I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Rita Brooke from Leeds in West Yorkshire and Pauline Power from Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland, whose birthday it is.
Today’s song is ‘Reete Petite (The Sweetest Girl in Town)’. This was a song made popular by Jackie Wilson. It was his first solo hit after leaving the Dominoes and, over the years, has become one of his biggest international chart successes.
The song was written by Berry Gordy, Gwen Gordy Fuqua, and Wilson's cousin Roquel ‘Billy’ Davis (though credited under his pseudonym Tyran Carlo on the record). It was produced by Dick Jacobs, and its title was taken from the Louis Jordan’s song ‘Reet, Petite and Gone’. It was Jackie Wilson's first recording as a solo artist. The song peaked at Number 62 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ in September 1957 and reached Number 6 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. With the success of the song, Gordy was able to fund the launch of ‘Motown Records’.
The song was reissued in 1986 following the showing of a clay animation video on the BBC Two documentary series, ‘Arena’. The video was directed by Giblets, a London-based animation studio. The reissued version proved so popular that in December 1986, almost three years after Wilson's death, the song became a Number 1 in the UK for four weeks (selling over 700,000 copies), some 29 years after its chart debut.
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‘Reete Petite’ was a song that was released a few months before my fifteenth birthday. I can remember feeling frustrated around that time as I wasn’t free nor fluent in dancing step with my leg movement. In fact, I was just finding my walking feet again following a lengthy period in the hospital followed by two years of exercise recuperation, of which swimming was highly recommended.
At the age of almost 12 years, I'd incurred a serious accident after a wagon ran over me and twisted the trunk of my body around its main drive shaft. The accident initially left me fighting for my life for a few months and by nine months in hospital, followed by being unable to walk for another two years, due to a spinal injury I’d incurred.
I was just learning to hobble about in an ungainly manner and a three-inch deficiency in my left leg had left me with a pronounced and unsightly limp. Over the following two years, I managed to disguise and diminish the depth of my limp by imagination and relaxation training exercises, along with engaging in anything that improved my body balance and foot agility. Over the next five years I engaged in every sport and physical activity imaginable for four nights a week plus Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons.
Sporting activities which improved my balance included Indian Dance, Table Tennis, Swimming, Court Tennis, Rugby, Boxing, Amateur Wrestling, Horse Riding, Judo, Running and Bopping (Rock and Rolling). I’d always loved all manner of dancing since nine years of age and once the rock and roll era arrived, I was eager to get my mobility back as well as I could so that I could do the splits and the rubber legs with the rest of the bopping crowd at the Town Hall Saturday nights and the other Rock and Roll dance halls all the lads from Windy Bank Estate regularly attended.
I was about seventeen years of age plus, before I could bop to ‘Reete Petite’ at a standard that gave me the reputation on the dance floor of being a good dancer instead of a crippled learner.
I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Rita Brooke from Leeds in West Yorkshire and Pauline Power from Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland, whose birthday it is. Rita lives in an old courting ground of my wild, teenage youth and Pauline lives in the Irish village where I was born.
I will not forget one Friday night when two of us lads from the Cleckheaton mill where we worked went to the old ‘City Varieties’ in Leeds. The finale of the show was always a stage of nude women who were stood perfectly still. They had tassels and bells on the nipples of their breasts so that the slightest movement would bring a ting-a-ling sound that was loud enough for the audience to hear. These were earlier days when the customary yell of the audience would not be one of, “Get ‘em off!” but instead, “Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling!”
Dear old Portlaw, the village where I was born in Ireland also had its own sinful places where teenagers and young lovers would go during warm summer days and dark winter nights whenever the haystacks and all the farmers barns between Waterford and Kilkenny would be occupied with would-be lovers. The most popular courting spot in Portlaw was up in the grasslands of the Curraghmore Estate where many a field of cows would be shooed away while lovers secreted themselves in the meadow grass where lots of flipping, flopping and flapping would take place.
I also recall being introduced to 'skinny dipping' in the river stream that ran through the estate lands at the age of 15 years by a young colleen who also had the name of ‘Power’ (Not Pauline Power of today’s dedication I might quickly add!). Downriver on the Curraghmore Estate was a whirlpool that has taken a number of lives of many less careful swimmers over the years.
It was also that afternoon of skinny dipping with a 16/17-year-old colleen from Portlaw when I was first introduced to the wry wit of the Irish colleen. As we were skinny dipping in the cool waters, she warned me, “Billy, whatever you do stay near me up here. Don’t go anywhere near that old whirlpool or it’ll be the death of you!”
I ask you? Did she really think me that dumb, having lived in England too long? Who in God’s name with an ounce of brain in his skull and too much testosterone below (which like a milking cow's udders would make the beast sore if not discharged fully) would be so crazy? What type of male lunatic would take themselves away from the presence of a 16-year-old colleen, fully formed, in the nude, skinny dipping in the streams of Curraghmore; and what for? Just to investigate downstream a mass of turbulent water, tossing and turning in vicious rotation and drawing all nearby objects into its deadly current? Not me, mate. I’m Irish, not foolish!
