Tuesday the 20th of February 1973 to Tuesday the 19th of February 1974
Perry Como
And I Love You So
Charting in the year of 1973, on the 1st of July, is Perry Como with the album And I Love You So.
Probably the most listened to album I heard in this, my 2nd year,..
…came from this man, due to my mother buying it and playing it most of the time.
So what comes back to me about this music?
Well, to me I get a picture of sunshine coming through the dining room window. Probably mid-morning, springtime. I remember the record player being positioned side on, with the arm of the player along the front, the starting mechanism push towards the left, on top of the low level unit. I remember I was tall enough to be able to operate it myself, she showed me how to do it.
This was safe music, my mother could get on with things without my other sisters and my father there.
It’s an atmosphere of calm. A feeling of comfort.
Perry is my mother’s favourite music artist.
To me, back then, he was old, he had grey hair, but he was also happy, and that made him seem younger. Something I didn’t see so much in my own father at that time.
Even then I could tell that Perry’s singing style was an old type of style.
So this is what old people listened to. Nothing like the stuff my sisters were playing.
A year or so later, to make her happy, I remember drawing a picture of the album cover on a sheet of paper. His head was the size of the page and I probably tried to fill in the colours the same as the background on the album cover.
I liked the cover of the LP because of the colours. This was a warm sunny album with an old, grey haired man who looked young.
The album enters the chart…
…on the first day of July and goes straight to No.3, and even though it relaxes its hold a little, the LP stays comfortably in the Top 10 until the summer month of August closes out.
This period is only brief as, before the close of September, he’s back in the Top 10 once again. An exclusive club which he’ll stay a constant member of, all the way up to the end of 1973.
With that sort of behaviour in the chart, he’ll of course visit me again when I celebrate another birthday, so we’ll catch up with him, and this album then, when the future gets even brighter.
Perry, of course, had been around for years,..
…prior to this new album.
Beginning his singing career in the late 1930’s, my elder Auntie, on my mother’s side, had his 1958 hit “Catch a Falling Star” on a 78RPM.
Before he became a crooner, he was a barber, and he always thought that if the singing career gave out, at least he’d have that profession to fall back on. He needn’t have worried.
When I came along he was making something of a comeback. It was also the time when Elvis Presley was basically doing the same type of music.
To put into this artist into a more up to date context, my mum was basically getting a comeback album from a singer who was hugely popular in the mid fifties. That would have been 18 years before.
For 2024 (as I write this), that would be 2006. That’s like Justin Timberlake making a comeback album today. Oh hang on…he is.
That just doesn’t seem the same to me.
I’ve created my own separate playlists for Sides 1 and 2 of this album with (I hope) the correct versions and the original track sequencing order for the U.K. release.
Side 1
Side 2
Many thanks go to the following YouTube Channels for providing the chance to hear this music once again.
Please show your appreciation by visiting their channel:
Grab Your Binoculars, Come Follow Me
My Socials
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