1930s: No radio but we were surrounded by music

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There were no radios, TVs, hi-fis, iPods, computers or even wind-up gramophones in the Richardson household in the 1930s. Yet music played a big role in the childhood of young Harold. More than 70 years on, Harold, of Trowells Lane, Derby, recalls those magical pre-war days, which, to him, were the best and worst of times.

As I remember it, ours was a house without either gramophone records or wireless and yet, whatever else, we went short of during my childhood and adolescence, we never seemed to be deprived of music.

As regular as any wireless, a Salvation Army band would gather into a circle on the corner of the street, always close to the door of the pub.

Their tuneful singing to tambourines, banging drums and blaring brass, helped along by grubby-faced urchins, would easily outstrip the coarser yawping coming out of the Seven Stars in King Street, Derby.

After half an hour of this, and earnest appeals from the man in charge to resist the evils of strong drink, the band would shoulder their instruments and move on further up the street towards the Albert Vaults, Albert Street and a repeat performance.

Harold in 1931

Other times, it could be a fiddler sawing away in the street, standing in the gutter with cap hopefully placed on the pavement's edge.

Another day and the man with a tin whistle would be heard; then later, there would be a barrel organ to dance to – all working hard for the odd penny to come their way.

And I should think the hardest working of all would be the man with the strained mouth organ with its tinny music.

Street singers were pretty regular. These we would mimic and I remember more than once getting chased off our own street.

I don't know if they had some sort of arrangement because they all seemed to have their set days and never upstaged each other’s act, so to speak.

And if that wasn't enough, on each school day we'd have hymns and traditional songs to learn and these would stick in the mind far into the future.

To be sure, we also knew the popular music hall songs of the day, mostly comic songs that became familiar from tipsy renderings coming from the pubs. In her times of fine fettle, after a visit to the Albert Vaults, my mother would often enact a favourite of hers, Burlington Bertie.

I got to know every word and every gesture and yet it never did become a hit for me.

It was the start of the 30s and the advent of sound in the cinemas that was to have the greatest influence on those of my generation. No wonder they came to be called picture palaces. Once inside, you were in a world of love and musical romance.

Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin, the Gershwins and Hoagy Carmichael, the list of those that wrote for the films is almost endless.

They were names to become as familiar as the film stars who sang their marvellous songs.

And we'd sit in our sixpenny seats, close up to the screen, and let the dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers take us spellbound and far away from what lay in the streets outside.

Nearly all, certainly the best of the musicals were the products of Hollywood and their songs will forever be associated with the singers and musicians who made them famous.

We all have our favourite tunes and, for me, there is nothing like the sentiment you get from an old song nor anything as powerful in bringing back memories.

Not always happy, alas.

That deeper meaning for me is in such songs as A-tisket, A-tasket, sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald in 1938; Chattanooga Choo-choo from the 1941 film, Sun Valley Serenade, featuring Glenn Miller and his Orchestra.

Also, there was The Way You Look Tonight from Swing Time, sung by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers with her hair in curlers and cream over her face, and there was Too Romantic, sung by Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in the 1940 film, Road to Singapore.

Hardly two years later and the road to Singapore was going to be a somewhat less romantic affair.

But, as well as living through some of the worst times, we also lived through some of the best and, while it had lasted, knew a magic that can never be again.

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