Buddy in a Maserati at Brooklands (Brooklands Museum).
Buddy’s daughter Sara has recently come to live in Eastbourne and has been a wonderful source of information about her father. An unexceptional boy at the college, he became one of the most extraordinary of its old boys. According to Sara he was ‘a very colourful character; a cad, a heavy drinker and smoker who lived his life full to the brim. He was also very, very funny and had the most incredible sense of humour. He often talked about his days at the college with fond memories’. Married five times, he was a jazz musician of rare talent and a notable racing driver. He died aged 67 when she was 12 and she recalls visiting jazz clubs, such as Ronnie Scott’s, with him. Buddy was born in Paris on 4th October 1909 and, after early education at Ripley Court prep school in Surrey, entered School House at Eastbourne College in 1924. During his three years at the college he was lead player in its jazz band. The Eastbournian of December 1926 records that: ‘The musical part of the summer concert programme was provided by the strident sounds of the Jazz Band. The saxophonist was able to vary his playing more than before as he had acquired a ‘soprano’’. The player was clearly Buddy but we may never know who taught him to play; and all this happened, perhaps surpris- ingly, under a headmaster, Mr Arnold, who was noted to have ‘little music in his soul’. Perhaps that is why he allowed it to happen. Buddy learned to drive on his father’s 1925 Red Label Bentley and by 1927 owned a boat-tailed one-litre Fiat, following that in 1928 with a four- cylinder GP Bugatti and then in 1929 with an eight-cylinder GP Bugatti. By 1931 it was a Eustace Watkins Hornet Special, followed in
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1932 by a 1½-litre Alfa. He began racing with the Hornet and by May 1932 he had won two Mountain races on the Alfa. Early in 1934 Whitney Straight gave Buddy a trial in a 2.5-litre Maserati; he liked his form and signed him on. In 1927, just one year after leaving school, Buddy began a notable career as a jazz saxophon- ist and clarinet player, making his début with the Pat O’Malley combo at the Brent Bridge Hotel in London. In March of that year he recorded with Buddy Rose and his Orchestra and again in June with Ronnie Munro and his Orchestra. He then joined violinist Jean Pougnet from late 1928 until 1929. He next played with Ambrose in 1929 and then, as a tenor saxophonist (1930- 32), with Spike Hughes at the Café de Paris – with whom he also recorded no fewer than eight times. In the early 1930s he played with Philip Lewis, Benny Carter, Jiver Hutchinson, Billy Mason and Phil Allen and the Twelve Rhythm Monarchs. In 1932-33 he toured with Billy Mason’s band, supporting the Louis Armstrong band. In the Melody Maker of October 1932 Buddy wrote: ‘The biggest thrill I got from Louis Armstrong was not from his singing, nor his magnificent tone on dizzy top notes, but just from the one occasion on which we played over some of the splendid arrangements which he brought with him. It was his swinging of the trumpet lead that stirred me profoundly. He was my idea of the perfect first trumpet, and my enthusiasm made me play better, I am sure, than I have ever done before or since. Apart from all that, Louis is quite the most charming and unspoiled personality with whom it has ever been my good fortune to be associated. In fact, I think he is the greatest thing that has
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