Next from the box is a cluster of twenty seven 45 rpm pop songs from the 1960s and 1970s. I guess mementoes like these date one in numerous ways, particularly in terms of musical tastes and the technologies for playing one's choices of personal music.
When I was young and visiting friends I liked to nose into the books on their bookshelves and the records in their record collections. Nowadays, with so much stored on computers, mobile phones, iPads, ebook readers and other electronic devices, much that was previously visible is hidden away.
I was given my first record player by my big sister on my twenty first birthday in 1961 and in the following years collected a small number of EPs (extended play discs mostly of 45rpm) and a large number of LPs (long play at 33-and-a-third rpm*). EPs were single tracks (one on each side) and only lasted a few minutes. They were the currency of juke boxes in pubs and coffee bars, radio and television shows (like the UK Top of the Pops) and parties, whereas LPs, mine at least, were primarily for more serious listening. I have culled many of my LPs over the years but still have a very heavy boxful hidden away in a cupboard; among them a Beatles' White Album - there's currently one selling on Trade Me for $62, which, given fifty years of inflation, is probably about a tenth of the price I paid for it originally.
[*Realising my grandchildren have probably never heard of such things, I thought I should briefly explain what EPs and LPs were.]
When I look through this little collection of EPs I'm not sure why I bothered to keep them at all, carting them around from place to place. Nina Simone's Fine and Mellow (1959) - a 1957 Billie Holiday song - and Ain't Got No - I Got Life (1968) from the musical Hair would still rank among my favourites. Some others have survived well over the years and I think may still be widely known - Peter, Paul and Mary's 1963 recording of Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind, Procul Harem's A Whiter Shade of Pale (1967) and Julie Covington's Don't Cry for Me Argentina (1976) from the musical Evita. I went to performances of both Hair and Evita in London so those bring back good memories and to Western Springs when Chicago sang If You Leave Me Now (1976), a special favourite at that time. So perhaps I'll keep the memories of those alive by downloading them onto my iPad.
For each of the songs I can remember snatches of lyric and melody, but then Ketty Lester's 1962 hit Love Letters gives me a big surprise. I find myself with the whole song in my head and write down the lyric as I recall it (with Sharon as my witness):
Love letters
Straight from the heart
Keep us so near
While apart
I'm not alone in the night
When I can have all the love
You write
I memorize every line
And I kiss the name that
You sign
And darling then
I read again
Right from the start
Love letters
Straight from your heart
Then I check on Wikipedia and find one small error: it should be 'your heart' not 'the heart' in line two.
I have no idea why that particular song has survived so vividly in the windmill of my mind. I wasn't even dating in 1962 let alone writing love letters but there it is clear as a bell over fifty years later. I listen to it again on YouTube and see that Elvis released a (to my mind inferior) version in 1971; I don't know if I was ever aware of that before or had simply forgotten it. That's memory for you.
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