Ancient Vinyl Loveliness

This weekend there's a craft fair on in Blackpool Winter Gardens. I spent yesterday afternoon helping out on the stall where Miss Franny and daughter Gill sell their handmade jewellery and cloth bags, aprons and so on whilst next to them Miss Jeannie sells her hand-made greetings cards. Both Miss Jeannie and Gill were unavoidably absent yesterday which explains my attendance. But this morning I was free to wander round the other stalls. And thus I ended up spending money.

Now this stall had loads of boxes of old 45s. Not only that, but they all looked in good condition. You can look at a 78 rpm record and know how likely it is to play or jump and the odd scratch doesn't necessarily cause great offence. But with 45s I've come to realise that even the ones that look pristine can jump because the grooves are so close together it's impossible to see some damage with the naked eye. But I took the chance. At seven records for a fiver you can't go all that wrong... This is Billy Fury's 13th Top 40 hit and his sixth Top Ten hit. Once Upon A Dream entered the charts in July 1962 and reached No.7, spending a total of 13 weeks in the charts. Sadly this one was in a plain white sleeve rather than Decca's orange with diagonal stripes.

Regardless that it may be "before your time" most people will have heard this one. Rawhide sung by Frankie Laine was the theme tune to the TV western series that featured a young Clint Eastwood as the character Rowdy Yates. It entered the charts in November 1959, the 30th and 31st (it re-entered after dropping out of the charts) of 32 chart entries for Frankie. So whilst it came towards the end of his career it got to No.6 and became the song he's probably best known for. Probably more people can remember this record than can remember that he had four No.1 hits with: I Believe in 1953 (the song reached No.2 eleven years later for The Bachelors); Hey Joe, also 1953 (sadly not the same song Jimi Hendrix had a hit with); Answer Me which entered the charts only a fortnight after Hey Joe (Nat "King" Cole also recorded it but never had a hit with it. A lot of people would recognise that version though). His final No.1 hit was A Woman In Love in 1956 (sadly not the same song that Barbra Streisand topped the charts with in 1980 - a shame as it would have been quite hilarious to hear Frankie belt out "I am a....")

Friday On My Mind is one of the 1960s' great ear worms of a song. It reached No.6 as a debut hit for The Easybeats who only charted one more time. Their follow up hit reached No.20 and was called Hello How Are You. No... me neither...

The McCoys were a similar case really. Hang On Sloopy got to No.5 after entering the charts week ending 2 September 1965 and almost anyone who was buying records at the time could accurately sing the chorus line. Their only other hit came three months later, a cover of Fever which only managed No.44.

We Got Love was one of Alma Cogan's later hits, just failing to get into the Top Twenty. It entered the charts week ending 18 December 1959 thus being in competition with any Christmas records at the time, though the Christmas No.1 spot was shared (this was the last time this happened to a No.1 slot) by two records sharing the same first few words - What Do You Want by Adam Faith and What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For by Emile Ford and The Checkmates.

Ragamuffin Man brought the run of hits of 1960s band Manfred Mann to a close. It reached No.8 in 1969, their last hit before - as Manfred Mann's Earthband - they started another (but shorter) run of hits in the 1970s. In the 1960s they had 17 hits, only four of which failed to hit the Top Ten and of those four, two of them stopped inconveniently at No.11. They had three No.1s and the other two that failed to reach the Top Ten both reached the same spot - No.36.

Ray Charles' only No.1 was I Can't Stop Loving You. I dismissed it as music for older people at age 8 when it came out in 1962 but now - as a member of the older people demographic - I love it...

Bargain Hunting at the Antiques Centre

One day last week we had a trip to one of the large antiques warehouses in the area and I bought a few items to bring home with me.

These came from more than one stall, but there's a 78 rpm record - regular readers will know I'm partial to them - four 45 rpm E.P.s, 28 postcards and one other item that we'll have a look at later.

The 78 rpm record is one that I've coveted for quite a while. Anyone who remembers children's TV from the days of Black & White TV would recognise this straight away. And I wouldn't mind betting that the song and exact words are going through your heads at the moment!

Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood!

The 78 records made of shellac were very brittle. They broke if dropped or sat on and in the 1950s they came to be replaced by smaller records made of vinyl. Smaller because the spiral of the groove was tighter and required a smaller stylus that even now many people call a needle.

They were very hard to break, but sadly for the collector were very easy to scratch. And it's not always apparent that they might be damaged in a small area enough to make the needle bounce out of the groove into a different part of the spiral. Unfortunate for me because despite a close look at them in the shop, they all "jump" at some point.

But just because they jump now, doesn't necessarily mean they are designated for the bin. I'll have a go at washing them first, taking care not to wet the labels. Years of dust and finger grease, not to mention lumps of sticky toffee being dropped on them, sometimes means that the damage is not a scratch but a build up of material causing a blockage inside the groove. Fingers crossed!

The postcards are a real mix. There are comic cards and picture postcards ranging from the 1910s to the 1970s. Some are from our own country and some, like this 1954 card of an erupting Mount Vesuvius in Italy, are from abroad. Some have been posted and some have been bought as a collector's item.

The other item was a late 1920s photographic album containing 117 family snaps ranging from 1930-1932. The majority are labelled across a corner in fountain pen with the year and the location.

Sadly, none of the people depicted is named and there is nothing inside the album to say whose it was. However, I imagine many of the photos will scan well and clean up and we'll take a look at them on this blog in due course! Come back for a look at some point!

Single-Sided 78 rpm Record

Over the Christmas break we got out of the house for a bit and visited one of the local antiques warehouses, G.B. Antiques in Lancaster. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I always have an eye out for old records (which usually means 78s) or old books, or really anything from my past which can give me a nice nostalgic kick.

Finding records in places like this is easy, Finding records in good condition and particularly finding 78s that are not just old collections of classical music is not always easy.

So I was pleasantly surprised to come across three different stalls that had something I could bring away with me. I even bought some 45s, though generally they are in much worse condition than the 78s. 45s didn't break - but they scratched much more easily!

The 10" record pictured dates from 1909. Unbelievable almost that it should be in its original sleeve and that the sleeve was in excellent condition. It was a bit faded and the colour was turning brownish at the edges - I've edited it in the scan to restore the colour.

It is Peter Dawson's rendition of Queen of The Earth and on the B side is... nothing. Many of the very early records were single sided. On the back of the record is an engraving of the Zonophone record company logo.

Altogether I spent £20.80 and came away with 24x 78 rpm records and 5x 45 rpm singles. Not too bad considering they were from antiques stalls, which tend to overprice stuff. The other trouble with antiques stalls is that they tend to think of records as "tat" and plonk sticky labels over them where they will ruin the record label or original sleeve.

I was lucky enough to get the sticky price label off this 1959 Marty Wilde record, but the damage over the record company's name is clear and permanent and caused by the desire to label it at 50p! It has J Mills written on it in pencil, which is harder to spot but in any case only serves to show that the record was loved and valued by a former owner.

I liked the look of these old bottles with the light shining through them, but records were the only things we bought on this visit. So to finish with, here's just a few of the rest of the day's findings.

The 45 rpm singles were in absolute mint condition, though most were in wrong or very tatty sleeves. Buying second hand vinyl is an extremely risky business and I never buy stuff that looks as though it has been given to a dog to play with!