But he left some vivid pictures, like bizarre cave paintings, of his years as a travelling jazz musician:At any time during the Fifties and Sixties, 100 jazz musicians would be living in West Hampstead, at least 50 of them at 4 Fawley Road, or Bleak House as it came to be known. The overriding influences on the choice of the address, so important as to dismiss all other considerations, were being near town and the road north.Purbrook lived there, along with Tony Coe and Brian Lemon, both of who also worked in Brown’s band.Conditions had achieved squalor of a surrealism it would have been hard to invent. Throughout the crash and snap of breaking glass, the splintered door panels and endless regurgitation of overindulged stomachs (singing a rainbow), Tony Coe would flit faultlessly through Bartk or Jimmy Deuchar would write down musical figures to show what brass arranging was all about.Purbrook’s parties were always in honour of some famous guest, who, typical of the formula that made the parties invariably disastrous, never turned up Coleman Hawkins and Stan Getz were amongst them. Judy Garland was invited to one and it’s not certain whether she arrived, but certainly Purbrook had impressed her enough when he accompanied her on the piano to make her want to.Most of the incumbents slept on mattresses on the floor The kitchen sink was unique. Dirty dishes lived in its pond for months, with the top ones being washed as needed.
Tony Coe, writing a score, managed to spill a full bottle of ink into it, and after that it was impossible to see below the surface It came to seem “that an ever greater evil lurked there. You could get your hand bitten off looking for a plate.”His father was a professional pianist and Purbrook began taking piano lessons when he was six. He won three Challenge Cups at the Brighton Music Festival of 1947 and went on to read music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He played trombone with the Cambridge University Jazz Band in the 1958 Rank film Bachelor of Hearts.
Leaving Cambridge in 1957 he first joined Sandy Brown’s quintet on double bass, working with it for a six-month season at the 100 Club in Oxford Street. He played piano in the Sandy Brown-Al Fairweather All Stars, staying for three years whilst also working with other bands. One of these was Kenny Ball’s, where Purbrook played trumpet, piano and bass.But his interests lay in modern jazz, and work in the band on the Queen Mary gave him a chance to hear many of his idols in New York. Leaving “the boats” he played mainly with the Allan Ganley-Ronnie Ross Jazzmakers and toured in Germany with the band led by trumpeter Bert Courtley in 1961. He joined Charlie Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Tubby Hayes and other musicians in another Rank film, All Night Long (1961).After more touring with Kenny Baker and Tubby Hayes, Purbrook returned to “the boats” for Black Sea and Mediterranean cruises with a quintet that he co-led with Tony Coe. Next he joined Dudley Moore’s Trio on bass, and continued the association by leading the trio on piano for the Beyond the Fringe stage show that starred Moore and Peter Cook.Purbrook’s trio played on the first 16 broadcasts of BBC Television’s Late Night Extra and worked regularly on the Tonight programme.
