Thank you for the music tributes to home-grown maestro who played among the stars
KEN ESSEX WAS BORN IN HINCKLEY, AND WENT ON TO PLAY WITH THE BEATLES, TOM
A TALENTED viola player from Hinckley who played with The Beatles and on many TV shows has died at the age of 101.
Kenneth Essex was once a regular at Abbey Road Studios and helped provide the theme music for Fawlty Towers and some of the music for Last of The Summer Wine.
He found fame again last year when he decided to do his own Captain Tom challenge, walking 1km a day in laps near his home in Muswell Hill, in London, where he lived independently up until the final five weeks of his life.
He was even doing the walk on his 100th birthday, with his good deed raising £22,000, and he did the challenge again this year, raising another £6,000.
His daughter, Liz, said: “He worked incredibly hard, his life was really about music.
“He loved his job and although doing three sessions a week could have been tedious, he never complained.
“He was grateful that he was really busy and had lots of work. There were lots of musicians who weren’t as popular.”
Kenneth – known as Ken – was born and went to school in Hinckley, where he took up the violin.
His father, Bertie, ran a bakery next to the former Co-operative shop in Castle Street.
His musical career began in the town when he took up the offer of violin lessons at his school, for 6d per week.
As his talent soon became clear, he won the under-14 violin solo class at Loughborough Music Festival, and he came second in the Leicester Music Festival, despite splitting his finger with a hammer two days before while trying to mend his boots.
The musician passed his entrance exams for grammar school at the age of 14, but as the family could not afford that as well as the violin lessons, Ken chose to carry on with his music.
After leaving school, Ken got a job at Sketchley dye works, and worked 11-hour days, from 6.30am to 5.30pm, practising the violin when he got home from work.
The adjudicator at the Loughborough Music Festival, Grace Burrows, was struck by his talent, and so took him under her tutelage, suggesting that he needed a better violin, or to change to a viola.
He liked the idea of taking on the new instrument, and he bought one for £20 – nearly a month’s wages.
In 1937, he entered the Royal Academy of Music where he joined the Hurwitz Quartet with fellow students Emmanuel Hurwitz and Jorgen Laulund on violins, and Peter Halling on cello, later replaced by Terence Weil.
The Second World War interrupted their plans and Ken joined the Royal Marines Band at the Royal Naval School of Music.
He had to learn a wind instrument, and would be serving at sea on a warship.
He was posted to the HMS Euryalus, engaged in running convoys to Malta, and he learned to play the alto saxophone, joining the front line of the ship’s dance band.
After the war he was accepted by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and a few months later the reformed Hurwitz Quartet was invited to take part in a production of the Rape of Lucretia at Glyndebourne, the first production after the war.
Shortly afterwards, the Amadeus Quartet was formed and Ken played in their quintet dates, but clashes in his timetable meant he had to give up playing with the Amadeus.
The Hurwitz players led the string section of the newly formed Goldsborough Orchestra, and Ken was also invited to join the Boyd Neel Orchestra, an experience he remembered with fondness.
He was then invited to join the front desk of violas for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, before joining the London Symphony Orchestra as principal viola.
He left the LSO to go freelance and was asked by jazz composer and score writer John Dankworth to appear in the radio series Johnny Come Lately, where he played an arrangement of Summertime with the Johnny Dankworth Band.
He made TV, film and popular music recordings, including playing in the string quartet backing for The Beatles’ recording of what is arguably their most famous song, Yesterday.
Daughter Liz remembers going along with him as a youngster to the recordings and mingling with famous people.
He was in the orchestra during the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton when ABBA won, and amused his family for the next few days by wandering around the house singing their catchy hit song, Waterloo.
Other popular music stars he has played with include Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Jackson, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey.
Liz said previously, when he turned 100 and took on the Captain Tom-style charity challenge: “He is an amazing man, he’s had an amazing musical career.
“I went through, with him, an enormous pile of birthday cards, some from other musicians. He
was held in such high regard. It was lovely to read them. He knows every single person who sent him a card.”
Last year, Ken did the challenge in aid of Moorfields Eye Hospital, where he had treatment, and this year he went out on his stroller to raise funds for Hospice Aid UK.
Ironically, it was a problem with his legs which forced him to move into a care home, and then into hospital for the final two weeks of his life.
His family were able to be with him during his final days.
He is survived by his three children, with his funeral to take place on Monday, November 8.