Harry Gold (musician)

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An elderly, grey-haired man sits in front of a wall covered with framed photographs and posters, and plays a floor-mounted contrabass saxophone.
Gold aged 89, demonstrating the contrabass saxophone in the 100 Club, London, 1996

Harry Gold (26 February 1907 – 13 November 2005), born Hyman Goldberg, was an English

Dixieland jazz saxophonist and bandleader.[1][2][3]

Biography

The eldest of six children, born to a

Original Dixieland Jazz Band playing at the Hammersmith Palais during their famous visit to Britain in 1919–1920. He studied saxophone, clarinet, oboe and music theory under Louis Kimmel, a professor at the London College of Music, and began working professionally as a musician in the early 1920s. He played with the Metronomes, Vic Filmer, Geraldo, Ambrose and many other bands, but it was his tenure as a star tenor saxophonist with the nationally popular dance band of Roy Fox
from 1932 to 1937 that brought him to wide public attention.

Playing plush London venues such as the

Café de Paris, he watched, from the bandstand, the London nobility of the inter-war years – including the Prince of Wales
– enjoying the high life. However, the contrasts in wealth and poverty that he saw reinforced his socialist convictions. From that time and through most of the rest of his career he was active in union activities and in efforts to promote the welfare of other musicians.

Pieces of Eight

In 1937, while working with Oscar Rabin, he formed a band within the Rabin orchestra, performing "break sets" as "The Pieces of Eight";

London Blitz and across the country. After the war, thanks to radio broadcasts, records and incessant touring, Harry Gold and his Pieces of Eight became household names in Britain through the late 1940s and 1950s.[2]

In December 1945, Harry Gold and his Pieces of Eight recorded for the first time, and began regularly appearing on the BBC's “Music While You Work” radio show.[4]

In 1946, the group almost became one of the first British bands to perform on television, but their performance was not broadcast because Gold's black singer and trombonist, Geoff Love, sang a duet with the band's female white singer, Jane Lee.[4] However, a performance at the 1947 Jazz Jamboree launched the Pieces of Eight to belated national prominence, and, in 1948, Harry Gold and his Pieces of Eight accompanied the singer and composer Hoagy Carmichael on a well-received tour of the UK.[6]

Eventually, however, tired of touring, Gold handed over the band to his brother Laurie on New Year's Eve 1955 and opted for a quieter life as a composer-arranger, working for music publishers and later for the EMI organisation. But he continued to play, joining Dick Sudhalter's New Paul Whiteman Orchestra in London in the 1970s and eventually reforming his Pieces of Eight. The band was inspired by the Bob Crosby Bobcats and Laurie Gold by Eddie Miller.

In the 1980s the band toured

78 rpm discs
, and though he did not make many records later in life there are several vinyl LPs, some of which transferred to CD. There is an intriguing LP made for Bruton Music, which was intended as background or 'filler' music for TV, on which there are several original Gold compositions which do not appear anywhere else. Formally trained in composition and orchestration, Gold also wrote and arranged music outside of the jazz genre, including an Irish Rhapsody - "Rhapsody in Green", and a jazz inspired march for the Coldstreeam Guards based on Lili Marlene.

Some long-time fans and former band members say the reformed band was not as good as the original although some performances, especially those where the front line was driven by the Bix-like trumpet of Al Wynette, were memorable.[citation needed] Fortunately, some of these were broadcast and exist on tape. In 2000, he published his autobiography, Gold, Doubloons and Pieces of Eight, recalling eight decades as a working musician,[8] and some of his original compositions and arrangements are published and still available.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ "Harry Gold". The Daily Telegraph. 18 November 2005. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Harry Gold: Master of the jazz bass saxophone and leader for four decades of the Pieces of Eight". The Independent. 18 November 2005. Archived from the original on 9 May 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  3. ^ Ankeny, Jason. "Harry Gold: Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  4. ^ a b c Fordham, John (17 November 2005). "Harry Gold: prolific bandleader, musician and arranger, he was at the heart of the jazz world for more than 70 years". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 August 2009.
  5. ^ "Harry Gold & His Pieces Of Eight". Spotify. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  6. Blogspot
    . 26 February 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  7. ^ "Harry Gold Pieces Of Eight (UK) 1987 Dresden Dixieland Festival – 3 items". YouTube. 20 January 2012. Archived from the original on 21 December 2021. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  8. ISBN 978-0-9537040-0-2
    .

Further reading
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