I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Stephen Bleunven and his partner, Michael, and Steven Spencer from Stalybridge, along with all my gay friends on Facebook who may or may not have declared their status.
Today’s song is ‘The Wayward Wind’. This is a country song written by Stanley Lebowsky (music) and Herb Newman (lyrics).
In 1956, versions were recorded by Gogi Grant, Tex Ritter and Jimmy Young, of which Grant's was the biggest seller in the United States and Ritters in the United Kingdom. The song reached Number 1 on the ‘Cash Box Chart’, which combined all recorded versions, while the Gogi Grant version reached Number 1 on the Billboard chart on its own. Billboard ranked it as the Number 5 song for 1956. It became a Gold Record.
In 1961, Grant's recording was reissued and reached Number 50 on Billboard and Number 78 on the ‘Cash Box Chart’. That same year, Patsy Cline made a recording, which did not chart. In 1963, a new recording was made by Frank Highfield which reached Number 1 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. The song made the ’Billboard Country Chart’ in the 1980s in a version by Sylvia, with accompaniment by James Galway. Members of the ‘Western Writers of America chose the song as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
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This song takes me back to my early teenage years. I was aged 13 years when I heard it on the wireless (the radio for you youngsters under 60 years of age). I loved the song instantly because the story tells of ‘a man who yearned to wander and who was born the next of kin to the wayward wind’. There is a time in the life of a young man when the wanderlust is prone to bite, and I started to get itchy feet after the age of 19 years.
In the generation before I was born, working-class men and women could be anticipated to be born and die within a ten-mile radius. In all probability, they’d be Christened, married and buried within the same church: they’d never travel beyond their county shire, and would marry a partner from the same village, and with whom they were schooled and even played their first street games.
From the 1960s onwards, something happened which seemed to tell the youth of the day that ‘they need not settle for what their parents once settled for’. A new age had dawned in which young men no longer wanted to dress in the fashion of their fathers (older men) as they once aspired to. The age of the ‘teenager’ had arrived. Young adults wanted to establish their own identities which were emphasised by their own distinctive dress sense, hair-cut styles and preferences of dance and music.
Television was becoming more popular, and corners of the world that had never previously been seen outside the homes of the upper-class or magazine illustrations were being brought into the living rooms of working-class homes. The British television documentary ‘Whicker’s World’ was a series that ran between 1958-94. Alan Whicker informed British society of the many changes taking place around the world; the mushrooming of hippy communes, the ways of the natives in Borneo forests at the other side of the world, a world of mass ‘ban the bomb’ protest and free love witnessed on the streets of San Francisco as hippies handed out flowers to passers-by between smoking a joint or riding a motorcycle down the free-way at 100 mph. Holiday travel shows started to appear on our television screens and the upshot was that this big wide world of ours didn’t seem as restrictive as it once did or beyond one’s imagination to travel.
In an age when young men approaching their twentieth year would have one time got married and settled down to start a family, joined the army or found some other way to push the boat out, I decide that I wanted a piece of this worldly action, so I decided to live abroad for a couple of years and to experience a different lifestyle and culture. Because of the amount of compensation I received from a traffic accident as an 11-year-old boy, this intention of mine became possible.
During the early 1960s, Great Britain was rife with racism and what was then defined as ‘colour prejudice’. I was disheartened, verging on sickened, that different cultures couldn’t get on with each other better, so, I emigrated to Canada. Ironically, the new country I’d chosen to explore and live in, along with the rest of the American continent I experienced was much more racist against people of black skin than was the country I had left! The main difference between America and Great Britain was that the white Americans rarely tried to hide their dislike for their black citizens whereas the more socially upper-class British person would tend to be more subtle and covert in their discriminatory practices against black and brown-skinned people.
I will never regret travelling around Canada extensively and seeing parts of the U.S.A. between the ages of 21-23 years that made those couple of years wonderful. Neither do I regret falling in love with the regularity of a Texan putting on and taking off his Stetson. I met so many interesting people who left a lasting impression on me, apart from learning a few important things about my own character in the strengths and faults department.
By the time I’d got rid of my wandering lust and returned to England, I was ready for settling down and starting a family of my own. In terms of needing to travel and see new places, one could say that my wanderlust had faded and I became ready to plant and cultivate my own garden instead of admiring and eating from the gardens of others.
