Peter Volpe on Peter Fielding.

I've just been checking out your site and was fascinated to see the poster (supplied by Colin Aitchison) and thread on my grandfather Peter Fielding and his band. Link to previous post. I don't have too many direct memories of him other than at Christmas times as he was working away from Newcastle by the time I was born but I do remember regularly receiving birthday cards from exotic places when he was the bandleader on the Canberra and the QE2.

Over the years many people have spoken to me of his days at the Oxford Galleries however, invariably with warmth and nostalgia. These evocations have not been confined to the north-east; in my student days I met a saxophonist in a pub in Richmond (Surrey) who had played in his band for twenty years and knew my grandmother and all her six children, including my father, Tony. On my way to a Latin gig in Paris one evening I also heard a fascinating radio 4 interview  with the trail-blazing female saxophonist Kathy Stobart who related that during the war Peter Fielding gave her her first real gig - at the Oxford.
My father played the piano well in his youth, though he never worked with my grandfather. My uncle Peter played the trombone in the band. After suffering a heart attack he moved onto Bass and Piano. He produced the St. Jacome Trumpet method from my grandmother's kitchen cupboard and gave it to me when I took up the trumpet. I still have it in my work studio downstairs. Mike, another uncle, was a drummer and continued leading a band in the north east under his own name (Mike Fielding). I did a couple of deps in his band round the time I played in the Newcastle Big Band. You may well have come across him yourself at some time.

My grandmother Cath was a dancer in her young days and met my grandfather when he was the MD on a review in which she worked. I met my own wife when she was a dancer and singer in a show I worked on here in France. Who says history never repeats itself?!
Keep up the good work on the web site.

Peter Volpe. (Ed. photo of Peter Volpe taken from Peter's MySpace site.)
P.S. When you worked in Windows you were responsible for the choice of the first Jazz album I ever bought. It was a Lee Morgan record with Art Blakey. The second one you advised me to buy was by Clifford Brown.

Good choices!

Thanks.