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I have just been browsing on YouTube and listening to songs from my youth. It was a period when several forms of music were evolving and the songs brought back many memories. It was interesting, amusing and a little sad also to read the comments of those who remembered them and how those songs sent them back in time too. I am sure that Mr Cohen would have his own particular favourites from that period. One that I enjoyed was 'Duke of Earl' by Gene Chandler. It was a big hit in the USA in 1962 but never really made it in the UK. I hope that listening to it here might evoke some reminiscences for those LC fans of a certain vintage. You might even care to add a few songs which recall that period and its experiences for you.

'Duke of Earl' Gene Chandler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Uht69h8Is

Hi Tony,

Thanks for this. Heard "Duke of Earl" the other day on an "oldies" radio show and thought of posting
a link to it here for the very reason you did. I'm very familiar with the song and many others
of its genre. I was a kid with a transistor radio at the time doo wop, R & B, and harmony
groups were still much in vogue, though they'd soon be largely replaced on the radio by "British
invasion" groups and American bands that were to become classic rock and rollers. That transistor
radio meant a lot to me. Here's a reminiscence: I was about seven or eight years old and familiar
with 50's and early 60's records, thanks to that transistor radio (slept with it, walked with it, etc.).
This, of course, was pre-video and much TV coverage of the records I was hearing in the broadcast
market that I lived in. I was too young to be aware of the phenomenon where speaking accents
often diminish or disappear when people sing. As a white kid, I imagined that the singers of many
of my favorite records were white. On records, the black acts didn't sound the way that most
of the black people I'd met or heard talked (the result of population moves from the South to
the North, etc.). I sure was surprised to see photos of many of the acts on the walls of a neighborhood
pizza place. All those pictured were black. Again, didn't know of the phenomenon and attributed
what I took of be an incongruity as some kind of attempt to make groups sound "white." Record
companies, of course, did capitalize on using white artists to cross over to mainstream white
audiences some music that had been known as "race music," a euphemism for music that had
much appeal in black communities. That's another story altogether. I was just a kid with a transistor
radio enjoying the music.

Hello Steven. Thank you for your comments. It was a different age then, wasn't it? The transistor radio reigned supreme. It was coincidental that you mentioned that you were thinking of posting a link to 'Duke of Earl.' In a similar coincidence only last week I was sorting through the debris that life leaves in our lofts and I found my old transistor radio from the sixties! It is still in pretty good condition and I was tempted to try to get a battery for it and to see how it sounded. It is a pity that these old radios are not time machines that can take a person back to the time when all those songs were playing and we knew every word! I remember seeing the film 'American Graffiti' and feeling that it encapsulated that period in so many ways. Even that was released longer ago than I care to remember!

As for songs here is another one which again never made it in the UK but which I still have in my collection of old 45s (and some 78s!) in the same attic as the transistor radio! It is by the Beau Brummels from 1965.

Don't Talk To Strangers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJwiysp47bU.

Since it's John Leyton's 80th birthday, I'll add a song of his that I've liked for 54 years (I was 10 when it was released). I finally got to see him play live and meet him last year, and he totally lived-up to my expectations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqtS1K-jlmQ

I never got to see him live, John. He was one of a number of early sixties singers who got caught up in the arrival of the Mersey sound and who never recovered. I actually have that song on a 45 together with 'Wild Wind.' It is good to know he is still around. I remember him being a heartthrob for the females with his good looks. He was in a number of films too, including 'The Great Escape,' wasn't he?