On the Dansette

There it was, on Silverback's blog, a few days ago: and many thanks to him for finding it.

Our Dansette record player from the mid-Sixties. Look here! The same model! The same colour!

- - Oh, okay then, there's probably some truth in the idea that it was the only record player made in the mid-Sixties. But it was amazing! Cutting edge. You could put a whole pile of records at the top, ready, and start the bottom one going, and then when it had finished the bottom one another one would drop down and start playing all by itself! Oh yes, we had Technology in those days, all right.

But, having bought the record player, the Communist and my mother didn't really follow through with the records, which was a bit of a disappointment. It did play the old 78s, so I could play ancient, crackly Sandy Powell records. Sandy the Postman. Sandy the Shop Walker. They were well out of fashion then and I knew you'd never be able to get them in the future and when those old records broke, that'd be it, so I was careful with them even though, to be truthful, I didn't like them that much.

However, I failed to envisage both the invention of cds and of t'interclacker and you can buy the whole lot here for £2.89, delivered to your door.

During the next five years or so, my parents did accumulate a record collection of sorts. They bought some classical records, which is all the Communist really likes. My mother likes classical music too, though she's partial to a bit of Glenn Miller.

Unfortunately the Fifties and Sixties passed them both by completely, music-wise. Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Dusty Springfield, the Beatles, the Stones and, let's face it, everyone else in pop and rock was just "What's that rubbish? I can't hear the words!" to the Communist.

And since we only had one record player, I didn't buy any records of my own throughout the Sixties and the first part of the Seventies, until I left home. (Yes, I know, can you hear the violins playing softly in the background?)

But we did have a small but impressive collection and it went like this:

This one (look, I'd embed it if I could but embedding's been disabled so click and have a look. Can you see what it is yet?)

Val Doonican - - Walk Tall (oh go on, click on the link, you know you want to)

The World of British Comedy - - now this was a compilation album featuring many of the greats of the time. I particularly liked The Great Bell sung by Marty Feldman, which I noticed recently is mentioned by Stephen Fry in his excellent autobiography. He rather liked the line Fol diddle iddle ido, I hate my old mum but I rather tended towards Rum tiddle iddle tum tiddle iddle, scum on the water, Lint in your navel and sand in your tea.

Sadly it doesn't seem to have made it to Youtube yet.

And - - er - - that was it for the modern stuff. Of course, I still have them all - nothing that has entered this house since 1959 ever seems to have left it again.

Is it any wonder that my taste in music is a bit hard to pin down?

Anyway, when I was twelve a great wind of change swept through the household in the form of my cousin Lynda, who lived with us for a while, bringing all sorts of new musical ideas with her.

One year, for Christmas, she gave me Tom Paxton's Ramblin' Boy and I realised that there was a whole world of music out there that I knew nothing at all about (I expect there still is).

The Communist and my mother didn't like it much, but I did, and Lynda took me to see Tom Paxton at Leeds Town Hall - my first grown-up concert, when I was thirteen.

I don't know when the Dansette stopped working but I bet it's still in a corner of this house somewhere. I'll find it on one of my regular junk-sorting sessions, probably.

Lynda, who was nine years older than me, was killed in an accident at the age of thirty-five. I still miss her. I bought Ramblin' Boy on cd a few years ago, but it was ages before I could bring myself to play it.

Here's one of my favourite tracks from it.