Going With The Flow

"Memories don't leave like people do, they always stay with you"...this song of yesteryear's has been playing non-stop on my mind for more than a few days now. Even in the middle of the cold night when I have to get up to go to the bathroom, it gets unstuck from some place and starts grooving off mechanically in my mind - and I 'm back to the gyrating rhythmic tones of this, aah now I do remember -- Tom Jones is the legendary singer who sung this in his unmistakable style.

My fellow contemporaries may well remember other of his songs like Delilah, She's a Lady, Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow and of course Green Green Grass of Home. This Welsh Singer who immigrated to America quite ruled the roost on the music world with his wonderful performances and one-of-a-kind voice. Well almost. There was Engelbert Humperdinck who truly sounded like a twin soul. Well there actually were some songs that the both of them did together.

What had me wondering was that how come I, in the mid sixty's, in a staid little town like Nagpur - came to learn about these songs and singers. It wasn't the time of  television or 24X7 music channels as yet. My mind goes back to the wooden radio on the corner table of our drawing room. I think it was called Saba. And I recall mention of it being a German radio. I can't be sure. But this wonderful contraption had me tuning on to Radio Ceylon every morning to listen to delightful instrumental music followed by melodious olden songs in the backdrop of a constant crackle and static.

Not that the continuous noise in the background made any difference to the keenly developed ear for catching the real music. This radio - for all the crackle and static, was a real learning house that taught all of those beautiful songs rendered by dozens of mellifluous singers of my childhood. From 'Those were the days...' to "Che Sera Sera..." - a lifetime appears to have been sated by these early year's grooming of pop music of the times. And now as the years go on they seem to have the Daffodils effect on my mind. When all at once a strain of a long lost melody will take me down memory lane and I am left to wallow in the music of days gone by. And I am still loving it.