I dedicate my song today to three Facebook friends. We wish a happy birthday to Steven Spencer who lives in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England: Richard Dalton who lives in Klagenfurt, Austria: Dianne Benn who lives in Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Steven, Richard, and Dianne, we hope that you enjoy your special day. Thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Singing the Blues’. This song was written by Melvyn Endsley and published in 1956. The song was first recorded and released by Marty Robbins in 1956. It is not related to the 1920 jazz song of the same name that was recorded in 1927.
The best-known recording was released in October 1956 by Guy Mitchell and spent ten weeks at number 1 on the U.S. ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. Mitchell's version was also Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in early 1957. It is one of only four singles to rise to the top spot on the chart on three separate occasions.
Marty Robbins and Tommy Steele versions were released almost simultaneously with Guy Mitchell's. Tommy Steele's version of "Singing the Blues" made Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in 1957, sandwiched by two of the weeks that Guy Mitchell's version of the same song topped the charts. Steele's recording of the song was not a chart success in the US. The song is often revived, and on three occasions new recordings of ‘Singing the Blues’ have become UK Top 40 hits.
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My first hearing of this song was the versions by Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele. When I was 15 years old, I left school to start work in a Cleckheaton mill. I wanted to get some money in my pockets for once in my life, and after having had numerous operations between 11-14 years, I just wanted to get a bit of fun back in my life.
I was a highly intelligent young man who had experienced sufficient difficulty being unable to walk between the ages of 11 and 14 years (following a bad traffic accident). I abandoned my education after returning to school after a two-year absence, and I was still finding my feet as I entered my first job in the workplace for two pounds and fifteen shillings a week for forty hours in January 1958.
Being a bobbin boy in the mill represented a wonderful start to my working experiences, and it provided a solid bedrock for my future employment experiences. The first thing I learned about mill workers who labour for a modest wage, was that their poverty of monetary expectation generated in them a need to have as much fun as they could, every day they started work. I never knew one day pass in the mill when a joke was not being played on one person or another and harmless merriment was not being had by someone.
All the new boys received their textile baptism by their male and female workmates during their first few weeks at work. Male workmates would send the new boy off on useless errands as they laughed at their gullibility. The new bobbin boys would be sent to collect a glass hammer or a round nut from the mechanics in the maintenance department. The women in the weaving shed, however, were less generous in their baptism ritual with the new lad, and the first time a new boy walked through the weaving shed, they would be pulled to the ground by a dozen frustrated female workers and stripped naked as they attempted to wriggle free from the women’s clutches. As the new mill boys were being ravaged and stripped, a few of the bolder female weavers would pull their ‘todger’ to test their reaction. I asked afterward why the women engaged in this sexual assault on new boys. The answer I got back was to estimate what they could expect if they ever went with you a few years down the line? After the new boy had undergone their weaver’s shed baptism, the women’s main topic of conversation for the rest of that day would involve the size of the new boy’s budding manhood.
Each year, the mill would have a day trip to Blackpool. These trips were ideal opportunities for young lads to have their first pint of beer ensconced in the corner of a Blackpool pub, and depending upon how good-looking the young men were, there was also the opportunity to sit with an older female on the bus journey home. Let me say, that for the purpose of the Blackpool Mill trip, no married woman ever alighted the bus when it arrived in Blackpool, wearing her wedding ring (which conveniently found a temporary resting place in the female’s purse). As for telling tales about the Blackpool exploits of any passenger that day, the golden rule was one of selective silence and total discretion. While mill workers who were passengers on the day trip to Blackpool would naturally speak among themselves about ‘goings on’ that day, any news of whatever happened on the day trip never reached the ears of mill workers who had not gone on the coach outing. All day-trippers understood, ‘what happens on the annual Blackpool trip stays in Blackpool!’ Mill workers who did not observe that rule would not be allowed on any future seaside outings and would be shunned by their workmates.
On the way back home from Blackpool, all bus passengers would be merry, to say the least. The coach journey would take around three hours, and the driver would turn off all the inner lights after he'd stopped the coach at the first watering hole. This stopping point usually came in the form of a grass verge that both males and females shared in the dark of night. Some males and females would bring a torch with them, and often quite a bit of flashing among giggles would be common.
At the time, I had a good voice, and I had won many singing contests since the age of 8 years. I would be pleased to sing for the coachload of mill passengers, given the additional perks. It usually enabled me to share a seat on the way home with a female who was older than me but younger than twenty-one. As most of the female mill workers were inebriated, my young age of 15/16 years would be ‘temporarily overlooked’ on the journey back home. Along with being serenaded, my female seat passenger might forgo any inhibitions she would normally have when sober about sitting next to a ‘toy boy’. Over the remaining journey home in the unlit coach, because of the darkness, nobody knew above speculation what was taking place in the seats in front, behind, or to the side of them. I will never forget one of three Blackpool mill trips I went on when my female seat passenger on the way home started interacting with me as though I was two or three years older than I was!
