paddington pub called the Marquis of Clanricarde. A mate of mine at the BBC - Bob Wood - recorded some stuff of mine in a basement studio at the Beeb's Maida Vale studios. I played a lot of blues harp in those days - here is a rcecording of me doing my best to sound like Sony Terry...

The Egbert Sousé All Stars

In 1971 some friends and I formed a folk-influenced jug band called The Egbert Sousé All Stars, and we started a weekly residency at The Redan in Queensway, also in London's Bayswater district, which lasted for nearly 5 years. Gradually, our jug band stuff got jazzier and more dance-band orientated.

The beginnings of the Egbert Sousé All Stars jug and good-time band - at the Duke of Sussex in Chiswick in 1971. Left to right: Rob Wayne, double bass; Brian Catchpole, vocals, kazoo and blues harp; Pete Charlton on washboard and vocals; Stefan Dreja, jug; Yours Truly, guitar. Some months later, the band was joined by Rita Foreman on washboard, Ian Chisholm on mandolin & guitar, and Norman Picken on soprano sax & clarinet - and others from time to time...

1973 - me and my '64 Epiphone Texan at a party somewhere in London. In the middle of the picture, in the white dress - Rita Foreman, temporarily minus her washboard...

Sussex 1976 -

In 1976 I moved down to the south coast and initially picked up on the folk scene. However my Epiphone was, by this time, amplifed with a DeArmond pickup and I started to get into the mainstream jazz scene. I joined the Brighton-based Jubilee Jazz Band and played jazz and blues on guitar and tenor banjo for around 4 years.

1983 - playing tenor banjo with the Jubilee Jazz Band. This photo was taken on a carriage on the Volks Railway in Brighton, and is part of the cover photo on the band's album of that year - "Making Tracks". The band played on a regular basis at the King and Queen pub in Marlborough Place, Brighton, and at the Adur pub (now the Gather Inn) in Kingsway, Hove. Here's a track from the album - Duke Ellington's "Shout 'Em Aunt Tilly", with me on tenor banjo. Dave Gibb on double bass; Ken White on drums; Roy Leith on alto sax and Sluff Hazell on tenor sax.

After the Jubilee Jazz Band days, I hooked up with a bass player and a rock'n roll drummer called Raye du-Val. And so I spent the next 12 years playing 1950s rock'n roll in a band called the Rockmates and then the Checkmates - with very little later than 1961 in the repertoire. I laid up the Epiphone and went solid electric, graduating from a Hofner Verithin to a Fender Mustang to a US Strat to a G&L ASAT. All things come to an end in time, and the rock'n roll stuff was no exception.

 This photo is of me playing with the Rockmates in the bar of the Burlington Hotel on Marine Parade in Worthing - and my guess is it was taken about 1984 as I'm playing a Fender Mustang guitar through a Watkins Copycat reverb system and an H&H VS Combo amp. This guitar had a good sound - midway between a Telecaster and a Stratocaster - but the sliding tone controls were prone to breaks and cause problems from time to time. Previous to that I played an old, cherry red, Hofner Verithin with a Bigsby tremolo.

Playing with the Rockmates in some pub or club about 1986. The guitar is a white Fender Stratocaster "Elite" model made in 1983. This was fitted with an active, ceramic pickup system which I got fed up after a while, and so had it re-fitted with Seymour Duncan pickups, a new scratchplate, and the traditional Strat selector switch.

After a short "rest", I got together with a few kindred souls around 1995 or so, and we formed a band to play the music of New Orleans and Memphis - from Booker T to Dann Penn. That band - the Roadrunners - is still going today, with a regular residency in Brighton, but without me.

 This photo was taken when I was playing guitar with the Roadrunners at the then Arts Club in Ship Street in Brighton (now part of the Hotel Du Vin), and dates from about 2001 or so. The guitar was my much-loved G&L ASAT, made in 1987. G&L guitars were the last creation of Leo Fender. The all-black hardware included two excellent P90 style pickups, black scratchplate, selector switch and tuners. It had a great sound and I played it for all its time with me through a 100w Gallien-Krueger amp - occasionally with a 50w speaker cab linked in.

The other members of the band in the photo are Mick Feltham on soprano sax and vocalist Jon Gilhooly. The track below is from our album "Last Night".

I changed guitars, swapped the old Texan for a Martin and acquired a parlour guitar, a tenor guitar, a mandolin, a lap steel guitar and a mid-range jumbo- all made by Ian Chisholm, my old band mate from London days. As well as re-doing my old folk and blues acoustic playing, I now play in a jazz and ragtime duo, and also play guitar with Ian and other good friends in a ceilidh band.  Ian has made me a jazzy, hollow-bodied electric guitar - which is fitted with the identical DeArmond pickup I used on the old Epiphone Texan over 40 years ago. Everything comes full circle in time...  So here's a live track from the ceilidh band - "The Star Above The Garter".

"Will & Wolfie" in action - with my guitar buddy Chris "Wolfie" Wolferstan, in 2016 - and here's a live track from our CD, "By Appointment"...

My latest acquisition is a Lowden O-10c guitar made in 1996. It's a great instrument - with clarity of tone and projection from bass to treble - and wonderful to play. Here's a track of it playing: