The wake up call from Infant to a less than teen..teenager, was driven prematurely by an explosion of varying types of music & associated playing equipment…first the amplified-valve driven ‘Record Player’…replacing the wind-up units with the enormous ‘Trumpet-speakers’ that just about managed natural amplification…Next came early reel to reel Tape Players.
I remember you could ‘play’ a 78rpm record on a turning platten with your fingernail & hear the tunes come through!!!….amazing.
In those days, the type of music was Big-Band..to…Jazz changing to Skiffle & eventually morphing to Rock…
What an incredible assortment….
The Presley years were here…his first hit single ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in 1956… !!…then came ‘Cliff’ in ‘58…he gave us ‘Schoolboy Crush’…with a ‘B’ side of ‘Move it’…which got to Number 2!! Everyone thinks that ‘Move it’ was the first true rock & roll record issued in the UK!!
Well….a strange thing happened during the music explosion; we’d had an old piano that got chopped up, can’t remember why…then we’d had a small Marconi TV hat you had to keep slapping to stop the picture ‘rolling’ but Dad bought a ‘Dansette’ electric record player…it cost a fortune & was closely guarded to it’s use….However….Dad did start buying records…first old ‘big-band’ records..then eventually ‘Skiffle’..then ‘Rock’. They were all 78’s to start with & you had to pay ’stamp-duty’ on each record purchased.
When skiffle came in mid 50’s..i’d be about 7 & i remember looking at the emerging ‘Guitar Players’ & thinking ‘I want to do that’ !!
Well..it just seemed a good idea to ‘copy’ the singing & imitate the guitar playing on a pretend substitute instrument…normally a broom stick!!
The Piccies above show the breakthough Record Player with an old wind-up one !!
The 50’s was a good era, full of change, but everyone accepted it!!
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