 Good friend Allan recently visited the Albert Docks, Liverpool and took the above photograph of the statue of the late, great Billy Fury. The original version of Maybe Tomorrow by Billy Fury can be heard on YouTube via the following link: https://youtu.be/2Dvb_PI7dJY The extract from Heanor Schooldays below explains the life changing significance of this record during my adolescence After four horrific years at Mundy Street Boys School in Heanor, attending William Howitt Secondary Modern School down the road in September 1958 - was a life changing experience. Each lunch hour, I walked up the hill to the café on Heanor Market Place and chose from various items on the menu. 'Something and chips' cost two bob, add three pennies for a cup of tea. The cafe had two halves. To the right of the central corridor was the snack bar and to the left a quieter dining room for meals. Above the clatter of pots, cutlery, comings and goings and the continuous hum of conversation, I could hear and enjoy pop music which travelled across the two rooms. The music came from something new and different: a space aged, push buttoned chrome and gaudily illuminated cabinet called a 'jukebox'. It needed to be fed - a threepenny bit for one play, a silver sixpence for two plays, or five plays for a silver shilling. Not many of those went in. Fascinated eyes watched a mechanical arm lift when a record had been selected. A popular seven-inch record would be located and then placed precisely on an automatic deck. As the needle fell into the lead groove, an anticipatory delicious electronic 'thud' would precede the ecstatic sounds to follow. The previous July, I became a teenager. Munching through my beans on toast (or whatever) each day at that café; I experienced the birth of, for me, real music. The charts of 1959 and 1960 were the very epicentre of my musical experience. I’d spend the rest of my life worshipping at that shrine of talented excellence. Forever more, I’d listen with nostalgic reverence to the lush orchestrations and sexy boyish voices which sang out through that small window of creativity. Marty Wilde, Bobby Vee and Adam Faith crystallised and defined fresh green hopes, inspired my dreams and fuelled my fantasies. One day was very special. I was entranced by what seemed like a sweet-sounding choir of heavenly angels ascending and descending the scale, complemented by a resonant twangy bass guitar. Into this euphonious mix came, exactly at the right time, a deep masculine voice with just a hint of the sexy adolescent croak so typical of this new young genre. He could easily have been mistaken for Elvis but, these dulcet tones were a touch lighter and, for my taste, with great respect to the King – better. This sensuous singer had composed both the music and lyrics for this beautiful work which lasted barely more than a precious two minutes. After such an orgasmic audible experience, in complete contrast to the hateful pious dirges of Mundy Street Boys School just a stone's throw away; this new music now became an important part of my new life at William Howitt Secondary Modern School – a culture of kindness. During the following weeks, the same record was played several times every day. I struggled to hang on to those illusive, hypnotic notes, above the ambient din of the busy Market Cafe. A few occasional words were discerned - " ... and in the evening, by the moonlight ... " I knew not the name of the singer nor the song title to be able to ask for it in a record shop. A pointless exercise not possessing a record player, let alone the expensive seven shillings needed to purchase. Eventually, the time came when, nervously, this scruffy youth entered a shop and held the precious vinyl disc, with its grooved integral encoded magical music, bearing the legend - Maybe Tomorrow. Later, in that same store, examining the sleeve of a prized long-playing record - I stood very still and looked. I peered long and hard into the stunningly handsome features of my teenage idol - Billy Fury: a typical image of the popular culture of 1959. Fast forward to May 2023 when Terry and I were watching Mike Read and Noel Cronin on TPTV’s Footage Detectives. They were discussing Billy Fury and his backing voices heard in Maybe Tomorrow! Suddenly, after 64 years, I was able to identify that sweet-sounding choir of heavenly angels ascending and descending the scale. They were the Vernons Girls - three session singers led by Maureen Kennedy on many hit singles in that period. Maybe Tomorrow was their debut as an angelic backing group. Narvel Annable Narvel also chose Maybe Tomorrow as his final record on the Desert Island Discs piece we recorded in May 2020 during the first national covid-19 lockdown. You can hear him talking about this from 1:20:50 onwards via the link below. This is followed by his 1998 Radio Derby interview with John Holmes where he also discusses the song: https://www.mixcloud.com/narvelontheradio/narvel-annable-desert-island-discs-lock-down-special-may-2020/ Comments are closed.
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