Musical Time-Line Chapter Two - The Inter-regnum.

Christmas 1958.


I'm six-and-a half. "Uncle Teddy" was the husband of an old friend of my mother's - "Auntie Eileen". In the way of such things, we were not related to them, it's just what I learned to call them. Uncle Teddy worked in some kind of research capacity for Decca, the electronics company which was also a record label.

He was way ahead of his time in terms of electronics. In 1953 he had had the first television I ever saw - a monstrous contraption which projected a grainy image onto a white wall - if you closed the curtains. I'm told I "saw" some of Queen Elizabeth's coronation that way, but it was on my first birthday and I slept through much of it. Some years later, Teddy gave us all a demonstration of stereo. I remember there were speakers hidden behind the armchairs and he played a record of train sounds. We heard the train pass right through the living room. Weird. I don't know when this was exactly, but mid-fifties, judging by the vagueness of my memory.

So it was nothing, I suppose, for Teddy to put together a real electric record player for me as a Christmas present. I came down on Christmas morning, like you do when you're six, and there it was, under the tree. Nobody had tried to wrap it. It just sat. Christmas was usually my parents and I, my three survivng grandparents and my great -aunt Jenny, who lived with my father's long-widowed mother. THIS morning, though, Teddy was there.too. He was also the only person we knew who had a car - a quite recent Ford Consul - so no problem for him to drive from the other side of Mitcham with my weighty gift on the seat.

I sat goggle-eyed but attentive, or so I'm told, while Teddy explained the complications of the new apparatus. "Be careful to select the right speed. Don't turn the volume up too high. Make sure you flip the "stylus" (my new word of the day) over if you change from a 78 to a 45 or 33 - or back - because the grooves are different sizes and so are the two styli. The stylus is made of "sapphire" (new word #2) and will last for 100 hours of playing if you're careful, but DON'T touch it. We'll get you a new one when you need it. Pull the arm back gently to start the motor then lower it very gently onto the record. It'll stop by itself when the record's finished."

Looking back, I realise he had bought or acquired the cabinet ("portable", meaning there was a handle on the side, but it would be years before I could lift it) and turntable - a maroon and cream "Collaro", very common at the time, though I'd never seen one before. He must have built the valve amplifier and installed all the guts himself. It looked just like a shop-bought one except there were no markings anywhere except on the turntable. The three-speed selector (33, 45, 78) was on the turntable and clearly labelled but the two knobs on the side of the cabinet were unmarked. The lower one was to turn it on and off and controlled the "volume". That's what you had to do instead of adding and removing rolled up socks to/from the sound-hole (yes, really - it's where we get the phrase "put a sock in it" from). The other knob was "tone". I'm sure Teddy explained this wonderfully but it went right over my head.

He also told me - and this was a tough one - that I shouldn't play some of my more scratched 78s on it or it would damage the stylus. I still had my gramophone, so I could play them on that if I wanted. We went through my whole pile, looked at each one, and sorted them into two piles - pass and fail.

Then he produced the piece-de-resistance. Musically, Teddy was something of a one-trick-pony. A HUGE fan of Ted Heath - an English band leader, still going strong some 20 years after his first hits covering American big-band tunes during the 30s.Teddy must have had just about everything "Ted Heath and his Music", as the record labels always billed him, had ever put out - and that was a lot. With him, that Christmas morning, Teddy had a 45rpm single: "Swingin' Shepherd Blues / Raunchy", by Ted Heath and his Music. He explained that he now had the LP that included the single (first time I'd heard THAT concept too), so he didn't need the 45. I could have it.

We played it - both sides, of course - carefully changing the speed and flipping the stylus over and all the other magical routines. It was SO CLEAR. Hardly any crackle and pop. It sounded like the orchestra was right there with us. And the record! So small, made of plastic, "unbreakable, but don't try too hard". So SLOW. I was used to 78s whizzing round like there was a race to be won. This just daudled.

Through all this, "Gramps" who had created the monster back in Chapter One, sat in his armchair and smiled whenever I looked at him. I have no idea what he was thinking, but he was thinking, that's for sure.

