The song was released in April 1962. It reached No. 1 in Australia, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, and the United States, and was a major hit in many other countries as well. The song topped the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ singles chart on July 14, 1962, and remained there for four weeks. The single was also the first number-one hit for ‘Epic Records’. Billboard ranked the record Number 4 in their year-end ranking ‘ Top 100 Singles of 1962’, and Number 36 in their year-end ranking of the ‘Top Rhythm and Blues records of 1962’. The song was also ranked Number 17 on Cash Box’s ‘Top 100 Chart Hits of 1962’.
In the UK, a cover version by Northern Irish singer, Ronnie Carroll, reached Number 3 on the ‘Record Retailer Chart’ on August 8, 1962, the same week that the Bobby Vinton record peaked at Number 15. It peaked at Number 7 in the very first ‘Irish Singles Chart’ published in September 1962.
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‘Roses are Red’ was a love poem that was used in verse on Valentine Cards that stretched back beyond the Victorian era. The origins of the poem may be traced at least as far back as to lines written in 1590 by Sir Edmund Spenser from his epic ‘The Faerie Queene (Book Three, Canto 6, Stanza 6). A nursery rhyme significantly closer to the modern Valentine’s Day poem can be found in ‘Gammer Gurton’s Garland’, a 1784 collection of English nursery rhymes:
‘The rose is red, the violet's blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou are my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou'd be you.’
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This song was released when I was aged twenty years and was at the height of my ‘pulling powers’ with beautiful young women. I was also only six months away from going to live in Canada for a few years; a dream I’d held since my mid-teens. Such travel was made possible for me due to a rather large amount of compensation I had been awarded by a court after incurring a life-threatening traffic accident at the age of 11 years that was to cripple me and leave me unable to walk for three years.
This song reminds me very much of when I was a 9-year-old boy at ‘St Patrick’s Roman Catholic School’ in Heckmondwike. Even at that age, I had developed an eye for a good-looking girl. The two girls in my mind constantly were Winifred Healey and Moira Campbell. Never a Valentine’s Day went by without me sending them a Valentine Card form a secret admirer.
Winifred had long dark hair and she would precociously purse her lips unknowingly, as though they were always getting themselves into a state of readiness to be kissed by some passing boy. Winifred was my first serious girlfriend. We were each 9 years of age. Before we were 10 years old, Winifred and I said that we would ‘go with one another’. At the time, a boy and a girl publicly declaring that they would ‘go with one another’ effectively told all other pupils, ‘Hands off if you fancy Billy or Winifred as they are an item and will marry each other and have children together when they grow up into adults.’ Indeed, I was so serious about marrying Winifred one day that I stole a diamond engagement ring from the home of my friend, Peter Lockwood. The engagement ring belonged to Peter’s older sister, 20-year-old Margaret.
The morning after the theft from the home of the Lockwoods, I presented the diamond ring to Winifred at school. For three days Winifred proudly wore the engagement ring I’d stolen as a seal of our promise to one day marry me, and she showed it off to all her friends in the playground at every opportunity. Three days after my theft, a policeman visited the school after hearing about the diamond sparkler that a 10-year old girl was proudly showing off to all and sundry. Although Winifred was to ‘hold out’ against every advance beyond a kiss that I ever made before she left Secondary School, she was unable to ‘hold out’ even for a few minutes when the police started questioning her. She instantly ‘spilled the beans’ and turned me into the cops. She might have told everyone else in the school that we were ‘going together’, but when push came to shove at our very first police ambush, instead of ‘shooting it out’ alongside me, she immediately ‘put her hands up’ and surrendered; making clear her intentions of never becoming Bonnie to my Clyde and risk going to prison with me.
Unknown to me, when Winifred initially agreed to ‘go with me’, she was flying her future intentions under the false colours of a pirate flag. All her life, (along with her older sister, Mary), Winifred had planned to enter a convent when she left school and train to become a nun. Both Winifred and her sister Mary eventually kept faith with these intentions to become ‘Brides of Christ’. However, while her older sister Mary was to remain a nun, just like her childhood promise to ‘go with me’, as an adult nun, Winifred eventually found herself unable to ‘go with God’ either. Winfred decided to leave the Order and to ‘go with’ a Blackpool landlord instead.
Winifred and I met up at an old school reunion about fifteen years ago but apart from exchanging a few pleasantries, our meeting was brief and uneventful, apart from observing that I had weathered the storms of maintaining our good looks better than her during the passing years.
Moira Campbell, on the other hand, was probably the better bet to have staked my money and reputation on, but like most gamblers, I was to back the wrong horse and I put all my money on Winifred to win, instead of being more cautious and spreading my bet by backing two runners in the race to win. Winifred and Moira were both lovely girls to ‘go with’ but they were so different in physical appearance, character, and so many other ways. In keeping to my horse-racing analogy, I’d have to say now that Winifred was the fastest runner on the flat and over the shortest distance, but Moira had more stamina and was most certainly a long-distance runner as well as being able to jump the fences along the way.
Winifred was always beautiful in my eyes, and Moira impressed more as being a bonny lassie. Moira was Scottish through and through but rarely came to the parties held by other pupils on their birthdays as she acted as a part-time carer for some sick relative when she got home from school at the end of the day. Two things I recall most about Moira. She had beautiful ringlets that ran through her hair in a Shirley Temple fashion, and she was the sweetest singer I had ever heard. Her voice was golden to the ear, and I have never heard anyone sing ‘Ye Banks and Braes’ as sweetly as Moira did. I can never hear this Scottish song that Robert Burns wrote in 1791 without seeing sweet Moira in my mind’s eye.
I never met Moira Campbell again since leaving school although my sister Mary has reportedly seen and spoken with her on several occasions at the ‘Church of The Holy Spirit’ in Heckmondwike. My sister Mary informs me that Moira never married to her knowledge.
Now that I am much older and wiser, and in my 77th year of life, I can now clearly see that even had I stolen the diamond engagement ring to give to Moira Campbell instead of Winifred Healey, that Moira would have declined it, advised me to give it back to its owner, but still have agreed to ‘go with me’. Over the decades, I have thought often about this possibility and have to conclude that the more I reflect upon my childhood decision ‘to go with’ Winifred Healey instead of hitching my wagon of future intent to Moira Campbell, that I’d chosen wrongly.
I had done as a boy as many males decide like a man, to look for true beauty in the wrong place and with the wrong eyes. I now know as an aged and wiser man that true beauty comes from within the person and not from without. I also know that lasting beauty flows from the heart and soul of a loving human being and will shine much brighter and longer than any diamond sparkler will glisten.
I bet that Moira Campbell would have gone to the length of the earth and back for me had I asked her ‘to go with me’ instead of Winifred. I bet that Moira would have been the type of bonnie lassie to have kept her childhood promise to marry her man when she became a woman. I’d also wager that had Moira and I ever married, that we would still be man and wife, deeply in love and marching together every fine morning on the moorlands through the purple heather, playing our bagpipes in perfect synchronisation and harmony.
I recently told my beautiful and loving wife, Sheila how different both our lives may have been today in May 2020, had I chosen ‘to go with’ Moira Campbell instead of Winifred Healey at the age of 9 years! Although my wife Sheila doesn’t have a jealous bone in her beautiful body, after revealing to her this earlier account of the first loves in my life, Sheila secretly bought a saxophone and practises at least one hour daily in her bedroom, especially since the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown. I have told her a number of times that I am far too old now to consider swapping a sexy saxophone-playing wife for an old Scottish flame who is good on the bagpipes!
Love and peace Bill xxx