music

In 2007 I interviewed Mrs Valerie Crane, the daughter of the man who created Newcastle's Palais Royale dance hall phenomenon. I recently rediscovered the interview, so here's what I wrote at the time. The man who invented the generation-spanning Novocastrian phenomenon of the Palais Royale was a keen violinist who moved to Newcastle from Tamworth in the 1920s and worked as an ironmonger for hardware merchant Frederic Ash. Fred Pears must have been a man of considerable energy. He worked full-time, played in dance bands and taught violin to aspiring young musicians. It didn't take him…