My friend Peter Gammond, who has died aged 93, was a writer of some 40 books on music, but was also a poet, composer, artist and broadcaster.
Peter joined the Decca record company in 1952, during the heady days of the LP revolution. This launched a glittering 60-year career as a music critic, during which he wrote more than 300 sleeve notes and interviewed figures such as Walton, Britten, Flagstad, Sutherland, Domingo and Pavarotti.
He made programmes for the BBC Light Programme, Radio 3 and Radio 2, starting in 1963, on diverse musical subjects, including Scott Joplin, Johann Strauss and Gilbert and Sullivan.
His oeuvre encompassed books on jazz, Schubert, Offenbach and Joplin, as well as the Oxford Companion to Popular Music. Peter also contributed to the Bluffer’s Guide series, including the bestselling Bluff Your Way in Music. Also a prolific poet, he was chairman of the Betjeman Society from 1997 to 2002.
Peter was born in Winnington, Cheshire, son of John (“Tom”) Gammond, who worked in administration for ICI and taught cello in his spare time, and Dorothy (nee Heald). Peter learned the piano as a child and often accompanied his father, who played the cello.
He was educated at Sir John Deane’s grammar school, Northwich, and won a scholarship to Manchester College of Art. He wanted to pursue a career as a cartoonist, but was called up for second world war service in 1943. He served in the Far East and India. While in the army, he developed a love of jazz – both listening to it and playing it on a discarded regimental trombone.
On returning to civilian life he went to Wadham College, Oxford, to study English. Encountering figures there such as TS Eliot, Auden, Betjeman and Dylan Thomas was for him like “being sent to heaven”. After graduating he spent eight years at Decca as an editor in the publicity department, leaving in 1960, and then pursued a freelance career. He edited Gramophone Record Review from 1964 to 1980 and served as an adjudicator for the Grand Prix du Disque at Montreux.
A modest man, he nevertheless delighted in giving talks, often drawing on memories of meeting Elgar as a boy, playing bar billiards with Finzi, and lunching with Stravinsky.
Peter and his wife, Anna, lived in Shepperton for more than 50 years, where Peter was much involved in local charitable enterprise. In 1990 he helped to found Care in Shepperton, offering support to the elderly, sick and housebound.
Peter is survived by Anna (nee Hodgson), whom he married in 1956, their sons, Julian and Stephen, four grandchildren, and his sister, Suzanne.
