Music Sweet Sounds of My Life

As I sit here typing away, I am gently swaying to my music in the background and I can feel my trusty chair threatening to give up the ghost. I can't resist the hypnotic beat and love feeling so many melodies waft over me. My children will be only too happy to tell you of the amount of times they have asked me to turn my music down as they can here it up the road. But then I do come from a generation that had no fear of gigantic speakers and would go anywhere to hear that deep heartelt beat bouncing off the walls. Mind you though, I am aware of how loud music can start off an ASBO process and in my current line of work, I think I would die of shame.......Playing music helps me in so many way, it can calm me down, it can make me happy and depending on some half baked lyrics, music can also sometimes stop me in my tracks. Best of all though is that I can dance in the absolute freedom of working up a sweat, knowing that there is a chair near by to collaspe in.

My parents had a SteroGram when I was growing up which took pride of place in the Front Room. For people of my parents generation, having a Front Room meant having a special place to display the best. Net curtains had to be whiter than white ( thanks to Reckitt's Blue Bag) with loads of pleats. I still shudder now at remembering balancing on a chair whilst Mum directed me with " A bit to the left, no, a little to the right" all to get the curtains to hang perfectly. No attention to my safety you know, must get the curtains just right. Display cabinets and ornaments fought for attention, some had many dainty crockery items held prisoner by glass doors, never to be used. Photographs of relatives hung in smiling silence or peeped out from behind vases full of stocking flowers. We were not allowed in our Front Room by ourselves, but when we went to a relative or family friend's house, we were ushered into the Front Room to ooh and ahh silently.

The SteroGram took pride of place in our Front Room right under the windows. .Most people we knew then had a similar one, some were smaller, our one was a good size. The radio section lit up when it got dark, highligting exotic and far flung places  with all the controls looking like ivory teeth. Two large speakers were at either end with a record deck in one bit and record storage section in the other. This beautiful piece of equipment with walnut veneer was polished to within an inch of its life on Saturdays. We even had to polish the legs and make sure that the metal golden band around each leg shone to perfection. Us children had the lovely task of doing this as well as cleaning the cocktail cabinet section which was lined with red velour-like fabric and a glass shelf groaning under the weight of small glasses with fantastic designs. Why alcoholic drinks were placed so low that children could get them is a question that I am only now thinking about as back in those days, we were not averse to having a little sip of what was in there. Well, the glasses were there and the drink and children are nosey........ Mum's stiffly starched crochet mats covered the top of the gram with a selection of ornaments and a record rack full of 45's. There seemed to be some sort of competition going on with the adults as to who had the biggest and best Gram and at house parties, when we were banned from the front room as adults danced the night away, the bass would just rumble throughout the house.

The amazing thing about these grams were, that you could stack several records on the arm of the record player and each record would play and then another would just drop straight down, wow. I found this so facinating as Dad would put at least six 45's or even 3 Long Play 33 1/3 on and they would all drop and play smoothly. (A few years later, when we were older and allowed to play music, we achieved a personal record of 10 45's, which we never told Dad about as he was adamant than anymore than 6 would break it.)

Dad was the only one who could use it ( he gave us a lecture on the consequences we would face if we so much as touched it without permission as we would damage the precious needle or wreck the stacking mechanism) and so on Sundays, we would have to go through the ritual of Getting The Gram Ready to Play Music and strip it of all its added finery. All this to end up with Jim Reeves and Tenessee Ford booming out followed by a selection of tunes by Lord Creator, Gene and Eunice, The Magic Notes, Jimmy Cliff and others.

I think this is such a beautiful and hopeful song, reminds me of when I was young. This type of music which I think is more Calypso than Mento,  provides an insight into  the musical  flow of Jamaica in the early sixties. Lord Creator also sang a lovely song with the same type of beat about the hope and dreams for Jamaica's Indpendence. A few years later, "Kingston Town" was a huge reggae hit for Lord Creator.

Back in the 60's, this tune  would be the first  or main dance of the bride and groom.. From the opening bars, this tune just lifts you with surprise and sounds  so romantic, ahh. 

Now this a real Gram tune! Lovely tune to sing along to with simple lyrics, This type of music was called Blue Beat after the label, many tunes like this had the same trilling beat and a deep continous rythm

Carol Crawford won the Miss World competition in 1963, representing Jamaica. Jimmy Cliff's  song  'Miss Jamaica' is a Ska classic. At house parties, this was always one of those tunes that either got those brave enough to do the moves dancing or just  got people singing along lots of finger clicking.