by Stuart on August 28, 2010
A Saturday afternoon in December 1958.
The local record department was packed as shoppers battled to buy the latest hits.
I was there, too, with a friend of mine who was asking if he could listen to a record fast climbing the hit parade – a rockin’ little number by a young lad known as “The Kilted Choirboy.” His real name was Jackie Dennis and his hit song was called The Purple People Eater, which had been a hit in the States for a disc jockey known as Sheb Wooley.
The girl behind the counter looked the record out (it was one of the old and fondly remembered “seventy-eights”), gave it to him and pointed us towards a booth at the side of the shop.
We went in, put it on the turntable and listened, not just once but several times.
That was the way of it in those days. And they trusted you to take it back once you’d finished even if you didn’t want to buy it. He did, though, and so did I and it sticks in the memory still for it was the first record I ever bought.
How times have changed.
At that time there was no popular music radio station (Radio One did not come until the “pirate” radio stations were driven off-air in the mid-Sixties) and to hear the music you liked meant either tuning into Radio Luxembourg every evening, the trouble being that it faded all the time, or if you were lucky hearing something worthwhile, on Family Favourites or Housewives’ Choice.
For many people in the 1950s, particularly in the earlier part of the decade, having something to play records on was a sought after item.
At one time I had a treasured wind-up player, a hefty machine with a pick-up that was extremely heavy and you needed a supply of steel needles to make it work.
But things started to move fast as the fifties progressed. Enter the Dansette.
This was probably the most popular record player of all, introduced in 1950-51 at a cost of 33 guineas (think £800 today!). It was fairly portable, although rather heavy and had four speeds – 16rpm, 33, 45 and 78.
Not only that. Joy of joy, you could actually stack your records on a spindle which dropped the next one once the disc which had been playing ended.
Of course, if you didn’t have the money to buy a record player and providing you lived in East Yorkshire you could always give Teledisc a call. This was the unique Hull Corporation Telephones service on which a hit of the week was played which led to many a household phone being tied up for ages, not to mention groups of teenagers gathered round phone boxes to listen in.
All very old fashioned by today’s standards, but those were days still fondly remembered by many.
What fun they were.
- FiftiesFan
*Remember buying your first record? Or what it was? We welcome your memories.
by Stuart on August 18, 2010
Summertime, and the living was exciting – especially if you were a youngster in the Forties and Fifties.
No TV in those days, computers were unheard of and the X-box was probably something the Martians used in the adventure comics you bought.
There was also the fact that you entertained yourselves, usually with other kids from the neighbourhood with games on the street.
For those were the times when the sight of a car down your road was a rarity, when most folk went by bus or by bike and when health and safety rules were unheard of. The street was probably your only playground.
And what good times youngsters had.
Young lads swaggered around toting cap guns shooting ’em up in wild games of cowboys and Indians, everyone a Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy. The marvels of big screen adventure enjoyed at the pictures on a Saturday morning came imaginatively down your way. Wonder why no one ever wanted to be an Indian.
The “marbles season” arrived just after Easter with kids everywhere carrying round bags of treasured little balls of intense colour, some glass, some ceramic. Those whose dads worked in factories would come out with bags full of ball bearings – what a prize they were.
Stilts caused endless amusement for a few weeks a year at least. How we enjoyed it staggering down the street two foot higher than usual. Every tried dancing on them? Bet you came a cropper.
Girls liked skipping games, chanting various rhymes as they dodged the turning rope which was often several feet long, allowing several of them to skip at once.
Others went in for endless games of hopscotch. There was hardly a street anywhere which was not adorned with those numbered squares they jumped in and out of.
Roller skates preceded skate boards and kids searched the neighbourhood for the streets with the smoothest surface.
Houses across the street would be connected by lengths of string attached to empty tin cans which formed a primitive form of telephone.
And on the street hide and seek became known by other names, not least of them being block.
Whoever was “It” (where did that name come from?) hid their face, counted to a certain number, and bawled “coming ready or not” while the rest secreted themselves away, racing from their hiding place to touch the place where “It” did the counting and live to see another game without taking “It’s” role.
Lads collected snails, fished for sticklebacks in local parks, took home jars of frog spawn and fought with home-made swords baddies supposedly from Nottingham in games where to be Robin Hood made you top dog for an hour an hour or two least.
At the local Cubs pack you went on “wide games” which entailed leaving a trail for you to be tracked. With the pack usually meeting in the evening these games often went on for hours across fields and through woods. No-one bothered, your safety just wasn’t a problem.
How times have changed.
These and many other games are now part of history.
Isn’t that rather sad?
