AN 89-YEAR-OLD piano player has died after 70 years of pub performances.
Betty Morley would still drink a whisky to calm her nerves at the end of her career, despite all her experience.
She was only 13 when she began performing at her parents' Derby pub and played until she was in her 80s.
She raised four children but never lost her love for performing and continued long after they had grown up and married.
She carried on playing until the age of 82 and still suffered from nerves on the big night after 70 years of experience.
"I still get nervous before I play, particularly now as I have a cataract in one eye and macular degeneration in the other," she told the Derby Telegraph in 2007.
"I worry about being able to read the music. But I have a whisky before I start and, once I get going, I'm fine."
Betty's father, Harold Pickering – who ran Garden City in Chester Green with her mother, Clara – played a number of musical instruments and encouraged her to learn the piano.
She began performing twice a week as a teenager at Garden City, where many servicemen used to drink.
One of those was RAF navigator Jim Morley and the pair were married at St Paul's Church in Chester Green in 1944 when Betty was 19.
"Dad used to go in regularly," said their son, Jonny Morley. "Back then, the Americans were the ones with the really smart uniforms so he had to beat off interest from them first."
Jonny, 55, of Allestree, said there was a time when it seemed half of Derby knew his mum.
The offshore pipe fitter said: "If you walked round town everyone would stop her because it was a time when everyone would go to the pubs.
"She used to play at the George and Dragon and The Exchange, which is now The City. She knew everyone."
Betty used to enjoy performing with singers and her daughter Jane Haresnape said she would change the way she played to accommodate the singers, even if they sang in the wrong key.
The 58-year-old of Allestree, said: "Even if she was doing it right she would change it to suit them."
Betty carried on playing until she was 82, when she had a stroke.
She then suffered from vascular dementia – caused by oxygen deprivation to the brain.
Jonny's sister, Amanda Naylor, 52, of Oakwood, added: "She lived life to the fullest and did what she loved."
Betty died on Tuesday, August 19, at Stanley Nursing Home in Derby.
Her funeral will be held at Markeaton Crematorium on Monday at 10am in the main chapel.
Any friends of Betty are invited to the service and to the wake at the Duke of Clarence pub in Derby.
