My song today is ‘Tammy’. This song has music written by Jay Livingston and lyrics by Ray Evans. It was published in 1957 and made its debut in the film ‘Tammy and the Bachelor’. It was nominated for the 1957 Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’. ‘Tammy’ is heard in the film in two versions. The one that became a Number one hit single for Debbie Reynolds in 1957 is heard midway through the film and was a UK Number 2 hit single in the same year. The version that used for the film's main titles was a hit for the Ames Brothers. There have also been several other cover versions of the song. It first reached the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ charts on July 22, 1957, and peaked at Number 1 on all the US charts: the ‘Disk Jockey Chart’, the ‘Best Seller Chart’, and the composite chart of the top 100 songs. The single ‘Tammy’ earned Debbie Reynolds a gold record.
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I was 15 years old when this song came out and had just commenced work in a Cleckheaton mill. I remember seeing the film with a young girl who worked in the winding compartment. I cannot recall her name, but she was 16 years old and still learning to wind. She was a nice lass with long, black hair but she talked and talked throughout the film, in between the occasional snog on the back seat of the cinema.
I remember that we both loved our mothers but she idolised hers and couldn’t stop talking about all the sacrifices that her mother had made for herself and younger brother since her father had been made to retire in his early forties, due to having incurred an industrial accident which had rendered his left arm virtual immobile of all movement.
While I cannot remember the young girl’s name, I remember after the film when she continued to talk and talk about her mum, I teased her by calling her mother ‘Tammy’s Mammy’ in a bit of fun. I always remember this occasion and the girl from the winding shed who knew how to wind me up talking about her mum. I smile wryly when I think of the experience today, as I am as guilty about talking about my mother’s influence in my life as was my young female film companion from the winding department way back in 1957.
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Our mother is the one person who is guaranteed to have been there at the very start of our journey through life, and for most of us, she will have been there for us from childhood to adulthood. Therefore, it’s only natural that she should remain a guiding influence throughout our lives and hold a significant presence in it. Even after her passing from this side of the green sod to the other, memories of our mothers, her quirks, her faults, and her failings, her sayings and her presence in our lives will leave an indelible mark on us. In fact, a mother’s love and influence is beyond any price and can never be matched in worth.
After I had a life-threatening accident at the age of 11 years when a damaged spine (caused by a wagon which ran over me and twisted my body around the drive shaft) led the hospital doctors to tell me that I’d never walk again, my mother said that I would, and I did! Let’s face it, folks, mothers can never do enough for their children. As my mother’s firstborn of seven children, there was rarely one thing that my mother wouldn’t do for me. Indeed, (forgive the pun) but as the mother of a small boy, it could be said that ‘She would work from ‘son up until son down’ on my behalf. She was even prepared to lie for me to the law if it got me out of a jam I was in.
I recall once trespassing on a carpet company’s roof in Heckmondwike one evening with a friend. We didn’t intend to rob the mill or do any damage; we were merely up to schoolboy pranks. Someone saw us on the roof and called the police. I was aged 9-years-old at the time and a tearaway in the making who was always getting into trouble of one sort or another. Within ten minutes, we were being chased across the mill roof by a burly policeman. The upshot was when me and my mate jumped down a ten-feet drop to another roof level, our youth prevented us breaking a leg upon landing, but alas, the policeman wasn’t as lucky. He fractured his leg and his weight nearly caused him to crash through the roof that he’d landed on.
I don’t know how he managed to identify me in the shadows of the darkening evening hours, but half an hour after I’d arrived home (3 miles away), another policeman knocked on our door. I guess the local police were just doing house-to-house inquiries of young rascals as they ran through their list of the ‘most likely suspects’. As fate would have it, when my mother opened the door and saw the policeman, she knew that her oldest boy had been in bother again. As soon as the policeman spoke asked, “Is your son, Billy at home?” mum immediately jumped in and provided me with a cast-iron alibi. Mum said to the Bobby (policeman), “I don’t know what you think our Billy’s done, but whatever it is, he hasn’t! He’s been in the house since 4:40pm when he came home from school and has never left my sight, so find somebody else to blame!”
I was so relieved as I stood innocent-faced within my mother’s ‘protection zone’ that it had been mum who’d answered the door and not my strict father. Dad had little time for my criminal behaviour and had he been the one to have opened the door (instead of being in the bath at the time), the outcome of the policeman’s inquiry would have been much different.
Dad would have opened the door, and upon hearing the policeman ask, “Is your son, Billy at home?” dad would have instantly assumed my guilt and said, “I don’t know what he’s done this time, Officer, but whatever it is, lock him up in the police cells for the night. That will teach him a lesson to leave other folk's stuff alone!”
Such was the radical difference in response between my loving father and mother!
Love and peace Bill xxx