Pasadena 2This is a featured page


He's wearing a tweed suit, almost certainly one that he bought in a secondhand shop - perhaps Alfred Kemp's (We Can Fit Anybody!) in Camden Town - and a similar but unmatching tweed hat. The pockets of the jackert are huge and swollen; there's a Leica camera in one, and a worn and bulging notebook in the other. His hands are black with grease; he's just spent most of the morning tuning his 3-litre Lagonda, or dismantling the gearbox of his Vincent HRD Rapide.

On stage, however, he is immaculate in white tie and tails, or the magnificent frogged smoking jacket in plum velvet that he had specially made for the Royal Command Performance. His bearing is regal, his presence gracious. But he's still a monster.

Cooper's regal eminence was at its best one evening in September 1961, when we played for a charity ball at the Savoy River Room. We had just formed ourselves into a limited company, and Ralph Peters thought that a photograph of a board meeting at the Savoy would make a good piece of publicity.

We descended to a large basement room, followed by a giggle of hoorays. One of them had a handsome gold and enamel medallion hanging on his chest. "I'd look very good wearing that for the photo," said Cooper. "Will you lend it to me?"

"You can't wear this!" was the horrified reply, "it's a baronet's badge." "Then," said Cooper, wagging his saxophone sling in the hooray's face, "I shan't let you wear this. It's a clarinet's badge."

With his talent, it's extraordinary that he stayed with the Seven, through all the hard days of coping with Douglas's cornet, Joey's gaspipe clarinet and Paul's trombone. Of recent years, he's takern to referring rather condescendingly to "the funny band", but (again, like Colin) he really preferred those early days of unprofessional chaos. He seldom missed a date - only once did I have to speak harshly to him, when he sent Goff Dubber, without any excuse, to dep for him (Cooper was probably doing a better-paid job with another band) - and I get the impression that he actually found great pleasure in playing with us.

From Hollywood Road, he moved to a ground floor flat opposite St Paul's School in Baron's Court, painted dark brown and hung with hundreds of old photos and song sheets; and then in the late 60s, he bought a house opposite Wandsworth Common. It had belonged to the daughter of Thomas Crapper, the appropriately named founder of the sanitary merchants in the Kings Road, and one of the conditions of the sale was that the house be left in its original condition. Cooper took this literally, keeping the same decaying curtains at the windows, the same ancient light brackets on the walls, even the same lino and the paper-lined kitchen shelves. He filled it with his collection of vintage cameras, innumerable musical instruments and glass-fronted cases crammed with a tumble of clockwork cars and toy railway engines. The magazine "Interiors" was delighted to photograph it, complete with "Professor" Cooper and his parrot, in November 1989.
Continued on Pasadena 3





JamieEvans
JamieEvans 		Latest page update: made by JamieEvans , Jul 14 2009, 8:00 AM EDT (about this update About This Update JamieEvans Edited by JamieEvans


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