If he doesn't get his fix of "at least three" professional gigs a week, pianist Dennis Fox says he becomes "a candidate for the rubber room".

"Music has been therapy since I started playing," he explains, which by extension means this very talented Bermudian has been "in therapy" for most of his adult life.

Like so many families where a common talent flourishes, Mr. Fox says music is imprinted in his genes.

Both his grandmother, Maude Fox, and father Albert were accomplished musicians who greatly influenced him. His father was a professional upright bass player, and his grandmother was a pianist who had her own band.

"She played for silent movie theatres and at No. 1 shed on Front Street. She had a big band. That was the beginning of the beginning, and I have such fond memories of her and I still miss her," he says.

"When she died in her 90s she was still sitting up playing the piano at Lefroy House, despite having lost half a leg."

Until he was well into his 20s, it was also an established tradition that, each year on his birthday, Mr. Fox's grandmother would play and his aunt, Olive Smith Fox, would sing `Happy Birthday' to him. Long before he was old enough to take lessons, young Dennis was a secret attendee at top nightspots.

"My father played in Hubert Smith's band for 25 years, and I vividly remember them playing in the big shell of the open-air dance floor at the Princess Hotel in Pembroke. I used to love to go there, so in my pyjamas I would get in his car just before he left to drive to work. Once there, I would hide underneath the floor mats behind the driver's seat until he'd gone, then I would watch the show through the iron bars of the balcony. That was what got me interested in music."

The moment the show ended, little Dennis would run back to the car and again hide. Once home (via the Musicians' Club), he would wait for his father to go into the house before sneaking back to his room.

"If he ever knew, he never let on," Mr. Fox says.

Then came another valuable lesson for the future entertainer: the art of staying up late.

"My father would start cooking something and put on some records until two or three in the morning. Between smelling the food and listening to jazz I would be wide awake, so I'd sneak up to the table and we would eat together. That was my introduction to a lot of my musical appreciation."

Then, one day, while enjoying a break with his fellow students at Churchill (later Robert Crawford) School, from an upper balcony, young Dennis saw the family car approaching. When it stopped, his father got out and said, "Come down, Rusty."

"He opened up the back of he car, and there was this beautiful, fire-engine-red, Kay electric guitar and amplifier," Mr. Fox remembers. "He wasn't a man of many words, but he said, `This is for you when you get home'."

"When you get home" was never interpreted so fast! As the elder man drove off, his son ran towards the land bordering the school, leapt over the wire fence, rolled down the steep embankment, and arrived home a whisker after his father.

"I was so excited I don't think I went back to school that day," Mr. Fox says. "I must have been 12 to 14, and I was thoroughly enthralled."

Guitar lessons with teacher Norman Astwood then followed - something he looks back on as an indispensable foundation to any musician's career.

"You have to know music theory, and you should be formally trained," he says. "My brother Glenn and I both did our full lessons on Saturday mornings, and on Saturday nights our father corrected us. If the music wasn't correct we wouldn't get our codfish and potatoes on Sunday morning, and I loved my codfish and potatoes. Later, we were in the same band for quite a few years, and we had so much fun playing together."

In fact, the first band was a family affair: Albert on piano accordion, Glenn on bass, and Dennis on guitar.

"My first job was at the Leopard's Club and I was so nervous that my knees were shaking," Mr. Fox says.

With confidence born of experience, however, the brothers were joined by another guitarist and a drummer and formed the Ultra-Sonics band, which played at hotels and private functions, even as the guitar lessons continued.

In the world of entertainment, one thing regularly leads to another, so through accompanying brother Glenn to an audition in a nightclub, a new window of opportunity was opened for Dennis. Although he had not studied piano, he "knew his way around a keyboard", so could not resist having a go on the venue's Hammond organ.

When guitarist John Virgil heard him, he said: "If I buy an organ would you play it?"

"Of course I agreed because I didn't have to pay for it, and that was my new beginning," Mr. Fox says. "I gave up the guitar and studied piano with various teachers."

Mr. Fox also "squeezed in" a year at the famed Berklee School of Music in Boston before returning home to join the band, Graham Bean and the Latinaires, for the next five years.

Among the many memories of what he calls his "formative years", are the occasions when he backed the "Battle of the Groups" talent contests at the Rosebank Theatre, and had his own battles with the agents.

"From now to eternity agents are notoriously bad business payers, so before I went on stage I insisted on being paid," he says.

"Music and money don't go together. To be paid is secondary to playing."

Little did he realise when he left the Latinaires to join Happening BDA, it would prove to be the longest gig of his career - 15 years to be exact -and what fun years they were. It was during the era when tourism was flourishing, as were the hotels and night clubs. Local acts were plentiful, and such were the opportunities for steady work that most musicians, including Mr. Fox, did not need a day job.

Happening BDA, led by Jimmy O'Connor, was a hot-ticket band that played from one end of the Island to the other, including the major and not-so-major hotels.

"The only night we had off was Sundays," the pianist remembers.

So what happened? Mr. Fox maintains that "the beginning of the end was when they put television in the hotel rooms, and the second thing was the invention of the karaoke machine".

Again, a host of memories of the glory days are ever-present, and much enjoyed in the retelling.

There was the time when a honeymooner's dress strap broke, leaving her (but not the band) blissfully unaware of an exposed breast; another, in Mexico, when Mr. O'Connor fell victim to Montezuma's Revenge, which threatened to rob the band of its leader; and still another, when Mr. Fox's keyboards were misdirected by the airline just hours before a gig.

Such was the pianist's acumen, that a fellow musician was awestruck.

"We were playing back to back with the Esso steel band, and when we came off stage Steve Dupr? said to me in his Caribbean accent, `Foxy mon, who you listenin' to? You're playing modal stuff and some serious licks, boy!' Years went by and he told me, `Foxy mon, you are two people - one person by day, and another person by night!'."

Other gigs with Happening BDA included gigs on cruise ships. On one, the group was the first non-Italian band to play on an Italian ship, and here the Bermudian love of partying earned them severe reprimands for entering passenger-only areas.

Even though Mr. O'Connor's group, like so many wonderful local groups and artists, has passed into history, the admiration for those with whom Mr. Fox shared the stage, and in particular Mr. O'Connor, remains undiminished to this day.

Many years later, with Bermuda's nightlife in crisis, Mr. John White decided to do something about it. Among others, he recruited Mr. Fox for the band that backed the Bacardi Bermuda Island Calypso Revue - a colourful, fast-paced show at the Hamilton Princess that encapsulated the best of what the Island once offers, and which the pianist describes as "fabulous".

"We just knew it was going to work," he says, and for that reason, despite no permanent venue, the cast remains determined to keep it alive. Most recently, they have been presenting the revue on board the