History
A.P.Sharpe
Alan Middleton
M
any of the younger generation of fretted
instrument players will not have heard
of A.P. Sharpe or know anything about his
immense contribution to their hobby. He
was born in 1907 and as a teenager was
employed by Clifford Essex himself in 1925.
Marco Roccia, who became senior luthier
for the firm, remembered ‘A.P.’ (as he was
known) taking him into the office of Clifford
Essex for the job interview in 1927. In the
ensuing years, ‘A.P.’ learnt everything he
could about the fretted instrument business
so that eventually he became Clifford Essex’s
right hand man. As well as working in the shop selling
instruments, music and accessories, he assisted first
Emile Grimshaw and then Bert Bassett in preparing
the ‘BMG’ magazine and when the latter died in 1937,
took over as Editor. He had a phenomenal memory
and became an acknowledged authority on all fretted
instruments and their music, in particular banjo and
Hawaiian Guitar.
During the Second World War he managed to keep
the firm going despite difficulties with supplies and
paper shortage, and constant worry of the bombing
and necessity for fire-watching. He also found time to
form a small Hawaiian group ‘The Honolulu Hawaiians’
which broadcast frequently during the 1940s and 50s.
Clifford Essex had died in 1946 aged 87 but by that
time ‘A.P.’ had become Managing Director of the firm
and then owner, but for a few years before his death in
1968 he had suffered ill-health and taken Kevin Keogh
as a fellow Director. In the years following his death
the firm gradually collapsed until it finally closed its
doors in 1977.
For many years ‘A.P.’ had been collecting every
piece of information he could about the banjo and
was writing a definitive book entitled ‘The Banjo
Story’ which unfortunately was never finished. Many
of its chapters remained in typescript and are now
being printed and updated in current issues of ‘BMG’
magazine, which is published by the new Clifford
Essex Music Company Limited revived in 2007 by
12
Correction to Page
9 article in Spring
2014 issue
A.P.Sharpe
Alan Middleton pointed
out that the picture
on Page 9 column 1
annotated as being A
P Sharpe was actually
Marco Roccia. This fact
was also noted by David
Wade. The assistant
editor apologises for this
error and is grateful to
Alan for the following
photograph and article on
A P Sharpe.
Clem Vickery, who served
under ‘A.P.’ as a young
man in the 1960s. He
remembers ‘A.P.’ as having an encyclopaedic memory
for fretted instrument facts, but also that he “did not
suffer fools gladly”, a trait which I too can remember
from my time at Clifford Essex in the early 1950s. I
thoroughly enjoyed