Everybody else, except for occasional visits from my father to see how we were doing, was in the kitchen, busy with the turkey which was, of course, now totally irrelevant to anything as far as I was concerned. My paternal grandmother, the widowed Scottish Baptist one, and her sister Jenny probably tutted up a storm at the music that was wafting their way. For my next birthday, they would give me a children's record - "Little White Duck" / "Old Macdonald Had Farm" by the "Red Raven Orchestra With Chorus" on an odd sized 78 with a huge label that made pretty patterns as it span. The next Christmas, "Mary's Boy Child / Eden was Just Like This" by Harry Belafonte, also on a 78, but at least a real one. They were trying, but they never did get it - or want to.

We played Lonnie Donegan, Tommy Steele and all my other good condition 78s, until I'd quite mastered the process and lunch was called.

There was still one more surprise to come. Teddy had with him the Decca Records catalogue for 1958. He could get a staff discount on anything in there and my parents had said they would buy me any LP I chose from it - but look carefully, get a good one. A few weeks later, although I don't really remember the selection process, I got my copy of "Olde Englyshe", another Ted Heath record. It made a sort of sense - I was familiar with a lot of the tunes on it, from "London Bridge Is Fallynge Downe" to "Cherry Ripe", but Tommy Steele was on Decca! Surely HE had an album out - I know he did, but I may have missed it in the book.

I still have all the records I've mentioned so far and that leads me to think there were other significant 78s at the time that have suffered the fate that befell so many of these fragile, brittle things. I came to know "Olde Englyshe" back to front but hadn't played it decades until, on a whim, I span it a few weeks ago. What a piece of nostalgia that was! So familiar and yet so strange. It's softer than I remember, but still easy to listen to, if a little corny in places. The "Swinging Shepherds Blues" / Raunchy" single is still a favourite and the "A" side was a contender in an "election" I held on Cove FM last Summer to choose a theme tune for my radio show. Up against various instrumentals, mostly from the rock era, it lost out to another Ted Heath single given to me by Teddy some months later - "Shish-Kebab". "Raunchy" is another of those covers of American hits which I did not recognise as such until much later. The Bill Justis original did not come to my attention until about 1973.

I called this chapter "The Inter-regnum" because it was my lot to enter the vinyl age right at the end of the rock 'n' roll and skiffle eras but five years before the "Merseybeat" marked the beginning of the 60s proper. Two months after that Christmas, Buddy Holly's death missed me completely. I knew about Elvis Presley, but didn't care particularly - I didn't have any of his records until "Return to Sender" several years later. I knew Bill Haley for his major hits and was aware of Eddie Cochran, I think, but that was about it.

In 1959, my first year able to play 45s, and the year I turned seven, I bought or was given singles by Russ Conway, a popular pianist who played tinkly little tunes at considerable speed, Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan, Michael Holliday and perhaps a couple more. More significantly, as it turns out, I came to know Mrs. Thorpe. She was the lady who ran the local record shop in Mitcham. She had originally operated from a room in the back of her husband's electrical goods store - where I had previously bought my 78s and gramophone needles, by the way. By now, she had her own little shop next door.

I guess there were not too many kids my age going in there in the late 50s and she took a shine to me. Whenever she found she had stock she did not expect to sell, she would put a few singles in a box and give them to me - just GIVE them to me - next time I was in. Of course, these were all records the populace of Mitcham did not want but, to me, they were a treasure trove. Some were, frankly, dire and as the years rolled on I have purged them. Many remain, though, and most of those are prized possessions.

My first Bill Haley record (and still my favourite, "Whoa Mabel / Chiquita Linda") came to me this way. Bill couldn't bribe people to buy his records by the time this came out in 1958, so it's no surprise it was in one of my boxes. I have never seen another copy, anywhere. Oddities by people such as Basil Kirchin's Rock-a-cha-cha Band, The Betty Smith Group, Lorrae Desmond (later a famous soap-opera star in Australia), The Goofers (The Dipsy Doodle / Take This Heart which once appeared in the UK "Record Collector" magazine in the list of "The 1000 most collectable singles of all time", but I have no idea why), The Southlanders, The Three Barry Sisters and others still crop up in my, admittedly rather odd, radio show quite regularly, all thanks to Mrs. Thorpe.

