Because of the intensity and feel of the articles these friends have written about the subject, I have decided to post them verbatim.
Song books with pop lyrics, written personally in one's own handwriting, was a big deal during the 50's, 60's and 70's, so I have highlighted three of such song books, written by three ladies, Daisy, Irene and Freda. But they did it for different reasons.
Thank you all so much.
When I was young I'd listen to the radio, Waiting for my favourite song...
Songbooks were treasured items. Those were the days when we had Rediffusion on all day. I would be listening to the request programme and practising 10-year series Mathematics - today it’s called multitasking. I also had my jotter book ready... I would scribble down the lyrics once a new song was aired. We would compare notes in school and confirm the lyrics the next time the song was aired.
I had a thick hard cover notebook of all the popular songs. The cover was wrapped in white mahjong paper and decorated with beautiful postcards of Elvis in front and Cliff on the back. We made our own plastic covers. The lyrics were written in our best handwriting. We were very proud of our song books then. 😁Writing down the lyrics also increased your speed in writing and comprehension skills... We would also try to figure out the missing blanks.
This book was handwritten way back in my secondary school years and on to my singing days! Back than we sang songs by heart but sometimes we had to oblige special requests on the spot so I always had this with me!
One night after work I left my bag on the floor and went to bed to find next morning the air-conditioner directly above leaking into my open bag. They were written with ink dipped pen so the smudges on most pages. Till today it remains my most treasured book!
Writing song books days really bring back great memories, I am very organised with my song books (really have so many). I have every category of song, evergreen standards in one, pop hits and rock in another, some in other languages like Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Malay in another. My reason; whenever I get a request it's easy for me to look it up even if I had not played the song for some time, and most of them have chords written at top of the wordings. I have no problem playing them. I make it very convenient; it's really my hobby, never tired of writing down lyrics in my collection, and I keep and treasure all my old books, bought and self written. Just sharing a few of my books here, Andy.
It was songs of love, that I would sing to then, And I'd memorise each word... Some can even make me cry...
This article is a combination of 3 comments by
Daisy Koh; Irene Yap and Freda Hanum.
Images 1 and 2 from Freda and Irene.
Comments were inspired by the post below. Click to connect.
https://singapore60smusic.blogspot.com/2011/11/copying-pop-lyrics-with-pen-and-paper.html
