Songlines

 An Entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

A song sheet featuring '"the last of the red hot mamas' for this week's prompt  took me to the red hot group of my teenage years 

and a whole song book; Little Red Rooster, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Bye Bye Johnny they are all in here, and a whole lot more, interspersed with moody black and white photographs.  I can even date it

because of the adverts at the back, yes we have arrived right at the middle of the swinging sixties when I was probably happily pasting Rolling Stones pictures in a scrap book and

daydreaming.  Except of course this is The Lovin' Spoonful, I just listened to their music, and bought sheet music. The place to buy that was Kelly's Music Shop in Barrow in Furness who had been in business from the time of gramophones and 78s.  In the 60s the ground floor was where the musical instruments, record players and reel to reel tapes lived but my school friends and I weren't hanging around down there, the action was upstairs where records could be spun. Turn right and there was the counter opposite which were two listening booths where you could bop around to the records. A Saturday port of call could be a trip in here, browse the records, come out hang around the main shopping street and then off to Buccianis Coffee Shop.   Both places have now gone but the hanging around on Saturdays 'in town' has never gone out of fashion for generations of school kids. I can't remember when they took out the listening booths, it may have been the early 60s but they continued to sell instruments, records and sheet music.  When looking at the sheet music it struck me that this may have been the decade of psychedelia but the front covers had not changed since Sophie Tucker's time.  Sonny and Cher

try to jazz it up a little with lettering but it would take the Beatles to

      do something different. It helped that they owned the publisher Northern Songs Limited.