In retrospect, the music scene of those years was dire. "Clearing space for the Beatles" I once called it. Cliff Richard & The Shadows ruled the roost in the UK and were following the Elvis path from Rock 'n' Roll to movies. His films "The Young Ones" and "Summer Holiday" were both huge successes and inspired me to a luke-warm fandom for a time but it was only when the Shadows played instrumentals on their own that I really took notice. Adam faith was a cut above most and I bought his "Poor Me", still without realising how heavily Buddy Holly influenced he was.

Apart from Cliff and possibly Adam Faith. it was a time of genuinely second rate pop-stars in the UK. The Eden Kane's, the Craig Douglas's were of no interest to me. Michael Holliday had a few more interesting singles but was fading and died at his own hand in about 1963. Frank Ifield, once an Australian milkman, or so the story went, became a huge star with a gimmick. He yodelled! In the middle of otherwise sensible songs, for no apparent reason other than that he could, he yodelled. I loved it. I bought "I Remember You", "Lovesick Blues / She Taught Me How to Yodel", and his updated version of "Waltzing Matilda". I can't listen to them now. Rolf Harris, another Australian, made his first appearance around this time too. I bought "Sun Arise" and still think it's a classic waiting to be rediscovered. I met Rolf in Newcastle in the mid-70s and was glad I'd liked him - really nice man.

The two saving graces of this time were instrumentals and novelty songs. There were enough of both to keep a 7 to 10 year old happy. In 1960, I heard Johnny & the Hurricanes' "Rocking Goose" on the radio. I still had some Christmas money and went to Mrs. Thorpe for it without knowing the title or who it was by. I had to describe it by the "HONK HONK" sound that permeated it. It sat wonderfully in the middle ground - instrumental AND novelty. I picked up some Shadows singles; "Foot Tapper" and "Dance On", Then in 1962, the two big ones that crowned the instrumental craze appeared. Jet Harris & Tony Meehan had been bassist and drummer of the Shadows until leaving in a blaze of publicity. They soon came out with one of the big ear-worm singles of 1962, "Diamonds" - the lead played on bass and with a drum solo in the middle. Hot on its heels, The Tornados blockbuster, "Telstar", named for the first ever communications satellite came out and not only took over the UK number one spot seemingly permanently but also became the first single by a British group EVER to top the Billboard charts in the US - a sign of things to come. It's "B" side, "Jungle Fever" was even better - another entry in my theme election last year and I was secretly hoping it would win.

In the novelty camp, I took to Bernard Cribbins, a well known comic actor who had hilarioius hits with "Right Said Fred" and "Hole in the Ground" during this time. Mike Sarne and the later MUCH more famous Wendy Richards ("Are You Being Served" and "Eastenders") had the, now corny but cute, then excellent "Come Outside". Joe Brown had me with "Jellied Eels`` too. Well I was only eight! There were still "concert" afternoons at school and "Jellied Eels" became my entry of choice for a time although that year's teacher, Mrs. Mills, criticized it - and my performances - for the exaggerated Cockney dialect it was sung in. "Bad speech", she called it, but actually, just our local dialect and much better than the fake American accents most other were songs were sung in.

Through all this, the old 78s kept coming in, from Gramps and, as word of my obsession spread, from other sources. I discovered the real American big-bands through donated 78s by Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton and others, had my first real intoductions to Rock 'n' Roll through the Everly Brothers, more Bill Haley (sadly broken in the later 60s) and Little Richard. The spring in the old gramophone broke in about 1961 and I had to push the turntable round with my finger to play the old scratchy 78s that were not good enough for the new machine. I bothered with this less and less and at some point (strangely, I don't remember the event), it went.

Late in 1962, there was a song on the radio called "Love Me Do" by a new group called "The Beatles". The world was about to change again.