Andy White (drummer) - Early Life and Early Career

Early Life and Early Career

Andy White was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 27 July 1930, the son of a baker. At the age of 12, he started playing drums in a pipe band, and became a professional session musician at the age of 17. In the 1950s and early 1960s, White played drums with a number of swing and traditional jazz groups and musicians. In 1958 he formed a big band jazz outfit and took it to the American Northeast where he backed "rockers" like Chuck Berry, The Platters and Bill Haley & His Comets. White said, "We used some big band arrangements and put a back beat to it to fit in with the rock 'n' roll thing. I got the chance to hear rock 'n' roll in the flesh. That was where I got a good idea about what it was supposed to happen, drumwise." In 1960 in London White recorded with Billy Fury on Fury's first album, The Sound of Fury, which is generally regarded as Britain's first rock and roll album.

In the early 1960s White lived in Thames Ditton and was married to the British Decca artist Lynn Cornell, who later became a member of The Vernons Girls and The Pearls.