... for the nostalgia that's in it ...
Foreword
I am a vinyl record collector who, over the last six or so years (that is, since 2010) has
been bringing together the fantastic WORLD OF series of records released on the DECCA record label and its subsidiaries over nearly 20 years from 1968. I still have a handful of the records to gather in but alongside my collecting, I, on the suggestion of a fellow collector, have been writing a review of the series, initially for my own amusement but latterly, I began to wonder if it would be an asset as a good old-fashioned book. I was thinking of a 12” square LP cover book similar to others that sit on the coffee tables and home libraries of bibliophiles and record collectors all over the world. I planned to set a page of text on alternate pages opposite pages of images of those fabulous record covers. The oft repeated trigger for making such record collections being that they are important cultural records of times gone by is as appropriate here as ever it was but I feel also that there is much to gain from unearthing personalities whose time has come and gone (… or has it?) and placing them, once again, before those of a certain age along with those of more tender ages and, maybe, less tender, but hopefully pliable, sensibilities.
Now, having thought of it, it began bubbling up inside until, well, not to get too physiological about it, this masterpiece, following a six year gestation period, was born. Since having this momentous thought, my mission has been to:
- confirm the place in historical social culture that is held by collecting, and record collecting in particular
- remember and recommend artists whose time would otherwise have come and gone
- introduce genres of music which some readers may not be familiar with
- make classical composers more real by finding unusual, fun information and to absolutely avoid boring stuff
- trigger enthusiasm for records, researching records and collecting them …
… something like that, any road up!
So, I had my words. Now I just needed the pictures. I contacted Decca regarding the copyright malarkey. After some to-ing and fro-ing, my request was passed to the Licensing Office. Sorted? Well, no. Not yet , anyway, but after nearly five months of having several polite emails ignored plus a couple of phone messages, I have begun to give up on my little idea of becoming an author and move my sights towards becoming one of that fine body of people; a blogger. So, look out people - it's coming at ya!
PART 1
INTRODUCTION
Nineteen sixty seven to sixty eight was a year of some turmoil. True, good stuff happened; Britain’s first heart transplant was performed in London and Manchester United brought the European Cup to England but generally, the World was in pain. In the UK, super-tanker SS Torey Canyon spilt more than 25,000,000 gallons of crude oil into the English Channel after hitting rocks, killing 15000 sea birds; the war in Vietnam was in full swing and America’s involvement triggered violent demonstrations outside the US Embassy in London. In the US, civil rights seeker of peaceful race relations, Martin Luther King, was assassinated. Amongst the mourners at his funeral was Jacqueline Kennedy who was already wearing black for her husband, US President John Kennedy’s, assassination five years earlier and who was soon to see Kennedy’s brother, Robert, fatally shot in the Summer of ‘68. Riots, fighting, war …. And all just 12 months after the Summer of Love! In an attempt to soothe the people’s torment, MacDonald’s responded by producing the first ever Big Mac. Nice try but it was Decca Records that had the ultimate answer. And the answer was … Mantovani!
The 45rpm single record was just beginning to be outsold by the 33rpm long player towards the end of the 1960s so Decca’s timing might have been well-chosen. Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (also known as Leonelli Gandino and Trulio Trapani) was featured on the first of a series of almost 600 LPs of the celebrated WORLD OF series released by Decca and its subsidiary companies between 1968 and 1981. Around the time of THE WORLD OF MANTOVANI (SPA 1) in the late sixties, approximately twenty
years after the start of record production, a new generation of listeners would have been born into the vinyl age and would have been the first to have access to the record collections of their parents. I was one of those babies. I’m sure that we didn’t all fall for the charms of the vinyl record but there is a collector in most of us, I reckon, and for those so inclined, a new hobby was waiting. By the time we were a little older; old enough to be able to amuse ourselves, we would have been mopping up new stimuli like a sponge and since we would quite likely be familiar with the sight and sound of records, I really cannot see why anyone would look further for a pastime.
And so to record collecting. That is, record collecting rather than music accumulating. Music accumulating is no challenge, particularly in this digital age. Downloading has its place but downloaded music is not a thing to be treasured like a record is. It doesn’t exist like a record does. You can’t touch it, for goodness sake! It has no smell. You can’t hug it or kiss it! The record, on the other hand, is very kissable … or … or is that just me?
