Trog’s terrifying Blues

sir – Your obituary of Wally Fawkes (March 6), best known as the cartoonist Trog but who was also an accomplished jazz musician, omitted to mention a tune called Trog’s Blues. It was recorded while he was the clarinettist with the Humphrey Lyttelton Band, which he co-founded in 1948.

In my house at Eton in the 1960s, a record of this piece, popularly known as The Dirge, was played to boys waiting outside the senior prefects’ room for punishment (which could include a beating).

Doleful enough when played at the correct speed of 45 rpm, when played – as it always was – at 33⅓ rpm, Trog’s Blues became so terrifyingly dismal that even the strongest of rebellious schoolboy hearts quailed before it.

J C H Mounsey Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire