Music – Page 38 – Ian Louis Harris

My First Taste Of Classical Music & Dramatised Stories: A Clutch Of Beano Records (aka Tale Spinners), Perhaps Early 1969

Images from Discogs, where some of these Beano Records might be bought.

By the summer of 1968, when I turned six, I think I was probably driving my parents a little bit nuts with my enthusiasm for pop music, which I would tape onto the faithful family Grundig reel-to-reel and play relentlessly:

Pick Of The Pops Chart Rundowns, Probably 28 July 1968 & 4 August 1968, Possibly 4 August 1968 & 11 August 1968

I think it was fairly soon after that summer perhaps autumn/Christmas 1968 or early 1969, a stack of Beano Records arrived in our household. I still have them. They were children’s stories and classic novels, dramatised and set to famous classical music in the background.

My research for this Ogblog piece has uncovered the fact that they were formerly known as Tale Spinners and had been released initially (late 1950s and early 1960s) on Atlas Records and/or, in the USA, on United Artists Records. Here is the Wikipedia entry about them.

The Beano Label releases of the same material came later in the UK, 1965 from what I can gather, with 24 of the original batch (most of them) making the cut for Beano.

I ended up with 12 of them, although I think I started with a batch of 10. My guess is that dad bought them as remaindered items at the Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction. Possibly, knowing dad’s sometime trading methods back then, he swapped some of his dead stock of cine films for some of the Slipped Disc’s dead stock of records. Exchange is no robbery, as South London merchants were want to put it.

The cast was stellar – or better to say that many were proto-stars: Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen, Donald Pleasence, John Wood, Cyril Shaps, Paul Daneman, Derek Hart, Anthony Woodruff, Judith Whale, Tony Church, Geoffrey Bayldon, Ralph Hallett, Marjorie Westbury, Denise Bryer, Peggy Butt, John Baddley, Alan Rowe, Mary Law, Jocelyn Page & Robert Hardy, to name not all, many of whom went on to great fame and acclaim afterwards.

Here’s the list of my dozen Beanos, each with a link to the Discog entry, either for the Beano Record or for the original Atlas release. The latter tend to contain details on the fabulous cast of actors and actresses who performed each story. Sometimes the cast is listed, sometimes the images contain the cast list, occasionally neither is present:

An example cast list and script – these were not included in Beano versions

The stories and the dramatic telling captured me, I have no doubt. But it was also the music – I think my parents main purpose – that got me hooked and I remember asking my parents what the music was and wanted to hear more of it. Here’s the list again with a quick note on the music of each:

Robinson Crusoe – Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony
Puss in Boots – Vivaldi (mostly The Four Seasons plus some horn concerto stuff I think)
Hansel and Gretel – Tchaikovsky Francesca da Rimini and some Nutcracker Suite
The Brave Little Tailor – Mozart Eine Kline Macht Musik – don’t be deceived by the record sleeve that reads “Gluck”. Mozart and Gluck would have both had a hissy-fit about that mix-up.

Treasure Island Berlioz Fantastique Symphony
The Count of Monte Christo Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony
Gulliver’s Travels – Some Purcell and a Boyce Symphony or two
Rip Van Winkle – Mendelssohn Midsummer Night’s Dream
Davy Crockett – American Folk Songs – out of character and a one-off I believe
Knights of the Round Table – Couperin (which seemed very strange to me back then)
Beauty and the Beast – Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream
Cinderella – Tchaikovsky Swan Lake Suite

Oh how I loved these records – some of them I’d listen to over and over again. At first I focussed on the children’s stories, possibly encouraged to leave the more “grown up ones” to one side for a while.

I especially remember being frightened by the Hansel & Gretel one, which is a really creepy, no-holds barred telling of that story. Francesca de Rimini is quite creepy music and the voices are American on that record. The mother…or evil step-mother…drones “something better be done, husband, something better be done”, to encourage the weak-willed spouse to go along with her plan to abandon the children. I had some nightmares about that aspect, yet I recall i wanted to hear the story over and over again, perhaps because, despite the nightmarish scenario, the children somehow get themselves out of trouble and into clover. One further memory about the Hansel & Gretel one. I remember my mother on one occasion, probably when I had been a bit naughty and aping the voice that she had heard countless times, saying, “something better be done, husband” to my dad and me having the collywobbles at hearing my mum say those words in that style.

I remember all of them pretty clearly and had a deep affection for those records.

Soon after, my parents sourced more records, several of which contained the music I had been listening to with these stories, which got me well and truly hooked on serious music, to supplant my interest in pop for several years.

I have pulled together a YouTube Music playlist of my twelve, mostly for my own convenience and/but you are welcome to use it. Do not be put off by the strikethrough on the link – anyone can access my playlists but if you don’t have a YouTube Premium account you’ll get adverts.

Alternatively, you can go to the source I used for that Playlist, where an enthusiast has pulled together all of the Beano ones into a YouTube channel named Beano Records Reboot. Finding that channel today (1 March 2025) has quite literally made my day, not least because I have lost much of the day wallowing with pleasure in that rabbit hole…not that Alice In Wonderland was one of the one’s I owned!

Which did I listen to the most? Hard to recall, but I remember with particular affection from the earliest times Puss In Boots, which I heard again today with great pleasure:

Latterly I recall wallowing in Treasure Island and dreaming of such adventure…

…which is a bit odd really, as my favourite true story about myself reveals me to be a landlubber who is a ludicrously timorous sailor whose timbers are all too easily shivered.

Nicaragua, Morgan’s Rock to Mukul, 16 February 2016

I wasn’t the only kid on our street with some of these Beano Records. I remember listening to some that I didn’t own, I think at the Cedar house or possibly the Benjamin house on our block. The Three Musketeers one, for example, I remember someone playing me at their house, just as I often played mine when friends were round. Those Beano Records were a wonderful part of my childhood, and that of many other youngsters of my generation.

On reflection, I am pretty sure that the purchase of these by my parents was about the music more than the drama. Someone must have recommended them for that purpose and I am grateful to that person, whoever they might have been.

Reflecting on my parents’ irritation at my pop music habits, I suspect that it was my mother who was angling hardest for a solution. Perhaps she even said:

…something better be done, husband, something better be done…

…to encourage my dad to get the records!

Thanks again to Ben at Beano Records Reboot @BeanoRecordsReboot – for his unwitting but hugely valuable help with this piece.

Pick Of The Pops Chart Rundowns, Probably 28 July 1968 & 4 August 1968, Possibly 4 August 1968 & 11 August 1968

I made my first tape recordings in November 1967, from the Radio One show Pick Of The Pops – I Ogblogged about it on the 50th anniversary here:

Pick Of The Pops Top Three, 5th November 1967

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…

…fifty years later I discover that the name “Mony” was simply taken from the sign on top of the Mutual Of New York (MONY) Insurance Company building. Now they tell me:

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.

For now, as Fluff Freeman would put it:

Tara.

Pick Of The Pops, Most Of the Top Ten, 12 November 1967

Grundig TK35, Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.

Greetings, pop pickers.

Last week I Ogblogged recordings dad and I made exactly 50 years ago to the day, on 5 November 1967, including the Pick Of The Pops top three – click here, from Alan “Fluff” Freeman’s seminal chart show.

This week, I’m setting out the recordings I made of most of the top 10 from Pick Of The Pops the following week.

These recordings have more cutting in and out – probably a five-year-old’s attention span incapable of just letting the tape run and unaware at that stage of the wizardry that could be achieved post-recording in that medium.

The first extract actually has a bit of the Tony Blackburn show; the tail end of San Fransiscan Nights by The Animals therefrom. My guess is that it was my desire to record that better that sent me to Pick Of the Pops that Sunday evening, finding this song at number nine, then I kept going.

Next up – at eight – Long John Baldry with Let The Heartaches Begin:

At seven, Donovan with There Is A Mountain:

Then at six, the Kinks with Autumn Almanac:

Into the top five with The Troggs, Love Is All Around:

The least said about The Last Waltz by Englebert Humerdink at number four, the better:

Massachusetts by The Bee Gees at Number Three:

Zabadak by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich at Number Two:

…by which point I guess it dawned on my very junior indeed mind that I already had the top three on tape from the previous week.

Still, I wouldn’t want to keep pop pickers in suspenders, so here is a YouTube of the Number One from that period – Baby Now That I’ve Found You by The Foundations.

Does this bring back memories? Not Arf!

Tara.

Pick Of The Pops Top Three, 5th November 1967

As I write, it is 50 years ago to the day since Sunday 5th November 1967.

On that day, my father and I recorded Hare and Guy Fawkes, Ogblogged here, on our family’s trusty Grundig TK-35.

Grundig TK35; built to last. Photograph by Michael Keller, from Rad-io.de.

Our machine was still playing (although not recording) when I let the scrap merchants take it to a better place in 2012.

The very end of the Hare and Guy Fawkes recording segues rather elegantly into the top three from Pick of the Pops:

Zabadak by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich

…which is followed by…

Massachusetts by The Bee Gees

…and then…

Baby Now That I’ve Found You by The Foundations.

With the excitable tones of Alan “Fluff” Freeman between the tracks.

I have split the audio track into parts, but if you run the files contiguously they run entirely unbroken.

The segue works so well, I can only surmise that dad was experimenting with that recording after we had made the Hare and Guy Fawkes recording.

I am pretty sure I must have been watching him carefully and working out what it took to rig up the radio to the tape recorder and record from the radio.

The next 20+ seconds of tape is taken up with “gunk”, as I describe it in subsequent notes, which I think is my early attempts to work out to record, stop, pause etc. some done that evening, the rest the next day or just a few days later.

The following week I recorded the whole of the top nine from Pick of The Pops. I’ll up that material next week.

Don’t try to compare these charts with anything you see from the Official Charts; the BBC Pick Of the Pops charts didn’t work that way in 1967; they tried to second guess the chart standings by making a “chart of charts” from the NME, Melody Maker and several other chart sources which would all be published on different days and different ways. But the only logical dates for my recordings are 5 November 1967 top three, some gunk in between and then the 12 November 1967 top nine.

After that, I recorded a whole load of other pop music stuff to fill up that side of the tape.

It could only have been me making those recordings after the initial part of the 5th November recording; the cutting and hacking about is too amateurish to have been dad or mum. I also remember mum telling me in later years their mixture of horror and pleasure when they discovered me making my own clandestine recordings.

The reason this particular spool survived is because of the Hare and Guy Fawkes recording and also some other material which dad wanted to keep on the other side of the tape.

Most of the recordings I made as a child would have been wiped by subsequent recordings I made as a child. Tape wasn’t cheap.

There is one other tape of similar vintage that survived; with Pick Of The Pops from August 1968. Those recordings include Fluff Freeman’s fabulous chart rundowns, which the 1967 recordings sadly lack.

I’ll up the August 1968 ones when they reach their 50th birthday.

In the meantime, pop pickers, hit the above MP3 files for the Pick of The Pops top three.

Tara.