Roy Budd - Early Life

Early Life

Budd was two when he began to play the piano, initially by ear and then by copying various melodies he heard by listening to the radio. When he was six, two Austrian music experts visited him at home and after various tests, found that he was pitch perfect. In 1953, he made his public concert debut at the London Coliseum. By the age of eight, he could play the Wurlitzer organ and four years later was appearing on television at The London Palladium.

In 1957, he featured on the Carroll Levis show on radio. He sang some Jerry Lee Lewis songs when he was eleven years old with his brother Peter and a friend at the Sutton Granada under the name "The Blue Devils." He formed the "Roy Budd Trio" with bassist the late Peter McGurk and his cousin drummer Trevor Tomkins before leaving school and embarking on a career as a jazz pianist. Roy later reformed the trio with Tony Archer or the late Jeff Clyne on bass and Chris Karan on drums. Clyne was later replaced by Pete Morgan, creating a line-up that was maintained until his death.

His first recording was "Birth of the Budd," a single recording. His first recorded LP was Pick Yourself Up on Pye (NSPL 18177) issued in 1967, with Peter McGurk (Dudley Moore Trio) on bass with the orchestra and Dave Holland on bass on the four tracks featuring the trio without an orchestra. Chris Karan was on drums and Tony Hatch and Johnny Harris arranged the orchestral tracks. In his sleeve notes, Hatch refers to seeing Budd on the David Frost Show on TV in February 1967 playing his own composition I've Never Been In Love Before, which is on the album.

Around that same time, he also recorded an album named simply Roy Budd featuring Ian Carr on trumpet; Dick Morrissey on tenor sax; Trevor Tomkins on drums; and with fellow pianist Harry South doing the arrangements.

He won a UK jazz poll in the category of best pianist for five years running and simultaneously became the resident pianist at the Bull's Head, Barnes, London, where he met up with songwriter Jack Fishman. Fishman secured him a three-year recording contract with MCA and although the company dropped him after only a year, Fishman convinced the managing director that Budd would become an internationally renowned writer of film music.