Music Ramblings
Vince Tracy
Remembering Vinyl
Let’s see how many of the following songs
you can guess. Do you remember a very old
film about a British battleship, The Amethyst,
getting caught down the Yangtze River in China
many moons ago? I tend to remember things
best when I connect them to a visual image
and our first vinyl title is Yellow River. Do you
remember the hit-makers and if not who had
hit number two with Make Me Smile (Come up
and see me)?
The only clue for number two is that the same
hit-makers had a song called Mr Soft used as
a backing track for a mint advert. When dads
protest that the words to songs don’t make
sense any more they’re either not listening
properly or they’re not remembering the
meaningful words to such quaint melodies
as the Ying Tong Song. Whilst we’re on the
subject of deep meaning and the intricacies of
lyric writing, do you remember the penchant
line Ooh Wakka doo Wakka Day. God only
knows what it was all about but we had a large
percentage of 56 million people prepared to
sing these words whilst they were in the charts.
Think next of two detectives who used to
always park their cars in the wrong direction
and were almost as reckless in their driving as
the Dukes of Hazard. The sung was sung by
the silver-haired member of the dynamic duo of
crime fighters and the words were, Don’t give
up on us. In the days when hammers were
26
not MCs wearing strange trousers there was a
great folk song which had charted as part of the
rush of sixties protest numbers. Who had the
hit, If I had a hammer? Did he ever ring that
bell in the morning?
Have you ever tried to sing falsetto? I was
always getting into trouble in the school choir
for pretending to sing falsetto and was accused,
most unfairly I should add, of messing about
when all that I was trying to do was improve my
range. Our next group of gentlemen were ultrasmart and ultra-falsetto with their hit ‘Betcha
By Golly Wow’. If singing high was considered
not to be taking music seriously another unfair
accusation would be to be accused of singing
like a cowboy. These were the days when it
wasn’t tremendously cool to be a fan of country
music yet this next valuable vinyl epitomised the
best in country music. Who had the monster hit
Please help me I’m falling?
Next there was a Motown hit The Tears of
a Clown, but this excellent song received a
new lease of life as part of 31 energetic record
labels devoted to phrenetic ( look it up) music.
I think there was a special dance to go with the
newer version. Finally, I was lost in admiration
for anyone who could get up on the stage at
the school’s end of term concert and one of my
most vivid school memories is of Larry Daintree
(you won’t know him) getting up to sing My old
man’s a dustman.
Well that’s our vinyl - did you remember
them all? Answers:-Yellow River, Christie
(CBS,1970); Make Me Smile, Steve Harley
and Cockney Rebel (EMI, 1975); Ying Tong
Song, The Goons (Decca 1957); Ooh-wakkaDoo Wakka-Day, Gilbert O’Sullivan (Mam,
1972); Don’t Give Up On Us, David Soul,
(Private Stock,l976); If I Had a Hammer, Trini
Lopez(Reprise, 1963); Betcha By Golly Wow,
Stylistics (Avco. 1972); Please Help Me I’m
Falling, Hank Locklin
(RCA, 1960); Tears of a Clown, The Beat (Two
Tone 1979); My Old Man’s a Dustman, Lonnie
Donegan (Pye, 1960).
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