As previously stated, what happened on the Blackpool day out, stayed on the Lancashire side of the border where it happened! Almost everyone on the Blackpool trip had a vested interest in keeping all the events of the day away from the ears and prying attention of the other Yorkshire mill workers, especially the married women who removed their wedding rings for the day, to replace on their fingers as they arrived home. It was often rumoured that their wedding rings were not the only items they might have removed from their person that day as they had fun and games down at the Pleasure Beach, or strolled beneath the pier on the sands, or socialised with day-trippers from other parts of the country in the pubs and Working Men Clubs during the evening! To have news of their day’s activities in the Lancashire seaside town reach the ears of their family and friends back home in Yorkshire would undoubtedly start another ‘War of the Roses’ within many married households.
I would have to acknowledge that there might be a number of blushed faces the next time some male who had been on the Blackpool mill trip went through the weaver’s shed. They were liable to be joked about as one female yelled out to another workmate “Is it worth us giving him another baptism yet, Mary to see how he’s coming on?”. This private joke between several female passengers of the Blackpool trip who worked in the weaving might cause a bit of speculative gossip between the rest of the weavers during their rest period, but it was harmless fun of the times I grew up in.
I will end today’s post by saying that once I experienced the additional benefits that being able to sing could get me during the return journey home from our Blackpool day out, I was determined to retain my singing voice under all circumstances. In fact, had I been unable to sing for toffee, the sheer attractiveness of many young women weavers, would have been a sufficient inducement for me to instantly take up singing lessons! You must bear in mind that I was still an impressionable 15/16-year-old boy with virgin credentials who was on the threshold of adult discovery. What a wonderful stage in my life this time was.
I know that many people knock the seaside town of Blackpool today as being a sandless wasteland which is now scattered with once splendid sea-front hotels that the new homeless claimants on DHSS housing benefit now occupy in their thousands. But it was not always so, and I was fortunate to know a much different Blackpool than the Blackpool that exists today. The Blackpool of my youth was an overcrowded, busy, and bustling seaside town, filled with floating music in the salty sea air, the calciferous sound of busy slot machines operating, visitors with buried faces in pink fluffy candy floss on a stick, and the permanent aroma of fish and chips being sold somewhere nearby.
This was an exciting Blackpool that I knew in its hay day of the late 1950s, when, as a 16-year-old mill worker on a day trip I enjoyed my first pint of Lancashire beer, and had my first real snog which instead of ending in a sloppy kiss went on to a much wider experience; something far more exciting. For a 16-year-old lad on the ride home at the end of the day, nestled alongside an older woman who was determined that I’d have a journey home that I’d never forget, life did not come any more exciting!
Love and peace
Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Singing the Blues’. This song was written by Melvyn Endsley and published in 1956. The song was first recorded and released by Marty Robbins in 1956. It is not related to the 1920 jazz song of the same name that was recorded in 1927.
The best-known recording was released in October 1956 by Guy Mitchell and spent ten weeks at number 1 on the U.S. ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart. Mitchell's version was also Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in early 1957. It is one of only four singles to rise to the top spot on the chart on three separate occasions.
Marty Robbins and Tommy Steele versions were released almost simultaneously with Guy Mitchell's. Tommy Steele's version of "Singing the Blues" made Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in 1957, sandwiched by two of the weeks that Guy Mitchell's version of the same song topped the charts. Steele's recording of the song was not a chart success in the US. The song is often revived, and on three occasions new recordings of ‘Singing the Blues’ have become UK Top 40 hits.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My first hearing of this song was the versions by Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele. When I was 15 years old, I left school to start work in a Cleckheaton mill. I wanted to get some money in my pockets for once in my life, and after having had numerous operations between 11-14 years, I just wanted to get a bit of fun back in my life.
I was a highly intelligent young man who had experienced sufficient difficulty being unable to walk between the ages of 11 and 14 years (following a bad traffic accident). I abandoned my education after returning to school after a two-year absence, and I was still finding my feet as I entered my first job in the workplace for two pounds and fifteen shillings a week for forty hours in January 1958.
Being a bobbin boy in the mill represented a wonderful start to my working experiences, and it provided a solid bedrock for my future employment experiences. The first thing I learned about mill workers who labour for a modest wage, was that their poverty of monetary expectation generated in them a need to have as much fun as they could, every day they started work. I never knew one day pass in the mill when a joke was not being played on one person or another and harmless merriment was not being had by someone.
All the new boys received their textile baptism by their male and female workmates during their first few weeks at work. Male workmates would send the new boy off on useless errands as they laughed at their gullibility. The new bobbin boys would be sent to collect a glass hammer or a round nut from the mechanics in the maintenance department. The women in the weaving shed, however, were less generous in their baptism ritual with the new lad, and the first time a new boy walked through the weaving shed, they would be pulled to the ground by a dozen frustrated female workers and stripped naked as they attempted to wriggle free from the women’s clutches. As the new mill boys were being ravaged and stripped, a few of the bolder female weavers would pull their ‘todger’ to test their reaction. I asked afterward why the women engaged in this sexual assault on new boys. The answer I got back was to estimate what they could expect if they ever went with you a few years down the line? After the new boy had undergone their weaver’s shed baptism, the women’s main topic of conversation for the rest of that day would involve the size of the new boy’s budding manhood.
