Gorman Sisters - Jesus Is My Santa Claus.

 

Released November1957

The Gorman Sisters - Jesus Is My Santa Claus

The Little Sisters - Are My Ears On Straight

 

Relesed 1959, the first of three releases by The Little Sisters, only their third single ' Goin' To Boston' had a UK release. 

 I do not have a copy of the 1964 Jennie Bradley Australian release.

The Little Sisters - Are My Ears On Straight (1959)

Gayla Peevey - Are My Ears On Straight

 

This was also recorded by 'The Little Sisters' in 1959, and an Australian Relase by 'Jenie Bradley' in 1964.

Are My Ears On Straight

Gayla Peevey - I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas

Issued in 1953, in the UK this record was issued on the Phillips Label as a 78 the Phillips Label at that time were not producing 45's in the UK.

Gayla Peevey - I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (Hippo the Hero) (Audio)

Doris Slater Martin - I Got The Chicken Pox For Christmas

 

First released in 1957, the record was also available as a 78rpm disc, I have it on a 45, the record is part of an activity pack, with actions for children to do during the song, a lot of the records have become separated from the activity packs, when I first posted this record it was still available to buy.

The only recording I could find is taken from a 78.

Doris Stalter Martin - I Got the Chicken Pox for Christmas

Mike Mercado - Brussel Sprouts

 

Sorry this record or any of Mike Mercado's records are posted on YouTube.

Each time I posted a Mike Mercado record I got a number of comments from former pupils of the schools he had taught in as Brother Solomon later as Mike Mercado, saying his subjects were Discipline and Music in that order, he left the order in 1966 and became Mike Mercado, there were hints of other things being carried out.

It seems the hints that something untoward was happening were true, 

Teacher accused of historic sex assault received pay-out worth £58k today | East Anglian Daily Times

Vagarants

Working in the Holborn/Covent Garden/Leicester Square/ Shaftesbury Avenue area of London vagrants were always a problem, we had to get the rear of certain buildings power washed every week,to remove the detritus, it was discovered that one of the Building Inspectors could not read or write, he had been employed as an Engineering Cleaner, when that grade was abolished the was made a Building Inspector, nobody knew of his iliteracy, he was put to use as a yard cleaner, one day I had given him a new box of black rubbish bags in the early afternoon I got a call from him he needed some more the area had been knee deep in empty Tennant's Extra (Tramps Treacle) & Carlsberg Special Brew cans, another time he went to the building to clean it up, he call back I can't go down there they have some of the female vagrants down there and they are all naked and taking it in turns to have sex with them.

When you had female vagrant you always had a lot more problems, one morning there were two vagrants sitting on a building entrance doorstep, a male and a female one, they had 5 cans of strong larger he had drank 2 and picked up the extra can opened it and started drinking it, she then started it was her money that brought the beer and she should have the extra one, the next minute they have come to blows.

One time were were watching the delivery to one of the local shops/off licence that the vagrants used, most of the beer came in as a couple of cases, when it came to the Tennant's Extra (Tramps Treacle) this came in by the pallet load, there was a campaign by the local authority's to try and stop the sale of the strong beers to discourage the vagrants.

The adverts on the escalators at angel station had one that said 99% or all money given to beggars goes straight to Drug Dealers, while waiting for the power washing with the council official we watched one of the vagrants shoot up twice in under half an hour. A number of buildings were fitted with Unicam or Other Digital locks it was not surprising that many of them were left on the default factory settings, another thing the vagrants used to do with these locks was put their needles in the buttons and break then off so when you pressed the buttons the needle would go in your finger under the nail.

Willie Rainford - There'll Be Rain, Dear This Christmas

 

Released 1972, I have no details about this record, Willie Rainford had another record released in 1977.

A few years ago when I was buying some records from my record dealer, he had a copy of this record I almost turned it down as I had just acquired a copy, something made me change my mind and  I brought the record, when I got the record home and compared it to the copy I already had it was the same label , same song but a different artist, I can not remember where which copy came from, the Willie Rainford release has 'There'll Be Rain, Dear This Christmas' as the 'A' side and 'Christmas Shoes' as the 'B' side and has the catalogue number as C 1035.

George Elliott released the same 2 tracks on the same label as catalogue No.         C-1036 with Christmas Shoes' as the 'A' side and 'There'll Be Rain, Dear This Christmas' as the 'B' side, there is a different musical director for both records.

In the early days of the blog I posted 3 different versions of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' all of them had the same track on the 'B' side.

The George Elliot version has not been posted on You Tube.

