THE choirmaster father of the boy with the drum had christened him Elvey, after Sir George Elvey, a Victorian composer of hymns and oratorios, so he was obviously destined for a musical career.
By his early teens he was playing drums in his father's orchestral band before graduating to the Keighley and District Orchestral Society. He also taught himself to play the xylophone when it was still a novel instrument.
His tenor voice could tackle anything from sacred solos to pierrot turns, and he sang in chapel operettas and qualified for the part of Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance. Meanwhile he served an apprenticeship with Messrs Laycock and Bannister, organ builders of Cross Hill.
In 1925, aged 23, Elvey Dewhirst was fatally injured on his motorcycle at North End, Cowling, the third accident in two months on a bend which it was currently being planned to widen.
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