I dedicate today's song to all my gay friends and in particular, Stephen Bleunven and his partner, Michael, and Steven Spencer from Stalybridge. Thank you all for being my Facebook friend. Bill x
Love and peace Bill xxx
Today’s song is ‘The Wayward Wind’. This is a country song written by Stanley Lebowsky (music) and Herb Newman (lyrics).
In 1956, versions were recorded by Gogi Grant, Tex Ritter and Jimmy Young, of which Grant's was the biggest seller in the United States and Ritters in the United Kingdom. The song reached Number 1 on the ‘Cash Box Chart’, which combined all recorded versions, while the Gogi Grant version reached Number 1 on the Billboard chart on its own. Billboard ranked it as the Number 5 song for 1956. It became a Gold Record.
In 1961, Grant's recording was reissued and reached Number 50 on Billboard and Number 78 on the ‘Cash Box Chart’. That same year, Patsy Cline made a recording, which did not chart. In 1963, a new recording was made by Frank Highfield which reached Number 1 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. The song made the ’Billboard Country Chart’ in the 1980s in a version by Sylvia, with accompaniment by James Galway. Members of the ‘Western Writers of America chose the song as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This song takes me back to my early teenage years. I was aged 13 years when I heard it on the wireless (the radio for you youngsters under 60 years of age). I loved the song instantly because the story tells of ‘a man who yearned to wander and who was born the next of kin to the wayward wind’. There is a time in the life of a young man when the wanderlust is prone to bite, and I started to get itchy feet after the age of 19 years.
In the generation before I was born, working-class men and women could be anticipated to be born and die within a ten-mile radius. In all probability, they’d be Christened, married and buried within the same church: they’d never travel beyond their county shire, and would marry a partner from the same village, and with whom they were schooled and even played their first street games.
From the 1960s onwards, something happened which seemed to tell the youth of the day that ‘they need not settle for what their parents once settled for’. A new age had dawned in which young men no longer wanted to dress in the fashion of their fathers (older men) as they once aspired to. The age of the ‘teenager’ had arrived. Young adults wanted to establish their own identities which were emphasised by their own distinctive dress sense, hair-cut styles and preferences of dance and music.
Television was becoming more popular, and corners of the world that had never previously been seen outside the homes of the upper-class or magazine illustrations were being brought into the living rooms of working-class homes. The British television documentary ‘Whicker’s World’ was a series that ran between 1958-94. Alan Whicker informed British society of the many changes taking place around the world; the mushrooming of hippy communes, the ways of the natives in Borneo forests at the other side of the world, a world of mass ‘ban the bomb’ protest and free love witnessed on the streets of San Francisco as hippies handed out flowers to passers-by between smoking a joint or riding a motorcycle down the free-way at 100 mph. Holiday travel shows started to appear on our television screens and the upshot was that this big wide world of ours didn’t seem as restrictive as it once did or beyond one’s imagination to travel.
In an age when young men approaching their twentieth year would have one time got married and settled down to start a family, joined the army or found some other way to push the boat out, I decide that I wanted a piece of this worldly action, so I decided to live abroad for a couple of years and to experience a different lifestyle and culture. Because of the amount of compensation I received from a traffic accident as an 11-year-old boy, this intention of mine became possible.
During the early 1960s, Great Britain was rife with racism and what was then defined as ‘colour prejudice’. I was disheartened, verging on sickened, that different cultures couldn’t get on with each other better, so, I emigrated to Canada. Ironically, the new country I’d chosen to explore and live in, along with the rest of the American continent I experienced was much more racist against people of black skin than was the country I had left! The main difference between America and Great Britain was that the white Americans rarely tried to hide their dislike for their black citizens whereas the more socially upper-class British person would tend to be more subtle and covert in their discriminatory practices against black and brown-skinned people.
I will never regret travelling around Canada extensively and seeing parts of the U.S.A. between the ages of 21-23 years that made those couple of years wonderful. Neither do I regret falling in love with the regularity of a Texan putting on and taking off his Stetson. I met so many interesting people who left a lasting impression on me, apart from learning a few important things about my own character in the strengths and faults department.
By the time I’d got rid of my wandering lust and returned to England, I was ready for settling down and starting a family of my own. In terms of needing to travel and see new places, one could say that my wanderlust had faded and I became ready to plant and cultivate my own garden instead of admiring and eating from the gardens of others.
I dedicate today's song to all my gay friends and in particular, Stephen Bleunven and his partner, Michael, and Steven Spencer from Stalybridge. Thank you all for being my Facebook friend. Bill x
Love and peace Bill xxx