 

Willie Rainsford - There'll Be Rain, Dear This Christmas

Three Blonde Mice - Ringo Bells

Released November 1964, the First of two singles from this group, the 'A' side 'The Twelve Days Of Christmas' is not on You Tube, while checking my storage I have both sided of their second single from May 1965 so I probably have a copy of that single, when I was buying lots of Christmas records I would get many I had never heard before.

 Three Blonde Mice - Ringo Bells - YouTube

Bob Rivers - Little Hooters Girl

Bob Rivers sadly passed away earlier this year, I first came across a CD of his when I was in the HMV store in London, I had a long service award and took it as HMV vouchers, I had a couple of pounds remaining, I saw a Bob Rivers Christmas CD at £1 so I brought that and another cheap CD, I went on to acquire most of the Bob Rivers CD's.

The Little Hooters Girl - YouTube

Elvis Appreciation

I live just outside London in West Ewell, though we have London telephone numbers, near Epsom Hospital there is a road with a similar name, this would not normally be a problem however the person who lived at the same number as me ran an Elvis Appreciation Society, I'm not sure what happened whether he moved house, gave up or died, people were getting no response from the person we started getting people turning up at our house asking about the Elvis Society, we had to explain that it was based in Sunnyside Road in Epsom, this was some time before I started the blog. When packages and parcels fail to arrive I often wonder if the Post Office have delivered them to that address.

Our land line telephone number was one digit different from one of the local Old Peoples Homes, one person always seemed to dial the wrong number, he would then tell us off for answering the homes number, not that he had dialled the wrong number, we have had caller number identification since the late 80's, when he called we just ignored the call.

I lived in Greenford before we moved to West Ewell, in the 1980's the Model Engineering Exhibition and  A Major Model Railway Exhibition were held in the Wembley Conference Center, great for us a short bus ride and we were there,  I was at the Model Railway Exhibition and the way it had been set up you had to go through the entrance area to get between the two areas the show was located in, the reception area also had the Ticket Office where you could buy tickets for future events, as I was going between the two halves was packed with people dressed as 'Cowboys', I'm looking at my ticket and program was there a discount if you dressed as a cowboy, no there was a Country & Western Festival in the future, the tickets went on sale that day, they had all dressed up to go any buy their tickets.

Weavers Green - That's How Christmas Began

I found my copy of  this 1967 release from one of the Hook Road Arena Boot Sales some time ago. the 'A' side 'I Saw Santa Sitting On A See-Saw', is not on You Tube, but the'B' side is., I do not recall ever hearing this record until I transfered it to MP3 format.

 Weavers Green - That's How Christmas Began (1967) MGM - YouTube

Windows and Murder

 

One of the buildings we dealt with was in Shaftesbury Avenue, in one corner of the building had some Social Housing incorporated, we had nothing to do with the housing, it overlooked one of the flat roofs, the roof was the responsibility of the Landlord, one of the families living their regarded the roof as their own personal rubbish dump tins bottles and general refuse was thrown on to the roof, in their wisdom the senior management had decided not to renew the window cleaning contract, we had a job issued that there was human excrement on the windows, the little sh1ts that lived there had taken their excrement wrapped it in toilet paper and thrown it against the windows, as a workaround to remove the excrement we used the fire hoses to blast the stuff off, on another front actions were started to evict the family.

A couple of weeks later a child was murdered in the Seven Dials area (part of Covent Garden), it turned out the little sh1t worked as a Rent Boy and he had been murdered by one of his customers, there was a memorial set up for him, reading the letters form his classmates 'he was such a wonderful person', are we talking about the same little sh1t, the family dissapeared, the Landlords cleaners cleared the rubbish from the roof, we had no problems from that area again.

Be careful what you wish for sometimes wishes do come true.

Paddy Roberts - Merry Christmas You Suckers

 

Released 30th November 1962, the last single by Paddy Roberts, and a bit prophetic as Christmas seemed to start earlier each year in the UK it is was not hemmed in by Thanksgiving, the start of Christmas was when Father Christmas arrived at Bentalls in Kingston usually late October, we would be taken to see him mid December, my mothers thinking was if the Christmas decorations have to come down on twelfth night they go up twelve days before Christmas, some shops were selling Christmas cards in June, another indication the Christmas was approaching was the advert for Timex watches on television, on Christmas Day the adverts extolling you to but this or that ended and changed to ones to book your Summer Holidays, though these start well before Christmas now.

