Wyatt Earp and My Dad
My father, Eric Whittle was born in 1916. He told
me he was born in a house in Fry Street, in the Parr district of St Helens. From his picture , you will observe
his very straight hair parting. His first permanent job on leaving school was a lather boy at Myett's hairdresser's
in the centre of St Helens. He was 14, and the working day was around 12 hours rubbing lather into men's stubbly faces
- this was in the days when most respectable chaps went to a barber to be shaved by a cut throat razor. The pay was 7/6d a
week. One of his biggest tippers was the banjo playing legend George Formby when he was gigging the Variety Theatre
across the street from Myett's.
Whatever musical ability I have, is inherited from my
Father's side of the family. His sister Edith was a classically trained pianist and young Eric grew up to the music
of Debussy, which was one of Edith's favourite composers. Eric was a keen cornet player in his youth, but he was
soon made to understand that the job of a man was to work hard and provide.
From the age of fourteen, he had to get up at six every
morning and go round all the local factories looking for a job. If there was no job available then he had to go to school.
This usually involved a caning for being late. Times were really bloody tough and he had malnutrtion and rickets. I
imagine the barbershop job with it's small wage seemed something approaching deliverance. Anyway he worked there
and became a qualified men's hairdresser until 1939 when he joined the police force. He had transferred to the Lincolnshire
Constabulary, the old Boston Borough force when he volunteered for military service in WW2.
After a disagreement with RAF when he borrowed a tiger
moth plane for a bit of fun, he was grounded for a month and in a sulk volunteered for the Irish Guards, who he had heard
were recruiting for the paratroops. However he ended up driving a tank in the Guards Armoured Division. His tank
was called MacGillicuddy Reeks and it was shot from under him five times before he got to park it on an autobahn outside Hamburg
after the hostilities.
He was always unwilling to discuss, the killing grounds
of France, Holland and Germany. He said if you were there you knew about it, if you didn't no words, films, photos could
express the horror. He came back to Boston police force in 1945 with a wife, a daughter and a head ful of stuff about his
war experiences that he never discussed with anybody to my knowledge.
It wasn't long before his tough shrewd nature made him
a natural for CID work. His work involved tailing Soviet agents, investigating murders, burglaries as well as being a presence
around the streets of Boston that trouble makers did well to avoid. He was always a natural athlete and in his youth
he had played for St Helens Rugby League Team - the bad guys soon learned that Eric Whittle could chase after and apprehend
any one of them if the fancy took him.
However despite many commendations for bravery from
Judges, etc - he never got preferrment or promotion in his career. He was a bit too bolshie - he'd seen too many good
friends fall before the guns to take the tinpot discipline of Boston's brasshats very seriously.
His time in the Irish Guards left him a lifelong
love of Irish music and song. Also he told me of one day when his unit were pulled out of the line to make a publicity
film with Field Marshall Montgomery. They got all the men up an hour early to practise throwing their berets in
the air in delight at meeting the chief. When Monty arrived, as was his wont, he beckoned his boys to crowd round
him like kids, and everybody in the unit just stood there in dumb insolence.
After that, telling the Chief Constable to get
stuffed, without so much as saying a word, was pretty much a piece of piss.
Eric was a lifelong fan of westerns and I always loved
watching Hugh O'Brian as Wyatt Earp on early evening telly with him. It was many years later that I saw the Kevin Costner
version of Wyatt, and read the Casey Terfertiller biography. I began to perceive that my Father had been the kind
of 'deliberate man' that Kevin Costner script talks about and I wrote this song, about Wyatt - but very much with
my Dad in mind.
Once when I was a kid, I came down to breakfast and
on the table were some forensic photographs just lying about - this guy had had half his face removed in a fight with
someone wielding a nail file with expert viciousness.
Someone told me later at school that such was my dad's
reputation, that the miscreant had surrendered without a struggle.
I wrote this song when he was in his 80's - I don't
think he understood what I was trying to say - the compliment I was trying to pay on the sleeve note sof the album.
However the Wyatt Earp fans did like it and it gets
played at The Tombstone Western Film Festival. Its on the official Wyatt Earp webpage, and my proudest moment came when
the curators of Wyatt Earp's birthplace in Monmouth, Illinois played the song on Wyatt's birthday!
I ought also to mention the work on David Forbes who got me to perservere
with this track, who wrote all the midi parts , and ruthlessly edited the song down to manageable proportions.