Each year, the mill would have a day trip to Blackpool. These trips were ideal opportunities for young lads to have their first pint of beer ensconced in the corner of a Blackpool pub, and depending upon how good-looking the young men were, there was also the opportunity to sit with an older female on the bus journey home. Let me say, that for the purpose of the Blackpool Mill trip, no married woman ever alighted the bus when it arrived in Blackpool, wearing her wedding ring (which conveniently found a temporary resting place in the female’s purse). As for telling tales about the Blackpool exploits of any passenger that day, the golden rule was one of selective silence and total discretion. While mill workers who were passengers on the day trip to Blackpool would naturally speak among themselves about ‘goings on’ that day, any news of whatever happened on the day trip never reached the ears of mill workers who had not gone on the coach outing. All day-trippers understood, ‘what happens on the annual Blackpool trip stays in Blackpool!’ Mill workers who did not observe that rule would not be allowed on any future seaside outings and would be shunned by their workmates.
On the way back home from Blackpool, all bus passengers would be merry, to say the least. The coach journey would take around three hours, and the driver would turn off all the inner lights after he'd stopped the coach at the first watering hole. This stopping point usually came in the form of a grass verge that both males and females shared in the dark of night. Some males and females would bring a torch with them, and often quite a bit of flashing among giggles would be common.
At the time, I had a good voice, and I had won many singing contests since the age of 8 years. I would be pleased to sing for the coachload of mill passengers, given the additional perks. It usually enabled me to share a seat on the way home with a female who was older than me but younger than twenty-one. As most of the female mill workers were inebriated, my young age of 15/16 years would be ‘temporarily overlooked’ on the journey back home. Along with being serenaded, my female seat passenger might forgo any inhibitions she would normally have when sober about sitting next to a ‘toy boy’. Over the remaining journey home in the unlit coach, because of the darkness, nobody knew above speculation what was taking place in the seats in front, behind, or to the side of them. I will never forget one of three Blackpool mill trips I went on when my female seat passenger on the way home started interacting with me as though I was two or three years older than I was!
As previously stated, what happened on the Blackpool day out, stayed on the Lancashire side of the border where it happened! Almost everyone on the Blackpool trip had a vested interest in keeping all the events of the day away from the ears and prying attention of the other Yorkshire mill workers, especially the married women who removed their wedding rings for the day, to replace on their fingers as they arrived home. It was often rumoured that their wedding rings were not the only items they might have removed from their person that day as they had fun and games down at the Pleasure Beach, or strolled beneath the pier on the sands, or socialised with day-trippers from other parts of the country in the pubs and Working Men Clubs during the evening! To have news of their day’s activities in the Lancashire seaside town reach the ears of their family and friends back home in Yorkshire would undoubtedly start another ‘War of the Roses’ within many married households.
I would have to acknowledge that there might be a number of blushed faces the next time some male who had been on the Blackpool mill trip went through the weaver’s shed. They were liable to be joked about as one female yelled out to another workmate “Is it worth us giving him another baptism yet, Mary to see how he’s coming on?”. This private joke between several female passengers of the Blackpool trip who worked in the weaving might cause a bit of speculative gossip between the rest of the weavers during their rest period, but it was harmless fun of the times I grew up in.
I will end today’s post by saying that once I experienced the additional benefits that being able to sing could get me during the return journey home from our Blackpool day out, I was determined to retain my singing voice under all circumstances. In fact, had I been unable to sing for toffee, the sheer attractiveness of many young women weavers, would have been a sufficient inducement for me to instantly take up singing lessons! You must bear in mind that I was still an impressionable 15/16-year-old boy with virgin credentials who was on the threshold of adult discovery. What a wonderful stage in my life this time was.
I know that many people knock the seaside town of Blackpool today as being a sandless wasteland which is now scattered with once splendid sea-front hotels that the new homeless claimants on DHSS housing benefit now occupy in their thousands. But it was not always so, and I was fortunate to know a much different Blackpool than the Blackpool that exists today. The Blackpool of my youth was an overcrowded, busy, and bustling seaside town, filled with floating music in the salty sea air, the calciferous sound of busy slot machines operating, visitors with buried faces in pink fluffy candy floss on a stick, and the permanent aroma of fish and chips being sold somewhere nearby.
This was an exciting Blackpool that I knew in its hay day of the late 1950s, when, as a 16-year-old mill worker on a day trip I enjoyed my first pint of Lancashire beer, and had my first real snog which instead of ending in a sloppy kiss went on to a much wider experience; something far more exciting. For a 16-year-old lad on the ride home at the end of the day, nestled alongside an older woman who was determined that I’d have a journey home that I’d never forget, life did not come any more exciting!
Love and peace
Bill xxx
