‘I can’t walk by a piano in a station without playing it. It looks lonely. I feel I ought to give it a little encouragement’
The Piano star, 94, is back at the keyboards for Christmas special
The chair teetered on the hearth as four-year-old Harry Hussey stood on his tiptoes, stretching his tiny hands as high as he could to reach the vase on the mantelpiece.
“Mum and Dad were going shopping and I wouldn’t go with them. I dug my heels in,” said Harry, now 94.
“Eventually they gave in and off they went. I was under strict instructions not to touch the gas and the matches. As soon as they went, I got a chair up to the mantelpiece and got the piano key out of the vase it was kept in. When my parents came back an hour later, I was playing The Skaters’ Waltz. Well, it was recognisable as that, but it wasn’t up to a professional standard by any means. I only had little hands.”
Frustrated that his fingers couldn’t stretch far enough to play the songs he wanted, young Harry soon swapped the piano for the accordion. He said: “I played a bit for a few years then got fed up with it, then Hitler bombed the piano. He was glad to get rid of it as well. I was evacuated in ’39 and that’s when I stopped playing.”
Over the next nine decades, Harry focused his musical talents on the accordion. It wasn’t until a few years ago, in his early-90s, that he sat down at a piano again.
“There’s a shop in Shawlands called Glasgow Piano City,” he said.
“I never went in because you had to go by appointment, but one day I had a look and there was a man inside who waved me in. He asked if I played and I said I played the accordion more and better. He let me sit down and enjoy one of the pianos and he said, ‘I thought you said you didn’t play?’.”
When researchers from Channel 4 approached the shop’s owner, Tom Binns, asking if he knew of anyone in the area who might be interested in taking part in a new show, The Piano, he thought of Harry.
The Piano features amateur pianists performing in train stations up and down the UK. Harry took to the keys on the show in February and will do so again in a Christmas special tomorrow.
He said: “I can’t walk by a piano in a station without playing it. You don’t know when it has been played last or if it ever gets played at all. It always looks a bit lonely. I feel as if I ought to give it a little encouragement.”
The idea of millions of people watching him play doesn’t faze him. He said: “It’s just like people taking photos of you. They will do funny things like tucking microphones down your front and back which makes you jump around a little, but there’s nothing stressful about it.”
When he watches a recording of his first appearance in The Piano, it isn’t to listen to himself play. It’s to see his wife again.
“We met through music, in effect,” remembered Harry. “She was a student in Aberdeen and I was there for work in 1964. We met at a party in someone’s flat. God knows whose. Pat and I were really the last ones left standing so I took her home.
“I had to go off the following morning to a site, then I was touring all around with my job in the Building Research Station. We corresponded for several years, then she came down to London and we eventually got together again, then married.”
Nearly 60 years after they met, Pat died last year, battling dementia for
the last few years of her life. As her memory faded, Harry said music remained the link between them. “There were things she couldn’t remember. Her short-term memory had gone,” he said.
“She didn’t know who I was sometimes. She thought I was her dad and that she was going to go home. But her memory for the tunes was wonderful. She could remember all the words and sang along. I used to sit at the keyboard and play for her and she would sing and tap her fingers. It was good for her and good for me.
“I can see her in the programme because she had a little part in it, so that’s good.”
Pat’s favourite tunes were those from the 1960s, when she was a student. Harry remembers her when he plays them and enjoys playing jazz as he doesn’t have to play exactly by the book. He has never had any formal training on either the piano or the accordion, but believes he has more than 12,000 songs in his repertoire, stretching back to the 1800s.
“When I am playing accordion and going out doing gigs, I never have a programme,” Harry said.
“I just sit there and ask people what they want to hear. It’s usually elderly audiences. I don’t keep up to date with modern music. I probably stopped learning tunes in about 1955. If you don’t read music, you have to remember them all. Any time someone brings up the name of a tune, it brings it back to me. I’ve got a good filing system up there.”
Since developing cataracts, Harry can’t drive, which makes it difficult to lug his accordion around Glasgow. He still manages to perform regular gigs though, his favourite of which is a monthly get-together at Babbity Bowsters. In The Piano At Christmas, Harry will duet The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) by Nat King Cole with Fiona Bennett, who also took part in the original show.
Regarding playing with others, Harry said: “You can get together with other people and have a mutual point of contact that you both appreciate. It doesn’t matter who they are, what age, gender, colour. It’s just wonderful.”
He hasn’t played as much as he would have liked to the last few years, as he has been busy completing his PHD in communication within construction. During the stress of studying, he sometimes allowed himself the treat of a few moments on the keys.
“You sit down and play and it relaxes you” he said. “When you are playing, you can’t think about anything else, you have to concentrate on what you are doing. Sometimes I play because things have got on top of me and are a bit stressful and I want to get away from it.”
Despite being invited to take part in The Piano a second time, Harry is still adamant he is “not good” on the instrument. That won’t stop him from adding a little music to his otherwise quiet Christmas though.
“We never have made much of Christmas,” he said.
“It was more important when I was working full-time and it was a holiday but now all my days are holidays really. I will be having a quiet one with my daughter and her boyfriend.
“We will definitely be watching The Piano in the evening.”