We all think we know what record collecting is but what is it that record collectors actually do? Well, you could say (though I don’t really feel inclined to because it is a long sentence ... ah well, for you dear reader ... big breath) that they take individual records away from their current setting, say a record shop, car boot sale or your mate’s collection when he’s not looking, and place them in a new setting in a particular relation with other individual records, creating an organised set of records; creating order from chaos; placing catalogue number SPA 183 in between SPA 182 and SPA 184 for example; bringing SPA 183 home to its natural resting place from whence it really should not now be moved unless it is called upon to perform its special duty to amuse and entertain its new owner, of course. And here is the big difference between record collecting and other forms of collecting such as stamp collecting, Batman trading card collecting and beer-bottle top collecting (all of which pastimes commandeered much of the time of my earlier years). The aim of most collecting hobbies is to draw items from general circulation and sequester them in dark, secret places to be viewed occasionally but otherwise, put to one side and forgotten. These things are inanimate with no way of being brought to life. Records, on the other hand, would not even exist if not for their ability to come alive and bring emotion to the user. They are created only to enhance the mood of life itself. They must be played to fulfil their own reason for being. From their grooves spring songs, music, dancing, stories, poems, steam train sounds … now, you try getting those out of a set of commemorative stamps from Sarawak!
My own fascination with the vinyl record began when investigating the strange black discs with holes in the middle that seemed to interest my parents so much. There were large ones and smaller ones and I preferred the smaller – the big ones were too unwieldy for my careless hands. In those days, that is, 1965 or so, when I was 8, Cliff Richard and the Shadows were very popular and they featured extensively in my parents’ collection. I was already amusing myself by noting things like the green Columbia label making way for the black version with the big 45 on the right hand side when the four numbers ‘1961’ changed to ‘1962’. Cliff was pretty cool then and I’m not ashamed to say that I knew all the words to his songs along with Hank Marvin’s guitar riffs, including the B sides. Of course, I had no concept of A and B sides until I began to study the minutiae of each label and became curious as to why the A at the end of the little number on one side of the disc was replaced by a B on the other. I hanker for those innocent times every now and again because, however much of a thrill a man, having seen his 6oth birthday go casually past without a by your leave, can muster on discovering a collection gap-filler in a charity shop in Timbukalongwayaway, it just does not compare with the trembling buzz I remember on being given special permission to play these magic discs all those years ago.
Now that I had access to the whole collection, I started to enjoy the different label names and colours. I was also taken by the way that the shade of green of one Columbia record was sometimes slightly different to another or that the vinyl of an Embassy record was always thicker than a Decca. M & D had a handful of Decca singles but the only one I really remember well is Carl Denver’s wacky ‘Wimoweh’. Classic weird! Incidentally, the records on the Embassy label were produced by Woolworth’s, a popular chain of department stores of the time. These seven-inchers were the cut-price cover versions of the top pop songs of the day but because these were the ones which I became very familiar with, on hearing Del Shannon’s original version of 'Runaway', I was less than impressed. Anyway, it was with those Embassy records that I began to notice that some records were solid vinyl from the hole in the middle to the outer edge whilst some had four thin cut-outs forming an interrupted circle about an inch from the hole. Truly fascinating I’m sure you’ll agree!
Even in these early days, I was tuning in to the physical aspect of getting music to come out of a record. The fact that this special needle managed to read and understand the musical message hidden in the grooves and then to turn it into something we could hear, was more than I could comprehend. But then, I didn’t have to comprehend it. I was only eight! Only eight but I knew all I needed to know to make music. What more could a young boy need? Anyway, when I was 11 and earning pocket-money, I purchased my first ever single record. Whilst I was a bit disappointed that it seemed to be on the familiar black Columbia label (I would have liked a different colour) I was thrilled to notice that where the word ‘Columbia’ featured on all of those Cliff records, the word ‘Parlophone’ appeared. Oh glee! Ah … the record? Lily the Pink by the Scaffold. True, I had much to learn in music appreciation but my love of the material manifestation of that music, the physical record, was already up and running.
I suppose I really began to notice music whilst in the back of my Dad’s ol’ ’53 Ford Consul on the long drives down to Bognor Regis or West Wittering. There were a few miles between the two resorts and if, as we were approaching the coast, the weather was looking a bit unreliable, we would go left at Chichester to Bognor but if warm sun looked to be settling in for the day, we went right to Wittering. As well as the beach, Bognor had amusement arcades and plenty of fish ‘n’ chip shops – always a handy alternative when the rain swept in off the sea. West Wittering, on the other hand, was mainly a long, sandy beach but with fantastic sand dunes between the road and the happy families building sandcastles and licking ice creams. This would have been 1967 when the BBC Light Programme or BBC Radio 2 (can’t remember which as the Light programme, which had been running since 1945 was rebranded some time in 1967) was the favoured listening of Ma & Pa in them there days so on the trips down south we would be listening to shows hosted by such as Alan (Fluff) Freeman on Pick of the Pops playing tunes like 'San Francisco' by Scott Mckenzie, 'She’d Rather Be With Me' by The Turtles and 'Even The Bad Times Are Good' by The Tremeloes; all upbeat sunshine sounds which suggested a new and different world somewhere other than the back seat of a Consul. The journey back home would be a more sleepy affair maybe with The Cliff Adams Singers in the background warbling their way through hits of yesteryear on Sing Something Simple. I was happy with whatever waves of music were wafting into my ears – my ears, as they are even now, were always open but hippy pop was moving to the top of my personal music charts and the clincher came a couple of years later.
The Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969 came just too early for me. I so wanted to be part of this fantastic movement. I was seeing images on the TV and in newspapers and things looked so cool, man, even to this twelve year old. Long hair, blissed out faces. I was with them in spirit. Band names with exotic-sounding names like The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane; enduring images of Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix. Groovy new language with adjectives like ‘trippy’ and ‘psychedelic’. I didn’t know what one earth was going on but I knew that it was happening without me and that it would likely be all over by the time I was of an age to partake. Of course, I didn’t know it then but I was living through the later period of the Hippie Movement which was happening in America as part of the Counter Culture period. This was affecting artistic life generally, but in particular, music, and it was happening in Britain too. The Flower Power of the Summer of Love right through to Woodstock. The bright colours, peace and love that endured through most of the sixties began to wane in the seventies and life seemed to become sepia-coloured and dull …… but there was always music.
As my arms grew longer and my hands more steady, I got around to thinking that perhaps I was ready to graduate to ……. The LP! It was 1972 and I was now 15. It was time for Piledriver by Status Quo on the Vertigo label and for those of you that are ahead of the rest, it was on the Spaceship label and not the celebrated Swirly. It was only later that I realised the significance of that; the Swirly fetching bigger prices nowadays than the Spaceship. Not that I have ever sold any of my LPs. Record collecting is a game of accumulation for most of us, not remuneration.
After this first grown-up purchase, I was soon on my bike regularly cycling from my home in Chalfont St Giles village in Buckinghamshire to the bright lights of Amersham, Gerrards Cross and Chalfont St Peter. I remember bringing home Toulouse Street by The Doobie Brothers, Wishbone 4 by Wishbone Ash and Moontan by Golden Earring from The Radio House in Amersham; There’s One in Every Crowd by Eric Clapton and Live at Max’s Kansas City by The Velvet Underground from Brendons in Gerrards Cross and the singles '25 or 6 to 4' by Chicago, 'Say You Don't Mind' by Colin Blunstone and 'Baby I’m a Want You' by Bread from Rumbelows in St Peter. All of these treasures bungeed onto my bike rack whilst I rode like the wind, eager to let loose my dear old Dansette onto my new acquisition. I would sit cross-legged on my bed beside said trusty record player, scared to move a muscle in case of jogging the needle. I could have put the player on a more sturdy, reliable surface but this way, I felt at one with the sounds as they were transferred from the groove to my ears. A bliss which is just impossible to replicate in real life in one’s later years but so easily recalled to mind … Ah, me. Excuse my tears of gladness and joy.
Whilst the spirit of The Radio House lives on in its new location along the high street, as The Record Shop (why call it anything else?), Brendons and Rumbelows, which were mainly white goods and electronics vendors (sellers of, for example, washing machines and TVs) are long gone. Doesn’t matter. If I hear any of those records even now, I can conjure the complete experience of the ride out, the rummage, the purchase, the ride home, the consummation.
The first record fairs I went to were at Wembley Arena. These were then the main fairs of London and were thus the precursors of those majors run at Olympia and now, at time of writing, the Horticultural Halls in Victoria. My earliest record fair purchase was an album that was being played on one of those Wembley stalls. I had never heard rock music quite like this. It had the normal guitars and drums and bass and stuff but something about it stirred me into further investigation. It turned out to be the Satori album by Japanese rockers, The Flower Travellin’ Band. It cost me £30 which was a lot to me then but I love this LP still today. If you should happen to find yourself listening to the quiet, single-note introduction to the first track on side 1, here is a word of warning. Do not turn up the volume to 11 just yet if there are nervous pets in the vicinity. I have amused myself by suggesting the opposite to family and friends but things could get legal if I didn’t warn you now of the short vocal restrain at about 30 seconds which may surprise a snoozing cat. I can’t demonstrate it here in printed word but... er … oh heck, go listen to it!