PADDY ROBERTS - 'Merry Christmas You suckers' - 1962 45rpm - YouTube

Kempton Park Toy Fair

Yesterday I went to the Toy-fair at Kempton Park, it was very busy possibly due to the date being close to Christmas, the Toy-fairs tend to be either model car oriented where there are more people selling model cars or ones where Model Trains are in the ascendance, yesterday's was one where model car's were more prominent, the queue to get in was the longest I had ever see it, one of the things I do is buy the old Triang mineral wagons and replace the chassis with a Bachmann one from either the China Clay wagon or the Salt wagon, they both use the same underframe, there were plenty of the triang mineral wagons there, most were priced at £5 or more and by the time you have acquired the Bachmann wagon the cheapest I have found was £4 but prices normally start at £7.50, I decided it was project not viable at present, I had spent most of my money and was having a last look around before I left, I noticed a bov under one of the stalls that I had missed on my initial walk round, the box contained a large number of Bachmann 16ton Mineral wagons all with coal loads, unboxed at £6.50, I ended up buying 16 perhaps I should have brought the lot, I rejected the odd ones that were damaged, mainly missing brake parts and some were from a later period than I model, one stall had a box of pigs they were a bit large for most scales. 

 

Mona Aboud - I should Have Left The Light On For Santa Claus

The 'B' side of this 1980 release, this record was issued on 2 different labels.

 I Should Have Left the Light On for Santa

Meeting Rooms & St. Giles

 For my sins I once worked in Building Facilities, it was not a job I enjoyed, meeting rooms were a particular bain, one woman called us and said I have booked Meeting Room 7 (it was a small meeting room for 6 people) I need 40 exrea chairs, I told her that we did not have any extra chairs and that you could not fit them in the room, I was told I was being very unhelpful according to her, another time someone stormed into the office and shouted at us you should have better signage on your meeting room doors I can not find room X, without looking up I said thats in such and such building about a mile down the road.

One day we got an 'A' job it had a four hour deadline, the job was there are naked  vagarants dancing in the car park, so we went to the building, there was no sign of the vagarants, the Building St Giles House shared certain parts with the Hotel next door, when cleating bottles of wine the bottles were just dumped in the recycling bim, they were not emptied some bottles still had some of the contents in them, the vagarants had diccoverd this, and had forced the bin open and had been drinking the dregs in the bottles, by the time we got there the offenders had dispersed, there was little we could have done if they were still there. The ironic thing St Giles is the patron saint of homeless people.

Mona Aboud - The Pretty Little Dolly

 

Released 1980. This is another record I first came across on a compilation CD of forgotten Christmas songs, I was looking at the new listings on a site I brought quite a few records from, this was listed so I brought it as one of the 50-100 christmas records I was buying each year back then, I no longer buy large numbers of Christmas records from America as the postage deals changed and it became unviable to buy records, the postage went fron1st record full postage then $1 for each subsiquent record, the revised was $17.50 for each record, the Customs declaration form only has 5 lines and I discoverd by accident thet if you brought 5 cheap records ($4-$6) as the first 5, the records were listed in the order you brought them on the Customs form, the avarage for the first 5 records was about $25, Customs duty started at $30, from memory the Custins duty worked out at about £30 of which £24 was the collection fee.

The Pretty Little Dolly - The Tonight Show - Mona Abboud Auer & Jim Rusk [1966] - YouTube

More Fun On The Trains

 I was almost always the last person the leave the office in the evening, I would walk from Blackfriars to Waterloo and catch the train at about 17.25, all the incoming passengers had left the train, there was one person left he was asleep the way he was dressed spoke vagarant, we had from one of the beggers that worked the commuter services from Waterloo, the scnario was "I have been on the phone for most of the day and I have found a place at a hostel from Thursday (always in three days time) until then I will still need to eat, I only want a small meal" but I digress, with the usual British reserve nobody woke him up, one of the station staff at Vauxhall woke him up, and he started, he was on his way to work, he had a job unlike you lot who don't have jobs, he did not stop shouting, at Clapham Junction when the doors opend their were two British Transport Police waiting for him, he was escorted from the train still shouting, maybe he was already known to the staff and police, most of the people on the train were returning home from work.

Anothger time a couple of vagrants got on the train, as the train left Waterloo they produced a bottle of wine I think they had stolen from the Off Licence on Waterloo Station, they excitedly peeled of the foil cap then their faced dropped the bottle had a cork and they did not have a bottle opener, that made me think they had stolen the bottle if they had brought it they could have got a bottle with a screw top.

Granny - Granny's Holiday Fruitcake

 

Released 1963, Granny is Jerry Thomas, in  Stan Freberg's record  'The Old Payola Roll Blues' the record label mentiond is the Obscurity label, this ia another record I first came across on a CD of forgotten Christmas records.

Granny - Granny's Holiday Fruitcake - 1963