The sound of my childhood.

Victor Sylvester and the strong smell opf soap...mum always listened to him on a monday when she did the wash!

I remember singing 'Noisy little puffer train ' 'How would you like to go up in a swing' and 'I have a little shadow '!!! These and others were before ' The foggy foggy dew '!!!!

I remember buying Diana (Paul Anka) playing and playing it !! My parents were very amused by the first line, ' I'm so young, and you're so old!!!!' The language of love from a young man to his girl??!!!!

Reading all these posts about children's favourites makes me think that no one makes children's songs anymore do they? The only kiddy songs now are the title music to children's TV programs.

You are My Sunshine, as has just been mentioned. My parents used to sung in harmony, Dad played the guitar. We all sang along, using a "Black and White Minstrels' Song Book" that had been a pull out centre page from the Radio Times.
Alexander's Ragtime band
Swanee River
My darling Clementine

And that sort of thing.

Vera Lynn was an important morale booster for the troops in the war, but she really was a terrible singer. What one choirmaster I once knew would call a vacuum cleaner. Started way below the note and worked her way up to it. The 1940s equivalent of Mariah Carey's unnecessary warbling.

“Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of Summer” by Nat King Cole.
“George, don’t do that” Nursery school talking monologue spoken with the plummy tones of Joyce Grenfell.

My mum turned the radio up whenever “Honey”, Bobby Goldsboro played, and my dad’s favourite at the time was “Morning Town Ride” by The Seekers.

First record - Cara Mia by David Whitfield. I was such a square. Drove my granny daft playing it! Would hate to admit how many years it was between singing 'Mairsie' as a nonsense song and then discovering the actual words. How did that happen? Most of us were pretty articulate and yet....

Scarlet ribbons for your hair
Que sera sera whatever will be will be
Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding thro the glen.
Blue Danube music

Hands up how many of you had a piano in the sitting room?
It seemed that everyone used to have one, and there was always an uncle or two that could play while you all sang along.I watched a very funny Catherine Tate sketch a while ago with a Cockney family in the 1940’s all singing ‘let’s all go down the Strand, have a banana!’ ? Well, things weren’t all that different, except we weren’t a Cockney family and we sang songs like The Quartermaster’s Stores, Ivan Skavinsky Skavar and ten green bottles.

You are my Sunshine
My only Sunshine
You make me Happy when sky's are grey
You'll never know dear how much I love you
Please don't take my Sunshine away

I don’t know if anyone has said it but the aforementioned song is
Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy
A kid will eat ivy too
Wouldn’t you?
Or something like that

My earliest childhood memory was a musical one. I think I was around 4 yrs old and I loved the song There once was an ugly duckling. Was it Danny Kaye?

I used to run to the “wireless” when it came on and listen intently. The radio had a slatted grill on the front and I used to peer up through the slats and try to see inside the radio. I could see a light inside it but what I really expected to see was the duckling!

Beniamion Beniamino--

I was 61 last week Grandma70s

Goodness, some of you are young! Penny Lane transports you to your early childhood? I was 27 when that was written!

My first record purchase was Humphrey Lyttleton playing Bad Penny Blues. I liked a lot of trad jazz at the time, but it was a mixed bag really, and I recall most of the songs already mentioned. My tastes morphed into rock and heavy metal which I still enjoy, with Pink Floyd at bedtime for lullabies.

3 songs that instantly transport me back to my early childhood. Penny Lane - The Beatles. Georgy Girl and Morningtown Ride both by The Seekers. No idea why they evoke such strong memories/emotions. Lovely songs though.

Oh yes, I remember The Foggy foggy dew!! My uncle (15 years older than me) played the piano and he taught me this song along with Come you not from Newcastle, Waley Waley, Barbara Allen! and others mostly about illicit love, Illegitimate offspring and early death, much to his amusement, my Grandmothers horror and my mother, his sister's irritation!

GillT57

Oh yes MissA my heart used to drop when Sing Something Simple came on, it was Sunday evening and that meant the weekend was over.

Another heart dropped here when the dreary signature tune came on .....but after that came the top 20!

I remember my grandmother didn't like Doris Day [she's heard about actress's and their 'lifestyle']! so she would be very annoyed when 'Move Over Darling' was played.

What a great thread MrsEggy....we need cheering up at the moment, a few gleams of sunshine ( this is one) on a forum of gloom and doom.?

I used to listen to Two Way Family favourites whilst having the Sunday roast. Also enjoyed Children's Favourites...Nelly the Elephant, I'm a Pink Toothbrush, The Laughing Policeman etc.

My mother used to love musicals so I knew the songs from South Pacific, The King and I, Seven Brides for Seven brothers, Calamity Jane, Oklahoma! She also liked Edith Piaf.

I went on to listen to Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Joe Brown, Lonnie Donegan, Helen Shapiro, and I loved Eddie Cochran. Not so keen on Cliff Richard or Elvis.

Kathleen Ferrier and especially Blow the Wind Southerly. My mother always cried, which embarrassed me very much when I was 13 or so.

Peter Pears singing The Foggy Foggy Dew, which was considered rather shocking because it mentioned unmarried people going to bed together.

A lot of the songs mentioned by other posters, too. Hymns every day at school, so they were a big part of my life. I used to sing round the house all the time - my grandfather called me ‘the Upton nightingale’ ?

My uncle had a wind-up gramophone on which he would play songs by the great tenor, Beniamion Gigli and records of Scottish songs. On the other side of the country, my granny had a wind-up gramophone which seemed to play nothing but Teddy Bears' Picnic and Hush, hush, hush here comes the bogeyman.

Oh, my mum loved Cleo Laine (sp?)
Nobody else did.