“My memoirs? My memoirs …!” No one who has seen that delightful film Kind Hearts and Coronets will need to be told that to write such a volume is a dangerous indulgence. Danger aside, autobiography has always seemed to me an excessively self-absorbed field of activity. Every man, leaving the devoutly religious for the moment out of account, is the center of his own life, and by the same token is not the center of anyone else's. But when friends and acquaintances have urged me, as many have, to put together a memoir, they have done so not because I am so interesting, but because I have had the privilege and pleasure of knowing and working with an extraordinary collection of interesting other people. The stories emerging from those activities are in many cases so illuminating about the character of such people that I think it would be a pity if they were not to be widely disseminated. And so, after much thought, I have decided to write an “allobiography” instead of an autobiography—“allo” from the Greek “allos,” meaning “other,” instead of “auto” from the Greek “autos,” meaning “self.”

What follows is an account of the life I have been lucky enough to lead in and around the world of music. If it reads, Will Cuppy style, rather like “The Wit and Wisdom of Practically Everybody,” that is because I have been the happy enjoyer of much wit and the recipient of much wisdom at the hands of many wonderful men and women, and I want to share that good fortune with you. My “Star Turns”—the people whose effect on my professional life has been most substantial and long-term—may be identified by the use of Small Capitals for the initial appearance of their names in the body of the book, and in the index. And if the word “I” is found rather frequently in my text, that is simply because my own part in all these proceedings constitutes the connective tissue necessary to hold all these diverse experiences together.