I am curious that in your obituary for George Martin (10 March) you fail to mention the band that gave him his first No 1 hit, the Temperance Seven’s You’re Driving me Crazy, which was significant for both George and us. We went on to enjoy considerable success, including sharing top of the bill with Shirley Bassey for a season at the London Palladium.
George was a great appreciator of quirkiness. What other jazz band would have included an interlude with a quartet where the singer sang Autumn Leaves in French and English or Falling in Love Again in German and English?
Our followers are today mostly dancing to us in care homes but there are still quite a few. In his film It’s Trad, Dad!, Dick Lester used the Temps to try out some of the techniques he would later use with George Martin and the Beatles.
Might have justified a mention, I would have thought. Even a whisper.
Paul McDowell (formerly Whispering Paul)
Towcester, Northamptonshire
• Ironic that the coverage and obituary of George Martin focused on the aural innovation and pleasure he brought to us without a mention of his own encroaching deafness, and his work to champion ear protection and research in the field. The BBC’s tribute programme to him a few years ago caught his own sadness at not being able to make out the high strings in The Lark Ascending; his own book was entitled All You Need is Ears.
Hearing loss remains the most invisible, oft-denied and inevitable disability. More than half the generation that grew up with George are living with it, and numbers are set to rise.
Richard Lee
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
• I, like Caroline Ewans (Letters, 10 March), agree with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett about the uplifting qualities of the Beatles song When I’m 64. However, I play for the Mole Veterans Brass Band, 75% of whose members are in their 70s and 80s and we have to revise the title to When We Were 64. Still sounds just as good.
John Cook (Band secretary)
Bookham, Surrey
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