Maestro Barry Salmon - 1962 to 1989

I went up to Ipswich to visit Barry and Julia on Saturday, 1st December 2018. It was my second visit, and on each one it was a huge honour and pleasure to meet once again my music teacher of the early 60s - and of course the Head of Music at WHS for TWENTY-EIGHT glorious years.

We had a long chat about this and that, including Barry's story of how he came to WHS. Fate is a strange thing, and certainly played a huge part in his appearance at the school, where he plunged straight away into a seies of memorable musical productions that gave so much pleasure and musical experience to WHS boys over so many years (quite APART from plain old teaching!).

It seems that he made it though an interview to be shortlisted as candidate number 2 along with another teacher whose name I forget but it hardly matters.

Anyway, apparently Mr Bailey contacted Barry some days after his interview and explained that he was in the running but there was another chap would have preference but wanted to continue conducting somewhere in London as well as working at WHS. This wasn't acceptable to Mr Bailey and ILEA and the guy had been asked to make a decision. Mr Bailey told Barry that he "should wait by the phone" ...

Well, the other candidate could not commit full-time to WHS and so Barry was offered the job. We'll never know what the OTHER chap would have been like, and that is perhaps just as well!

As I have remarked before, WHS was remarkably lucky and/or clever in its recruitment of teachers .......

Chris Snuggs - December 2, 2018

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