The Bluffer's Guide to Music

Hailed as an infant prodigy, Peter Gammond was playing the gramophone at the age of three, revealing a natural winding action that was the admiration of all who beheld it. A well-known amateur through his years at school, in the army and at university, in 1952 he was at last persuaded to turn professional and joined a major record company.

Today, looking much younger than he seems, he is acknowledged as one of the country's leading gramophone players, equally at home in the various fields of popular music as he is in the classical world, and now as tasteful an executant in the electronic age as he was in the days of the 78. He also plays the piano, golf, tennis and fruit-machines.

He is the author of an excessive number of books on music. Most of them, as in the case of the present volume, have been compiled from the bits that zealous editors removed from earlier ones. Thus there is a remarkable uniformity about his work that many critics have eagerly noted. Most of all they provide a glimpse into the mind of a frustrated composer. Not many people know that he has written almost as many songs as he has books.

His wide non-musical interests include Indian curries, Evelyn Waugh, real ale, Offenbach, class-warfare, John Betjeman and Things. He lives in a ramshackle house in Middlesex with a fine view over a row of garages and an old-people's home. A contented recluse, he is known to few beyond the immediate circle of his doctor, lawyer, accountant, golfing friends, listeners to the radio and a handful of devoted readers.

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.