Why it's a numbers game for Buddy Greco

Life is something of a numbers game for Buddy Greco. He’s just turned 84 and this is his 60th visit to the UK.

He’s on a run of 33 dates around the UK, on the back of his 70th album.

The big draw is that he’s no tribute act. The Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis were his best friends in the 60s and a quick search of the internet throws up dozens of images of them all having fun together during those heady days in Vegas.

Frank Sinatra rated his pal highly, saying “Buddy can make anything swing - nobody comes close in that department".

“The originals were my dearest friends in the world and I certainly miss them,” said Buddy.

“I tell stories about my relationship with Frank and Sammy and so on during the evening.”

Buddy Greco is a true legend and has been headlining in Vegas since the 1950s, yet his voice remains mellow and smooth. He started his career as pianist and vocalist for jazz musician Benny Goodman. When Goodman was recruiting for a bebop band, Buddy was one of the musicians he hired. Buddy, of course, went on to become one of America’s most popular entertainers.

He boasts Grammy and Emmy awards along hits including The Lady Is Tramp, Around The World and Girl Talk.

And now he’s taken on this huge UK tour and shows no sign of slowing.
Buddy says: “I’ve been very fortunate. My father lived until he was 99 and I have just turned 84.

“The music business is only a number. I don’t look it and certainly don’t feel it.

“I have always had a very successful career in Britain. This is my 60th trip here over the years.

“I first came with Benny Goodman in 1949. People have been wonderful to me all of my life. At one of the venues this time around a man in his 80s came up to me and asked me to sign a flyer from that Benny Goodman concert.

“Yet we have a whole new audience too. Young kids want to know about what it was like. They want to know about Marilyn Monroe, who was also one of my good friends. I love doing this.

“I do it because I love it. I’m now at that point where I just enjoy it more and more.”

Frank and Buddy
The tour takes in mostly theatres, compared with the cabaret venues of the past.

Buddy takes to the stage and does some numbers from his vast repertoire along with a little bit of chat about his great friends in the Rat Pack and their golden says in Vegas, then the tribute band The Rat Pack Is Back do their stuff, before the intermission. After that, Buddy’s wife of Lezlie Anders - who he is proud to point out is more than a couple of decades younger than he is – comes on for her tribute to Peggy Lee, before the pair combine for the finale. The Goodman Allstars Band and the Flamingo Vegas Showgirls complete the Las Vegas Experience.

While he’s not traveling, he’s settling down in the south-east to tweak his stage musical – a ‘Fever’ tribute to Peggy Lee, which he’s planning to take to the West End next year.

“We’ve found a gorgeous flat in Westcliffe on sea. I sold my house and nightclub in Palm Springs – we’re going to be here for quite a while!”

And there seems to be no stopping the creative talent that already has an impressive pedigree: “I’m a piano player/singer, not the other way around,” he said. “I try to get my hand into as many things as possible.”

“I’ve just finished my 70th album and I’m still writing, and recording and performing. And as long as the good Lord allows that’ I’ll carry on!”

Words by Patrick Astill, first published, and copyright Derby Telegraph

Tales of pilots lured to their deaths

Stroll across the High Peak and you’ll always enjoy some of the country’s finest scenery.

Wander only a few minutes away from the main paths and – if you know where to look – you’ll be rewarded with an awe-inspiring, time-travel moment, where you can see and sometimes feel the ghosts of the past.

For scattered across an area from Glossop to the west and Sheffield’s borders on the east are almost 70 air crash sites, around half with debris still laying on the ground.

A new book, High Peak Air Crash Sites, explains how the sheer height of the national park lured pilots and navigators into believing they were 2,000ft up, rather than just inches above moorland sitting 2,000ft above sea level.

The evidence is there through the tons of metal strewn across 30 individual sites. A further 36 sites, often showing tell-tale craters and crash scars, can also be found. Most date from the Second World War but others are from as recently as 2006.

The author, Pat Cunningham, is a former RAF and British Midland aviator of 40 years standing, with more than 20,000 hours of operational and commercial flying under his belt.

The book tells the moving story behind each crash, discovered using coroner’s reports and researching official investigations as well as talking to the people involved and people who know the land today.

Inevitably they are stories of tragedy. One, from 1948, recalls how a US Air Force Boeing F-13A perished along with its 13-man crew on a local delivery flight between Scampton, in Lincolnshire, and Burtonwood, Liverpool, after a successful mission over Russia during the blockade of Berlin. It was their final flight and the crew would have been on their way back to the US a few days later.

Cloud conditions led the pilot, Captain Landon Tanner, to use Visual Flight Rules for the 86-mile trip. But he never completed the 22-minute journey.

Pat, getting to the human story behind the tragedies, records that the aircraft wreckage was found in line with the direct route it would have taken, and just three miles north.

The book records: “There had been no witnesses and no recorded emergency transmissions. Beyond this, a crew member’s watch had been smashed while reading 1050 hours. Taking this as the time of impact, and calculating from the known take-off time to obtain the planned estimate for Burtonwood – around 1037 hours – they might well have reasoned that the crew has done some sightseeing before entering the cloud belt; a reasonable assumption in view of their imminent departure from the United Kingdom.”

Pat, who lives in central Derby, said: “I’m a flier and a walker and I take an interest from both points of view.

“Many walkers are only interested if there is a lot of metal about but I find the stories fascinating.

“It’s the human side that’s important. A lot of people would have said in the 40s, for instance, that a crew should have known better. But you have to realise these were young chaps who were floating around in a very darkened landscape and with communications silence, so they were on a hiding to nothing.

“And very, very few were flying in anger. Of the 300 crashes in the wider area, we have about four with battle damage.

“Most were simply getting lost thinking they were over low ground and thinking they had flown higher.”

High Peak Air Crash Sites is illustrated with photographs on almost every page, as well as map references to allow walkers and sightseers to pinpoint these historic and fascinating monuments to the past.

High Peak Air Crashes (Central), [ISBN 978 1 84674 219 4] is by Pat Cunningham and published in paperback by Countryside Books, priced £12.99.

(Words by Patrick Astill; First published and copyright Derby Telegraph 27-8-2010)