Sgt Will Scuffham - And They All Came Marching Home

 

I remember hearing this record being played by Charlie Chester on is early morning Saturday show, I did not know (or remember the title or artist), I could recall some of the chorus, though I was not sure if it was correct, well I brought a batch of records for the blog this was amongst them, for the blog on a Sunday I would sort out the records I was going to post for the whole week, first I would clean them with record cleaner, then scan them, then play them and record the sound file in Magix then get rid of the clicks, pops and scratches etc, the last thing before saving was adding the scan to the mp3 file, I would prepare 9 records from mainstream full price labels, 1 EP and one budget label such as Embassy, Cannon etc. I would post 3 singles, a budget label and an EP on Sunday also the Budget label would appear on my Forgotten Vinyl blog, the other 6 records would be posted one a day Monday to Saturday, on one Sunday I had miscounted and was one record short, this was in the days of six cans of strong larger for £5 I would often have a few cans of beer while getting the posts for the blog ready, this record was near the front of the box so I decided this would be the one to make up the number, as I started to play it I realised it was the elusive record from my past, I did have the chorus wrong.

They All Came Marching Home - Sgt Will Scuffham (youtube.com)

Ray Stevens - High School Yearbook

 

I first came across this track on a CD on a set of novelty CD's intended for Radio Stations, on the Ray Stevens - High School Yearbook there was a lot of hiss, the programs I used were unable to remove the hiss, couple of years later I saw another CD of Novelty Songs that included High School Yearbook, it also had a number of other tracks I wanted on the CD, alas on the CD the High School Yearbook track had even more hiss than the first CD, eventually I tracked down a 1959 issue vinyl copy, at last a copy with no hiss.

"High School Yearbook (A Deck Of Cards)" - Ray Stevens (1959 NRC) - YouTube

The Womenfolk - Little Boxes

 

Released February 1964 at 1 minute 3 seconds this record made #83 in the US charts, one of the shortest records to chart, when I was transferring the track from vinyl to MP3 it came in at under 1 minute, the group rattles through the song like there is no tomorrow, perhaps they were almost out of studio time, this record did not have a UK release.   

(5) Little Boxes - YouTube

O.A.P's - Give Us The Right To Live

 

This 1970 release is one of the stranger records I acquired I do not recall ever hearing it played on the radio, like many things little has changed, one of my many jobs within the company I worked for was a spell in the Personnel group, I was in the Exit group dealing with people leaving the company, the work covered Age Retirement, Medical, Death In Service, Resignations and the largest part (at the time) Redundancy, on the redundancy side the most often asked question was "How can I get my whole Pension paid out as a lump sum" at the time it was not possible, you could only transfer it the another pension scheme, after I had left that group government rule changes allowed people to withdraw their pensions as lump sums.

The scans are from 45cat and are of my copy of the record, there is also a factory sample (not mine) it indicates that at least 100 copies were pressed, as part of the QA controls the 100th, 200th, 300th, etc. records was played, if the record was faulty the batch back to the last good record were rejected, the record that were played had a sticker put on them and were sold to the staff at a reduced rate, they are not as some people who try to sell them as promotional copies, generally the first 500 records were produced as promotional records and were supplied to Radio Stations, some D.J's and at one time record shops (so you could listen to the record before deciding to buy it). 

The rejected records were dumped, the children local to Hayes where EMI was based found out  where the records were dumped and started scavenging them, sales in the local record shops of EMI records declined, a number of children were interviewed about the records and all said they had 100's of records from the dump and all of them played perfectly.  

When I first started collecting records I could often get 10 for £1, on 45cat it has this record valued at £20 I think I paid £1 for my copy.

I am still trying to work out is this worse than the record by the Saucepan Lids or is the Saucepan Lids better than this record?

O.A.P's - Give Us The Right To Live (Part 1) (youtube.com)

O.A.P's - Give Us The Right To Live (Part 2) (youtube.com)

Fishing Goodrington

During the week I was in Goodrington, Devon, so I decided to try a bit of beach fishing, on Monday I fished for about 2 hours I did not catch any fish I was not alone as none of the few other anglers there caught any fish, I gave up as a cold wind was blowing down the promenade, Tuesday was windy all day so I did not bother to go fishing, by Wednesday the weather had improved, despite fishing the 3 hours up to high tide and the 3 hours after I did not catch any fish though others caught very small pollock, Thursday this time I managed to catch some fish the first was a Ballan Wrasse, I did not take a photo of it and the next fish caught which was a small pollock.

For some reason the Mackerel have not arrived at the venue yet, also none of the fishmongers have has any Mackerel for a number of weeks. 

F

Fish #3 a small pollock

#4 a small pollock

#5 a slightly larger pollock 

Fish #6 the final fish of the day another small pollock

On getting back to the car I loaded (threw) the fishing gear in the back of the car, when I came to start the car I pressed the start button there was just a click and nothing I retried several times with no results, so I checked the name and location of the car park and called the breakdown service, they wanted to know if any warning lights were showing, so I tried the start button again this time the car started, the breakdown people advised me to do a 30-40 mile run to charge the battery, I did one stop and the car restarted with no problems, the next day I had the same problem but the car eventually started, the car is booked in for it's service and MOT in the near future.   

Ray Stevens - Shriners Convention

I am not sure how I acquired this record, being a 1980 issue it was a bit outside my timeframe, it may have been in one of the job lots that I regularly brought, my copy is a "Knights Of Colombia" copy, this record did not have a UK release.

 Ray Stevens - Shriner's Convention (Original) (youtube.com)

Ray Stevens - Shriner's Convention (Knights Of Columbus Version) (youtube.com)

Peter Janes - Emperors And Armies

This is another record that was played by Brian Matthews on Sounds Of The Sixties, I was working overtime when it was played, the work I was in for had some waiting time of between 5 and 25 minutes for the work to process to move to the next stage, and within 5 minuets I had found a copy and brought it, from memory the cost was under £5 the down side it was in the USA.

This was also an early post on the blog at the time I was using Magix (version 3 though it may have been version 2) in those days Magix used the headphone plug  of  a stereo system, later I would use Audacity and then transfer to Magix, as Magix did not at that time support loading via USB ports, later I got an ION USB deck and used that for a number of years, I eventually changed over to Stanton ST80 decks and used an optical digital interface, the problem with the Stanton Decks if you had the power chord too close to the out put cables you would get Transformer Hum, I did intend to get some chokes for the power cables but never got round to it, I also have a Thorens record deck that was used mainly for 78's as the Ion deck did not support 78's.

 Peter Janes - Emperors & Armies (youtube.com)