Here’s hoping you two lovely ladies have a marvellous birthday today. Thank you for being my Facebook friend.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Today’s song is ‘Reete Petite (The Sweetest Girl in Town)’. This was a song made popular by Jackie Wilson. It was his first solo hit after leaving the Dominoes and, over the years, has become one of his biggest international chart successes.
The song was written by Berry Gordy, Gwen Gordy Fuqua, and Wilson's cousin Roquel ‘Billy’ Davis (though credited under his pseudonym Tyran Carlo on the record). It was produced by Dick Jacobs, and its title was taken from the Louis Jordan’s song ‘Reet, Petite and Gone’. It was Jackie Wilson's first recording as a solo artist. The song peaked at Number 62 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ in September 1957 and reached Number 6 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’. With the success of the song, Gordy was able to fund the launch of ‘Motown Records’.
The song was reissued in 1986 following the showing of a clay animation video on the BBC Two documentary series, ‘Arena’. The video was directed by Giblets, a London-based animation studio. The reissued version proved so popular that in December 1986, almost three years after Wilson's death, the song became a Number 1 in the UK for four weeks (selling over 700,000 copies), some 29 years after its chart debut.
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‘Reete Petite’ was a song that was released a few months before my fifteenth birthday. I can remember feeling frustrated around that time as I wasn’t free nor fluent in dancing step with my leg movement. In fact, I was just finding my walking feet again following a lengthy period in the hospital followed by two years of exercise recuperation, of which swimming was highly recommended.
At the age of almost 12 years, I'd incurred a serious accident after a wagon ran over me and twisted the trunk of my body around its main drive shaft. The accident initially left me fighting for my life for a few months and by nine months in hospital, followed by being unable to walk for another two years, due to a spinal injury I’d incurred.
I was just learning to hobble about in an ungainly manner and a three-inch deficiency in my left leg had left me with a pronounced and unsightly limp. Over the following two years, I managed to disguise and diminish the depth of my limp by imagination and relaxation training exercises, along with engaging in anything that improved my body balance and foot agility. Over the next five years I engaged in every sport and physical activity imaginable for four nights a week plus Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons.
Sporting activities which improved my balance included Indian Dance, Table Tennis, Swimming, Court Tennis, Rugby, Boxing, Amateur Wrestling, Horse Riding, Judo, Running and Bopping (Rock and Rolling). I’d always loved all manner of dancing since nine years of age and once the rock and roll era arrived, I was eager to get my mobility back as well as I could so that I could do the splits and the rubber legs with the rest of the bopping crowd at the Town Hall Saturday nights and the other Rock and Roll dance halls all the lads from Windy Bank Estate regularly attended.
I was about seventeen years of age plus, before I could bop to ‘Reete Petite’ at a standard that gave me the reputation on the dance floor of being a good dancer instead of a crippled learner.
I dedicate my song today to my Facebook friends, Rita Brooke from Leeds in West Yorkshire and Pauline Power from Portlaw, County Waterford, Ireland, whose birthday it is. Rita lives in an old courting ground of my wild, teenage youth and Pauline lives in the Irish village where I was born.
I will not forget one Friday night when two of us lads from the Cleckheaton mill where we worked went to the old ‘City Varieties’ in Leeds. The finale of the show was always a stage of nude women who were stood perfectly still. They had tassels and bells on the nipples of their breasts so that the slightest movement would bring a ting-a-ling sound that was loud enough for the audience to hear. These were earlier days when the customary yell of the audience would not be one of, “Get ‘em off!” but instead, “Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling!”
Dear old Portlaw, the village where I was born in Ireland also had its own sinful places where teenagers and young lovers would go during warm summer days and dark winter nights whenever the haystacks and all the farmers barns between Waterford and Kilkenny would be occupied with would-be lovers. The most popular courting spot in Portlaw was up in the grasslands of the Curraghmore Estate where many a field of cows would be shooed away while lovers secreted themselves in the meadow grass where lots of flipping, flopping and flapping would take place.
I also recall being introduced to 'skinny dipping' in the river stream that ran through the estate lands at the age of 15 years by a young colleen who also had the name of ‘Power’ (Not Pauline Power of today’s dedication I might quickly add!). Downriver on the Curraghmore Estate was a whirlpool that has taken a number of lives of many less careful swimmers over the years.
It was also that afternoon of skinny dipping with a 16/17-year-old colleen from Portlaw when I was first introduced to the wry wit of the Irish colleen. As we were skinny dipping in the cool waters, she warned me, “Billy, whatever you do stay near me up here. Don’t go anywhere near that old whirlpool or it’ll be the death of you!”
I ask you? Did she really think me that dumb, having lived in England too long? Who in God’s name with an ounce of brain in his skull and too much testosterone below (which like a milking cow's udders would make the beast sore if not discharged fully) would be so crazy? What type of male lunatic would take themselves away from the presence of a 16-year-old colleen, fully formed, in the nude, skinny dipping in the streams of Curraghmore; and what for? Just to investigate downstream a mass of turbulent water, tossing and turning in vicious rotation and drawing all nearby objects into its deadly current? Not me, mate. I’m Irish, not foolish!
Here’s hoping you two lovely ladies have a marvellous birthday today. Thank you for being my Facebook friend.
Love and peace Bill xxx