So, when does someone who has a handful of LPs turn from a music accumulator into a record collector. For me, I reckon the first episode that would have alerted the Nerd Patrol was when I spotted a US issue of Fog on the Tyne by Lindisfarne. These chirpy Geordies were my favourite music-makers for a period in those early years and I was very attached to my gate-folded copy of FOTT; fascinated by the sketch of the Newcastle skyline drawn on top of a warm maroon background which stretched around the front and back of the cover; in the centre of the shiny black disc, the famous pink Charisma label with the wide scroll at the top and the thin, flowery swirls at about halfway demarcating the wordy space below. Lovely, I say. I think the later Mad Hatter label is fine but does not have the nostalgia which imbues the pinky. Anyway, I was in Watford Market, sadly mourned since its closure in 2014, in which it was my pleasure to visit often the record stall, when I was transfixed by a strangely familiar record cover. There was the Newcastle skyline but this time it was backed by a cool blue rather than the red. Closer inspection revealed that it was also a single sleeve and on the back, not the West end of Newcastle city but a photo of the band members and the track listing etc. The final sacrilege was the replacement of the Charisma label with a rather modern-looking Elektra one! Everything was wrong but I had to have it. I told myself that I have this record. How does having another one enhance my life? I easily compiled a mental list of reasons for not making this purchase on the left side of an imaginary page of gleaming, white paper whilst on the other half, where the excuses in favour of commencing a contract to buy, approximated a cavernous void. Not liking the look of the way things were going, I decided to run the conundrum through the four-test where you invite yourself to a private conversation which goes something like:
Question: How will I feel after 4 minutes of making this purchase?
Answer: Pretty darn pleased!
Q: Why?
A: Dunno!
Q: OK, how will I feel after 4 hours of making this purchase?
A: In four hours I’ll be listening to it – I imagine I’ll be pretty darn pleased!
Q: Why?
A: Look, I don’t have to answer your silly questions!
Q: OK, how will you feel after 4 day…?
… it was at this point of the conversation between Me 1 and Me 2 that I realised that Me 3 was holding the item of interest in one hand whilst offering £8 to the stall holder with the other. So there you go – if you want to see your score on the Nerdometer, try the 4-test. If you can’t get passed the 4 day time-point, you might as well face it, you’re addicted to … hmmm, I was about to say ‘love’. Now, where did that come from? Anyway, if I had stayed with my question and answer session, on asking myself, ‘Why?’ I might have said, ‘Because I want to know if the Americans have censored the line in the title track (‘Fog on the Tyne’ if you’d forgotten) where Alan Hull sings about being able to have a wee wee and, subsequently, a wet on the wall. Sorry. No punchline. It was exactly as the UK issue but the reason for this story …? It is that this may have been that special moment when I graduated to the position of vinyl collecting junkie. The shackles were off. I was free to make random record-related purchases without the need to explain myself to anyone, not even my wife! Well, maybe my wife … but absolutely no-one else!
Perhaps the other main signpost towards record collectorship (and, therefore, away from music accumulatorship) is when one begins to see one’s collection as an indicator of one’s personality and character; that moment in time when you realise pleasure on the presentation of your row of LPs and 45s to your friends for perusal and comment. Or maybe, when you realise that Lily the Pink by The Scaffold is lying within easy sight of anyone looking into the room and that you need to barricade the door to prevent entry until you have tidied away this item of guilty pleasure. Anyway, as well as the certificate gained by the Fog on the Tyne experience, my diploma of Record Collectorship was self-awarded when I decided that my three WORLD OF LPs (THE WORLD OF AMEN CORNER (SPA 33), THE WORLD OF CAT STEVENS (SPA 93) and THE WORLD OF ALAN PRICE (SPA 77), far from being random records in my random collection, were actually the small acorns from which a magnificent vinyl record collection would, one day, grow. And so it did.
Let’s talk about (fanfare, please) the WORLD OF DECCA!
Before we get started, however, I’d like to explain the convention when stating record titles. I will suffix the titles, for example, THE WORLD OF AMEN CORNER, with their catalogue numbers, using the letters appertaining to the stereo version (SPA 33) rather than both mono (PA 33) and stereo where the record is available in both modes. Where the record is available in mono only, for example, THE WORLD OF TONY HANCOCK, the catalogue number will be shown with the mono format, for example, PA 147.
References available on request
Regarding the LP cover image, it is a photograph of a record in my own collection and is taken by my own hand . All images should be considered, however, copyright of Decca.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of any image in any form is prohibited.
Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the text in any form is prohibited, restricted by permission of the author.
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