Mum, Dad and I spent a couple of summer holidays at the same kosher hotel in Bournemouth , in 1967 and 1968. Probably a couple of weeks each time. Probably late August.
Were we at The Cumberland? Were we at The Normandie? Was it one of the other “Bournemouth Borscht Belt” hotels. None of us could remember – perhaps someone more knowledgeable can recognise the place from the pictures and help with a comment.
The following slides are from the holiday in Bournemouth in 1967 (same hotel) and then some pictures that were taken subsequently on the same roll of film.
We took a ferry and visited Corfe Castle, amongst other things. This was before dad had that Zodiac sprayed in psychedelic colours, unfortunately, but I’ve used some music which sounds of the period anyway.
I have a little more recollection of the 1968 holiday. Perhaps in part because of the home movie from that holiday – see the silent YouTube embedded below:
Unfortunately, YouTube has blocked the soundtracked version of this film, so you’ll need to imagine hearing a soundtrack including:
Hey Jude, The Beatles;
Jumping Jack Flash, The Rolling Stones;
Baby Come Back, The Equals.
Those three tunes in particular were the soundtrack of that holiday to my memory. Especially the first of those three, which was being played incessantly on the hotel jukebox; not least by me if I could persuade daddy to part with another sixpence so I could hear Hey Jude again.
I had been recording the pop charts from the radio earlier that month, as evidenced by a reel-to-reel tape that survived the decades – written up on Ogblog – click here and below:
Only one other similar spool of that vintage survived, from the summer of 1968. The bulk of the tape comprises most of the top 10 from two consecutive weeks; there is therefore much repetition, but one of the great joys of this tape is that it has those two week’s chart run-downs, by Alan “Fluff” Freeman:
I especially love the way he turns the name “Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich” into a single word:
Davedeedozybeakymickandtich.
I also love the bit, in one of the two chart run downs, when he starts to say “Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love In My Tummy” but has to abandon the second part of the phrase midway through because he is running out of time.
I explained in the November 1967 article how the BBC compiled its own chart from various other ones, so it is hard to pinpoint an exact date for the broadcasts. The Sunday early evening show – it was certainly those I recorded – was a rundown of the BBC chart broadcast the previous Tuesday and I’m not sure whether the BBC tended to lag the other published charts or was trying to pre-empt them.
Anyway, the first of the two, above, would have either been broadcast on 28 July 1968 or 4 August 1968; I’d guess probably the former.
The second of the two, broadcast one week later, I captured most of the top ten as well:
At 10, Simon & Garfunkle singing Mrs Robinson:
My editing had got much better between November 1967 and July/August 1968, although was still a little juvenile (I was five going on six). For some reason, I must have hated This Guys In Love With You by Herb Alpert as I edited it out completely from its Number Nine spot. I guess it was too slow and romantic for my 5-year-old ears back then.
Sorry Herb. I rather like the song now.
I have found a truly cheesy, uber-1960s video on Herb Alpert’s YouTube Channel, which accompanied the song back then, so I can present that to you here instead:
Tidy hair.
Anyway, at Number Eight…
…Cupid’s Inspiration with Yesterday Has Gone. Today the lyric might be seen as some sort of mindfulness anthem.
Number Seven was Fire by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown – which subsequently got to Number One:
Then at Number Six the bizarre MacArthur Park by Richard Harris. I must confess that the five-on-six year old me was totally taken in by the pastiche lyrics for this one. Ever since, I have lived in fear of someone leaving the cake out in the rain, thus wasting gargantuan amounts of effort and (for utterly inexplicable reasons) consigning the recipe as well as the cake to oblivion:
At Number Five, OC Smith with Son Of Hickory Holler’s Tramp. On hearing this song again, I do wonder how all fourteen children, when abandoned by their dad, would only care about mama’s chicken dumplings and a goodnight kiss before they went to bed. Wouldn’t several of these children have reached late adolescence or even adulthood by the time the last one arrived, or did the wayward couple spawn a handful of sets of quadruplets and quins in quick succession? The story is neither well nor convincingly explained. It feels like exaggeration or possibly even fake news to me:
At Number Four, the bubblegum song Yummy Yummy Yummy by Ohio Express. Now here is a truly meaningful lyric with which to grapple:
The Number Three song in the second week of my collection was Number One in the first week – Baby Come Back by The Equals. I really like this track:
Number Two was I Pretend by Des O’Connor. The official (at that time NME) charts have this song as Number One for a week, but two weeks of BBC chart recordings suggest that it never made the top spot on the BBC version. It is a well cheesy song:
Number One was Mony Mony by Tommy James And The Shondelles. Here we find the most meaningful lyric of all…
I’ve managed to find a wonderful video for that Number One song – so uber-sixties it is almost untrue. Perhaps some of my more musical friends can tell us whether the band is miming or actually playing their instruments – I find it impossible to tell:
Finally, here is the second of those wonderful classic Fluff Freeman chart rundowns. Probably 4 August 1968 but possibly the following week, 11 August 1968. If it was the latter, that was my dad’s 49th birthday and I write this piece as we approach what would have been his 99th birthday.
By July/August 1968 dad was no longer directly helping me with these recordings, other than (probably) hiding spools of tape from me so I kept reusing the same ones for chart shows.
Why this spool survived is a mystery.
We went on holiday to Bournemouth soon after and perhaps I got bored with or forgot about recording chart shows after that.
It might have been for my sixth birthday that a heap of Beano Records arrived to try and get me interested in more serious music. That attempt succeeded, more on that anon, but my fascination with popular music of that 1960s and then 1970s period has lived on in me.
