Song Book From The Past: Personal n Precious: Daisy Koh n Doris Chua

Ms. Doris Chua's Song Book From The 60's 

My schoolmate and good friend, Doris Chua finally sent me photos of her precious song book. This brought back a ton of beautiful memories from the 60s. Quote from Doris herself, “These few days I have been going back to the music from the late 60s and early 70s …and going through my old song book…really made me feel young again.”

The pages may have yellowed and the photos stained but the memories remain for many of us who were teenagers in the 60s and still young at heart today.

Pop star pictures from the newspapers have been 

painstakingly cut out and pasted on the song book.

It was fashionable then to keep a song book. Usually it would be a hard cover exercise book bought from the neighbourhood shop. We would wrap the hard cover with white mahjong paper and embellish it with colourful pictures of our pop idols. With the girls it was either the most heart-throbbing pictures of Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, The Beatles, Connie Francis…

I remember in secondary school, there were two camps – Elvis fans vs Cliff fans. We argued over the most popular singer and defended any criticism of our idol but actually both singers were highly rated, adored and idolized. We went crazy over their hit songs. I even had my Maths textbook wrapped up with pictures of both Elvis and Cliff – an inspiration when studying became too tedious.

Singing heroes wrapped in plastic sheets that have taken the toll of time. 

But it was fun, great fun to be able to keep them till today, 60 years later.

Keeping a song book was a popular pastime then. Well you can’t sing along if you don’t know the lyrics. Thanks to the request programs on Rediffusion and RTS [Radio & TV Singapore… now Mediacorp or meWatch] the latest hits were played everyday, sometimes more than once a day. 

Teens like me and Doris would always have our scrapbooks on standby, ready to scribble down the lyrics of the latest hits by Elvis, Cliff, Rick Nelson or Connie Francis. We would verify the lyrics with our friends if we missed out a few words here and there. Once the lyrics had been edited, we would painstakingly copy them into our songbooks in our most beautiful handwriting and decorate the pages with pictures of the pop stars. You could forget to bring your textbook to school but you never forget to carry your songbook with you.

A singer that's never missed,

Elvis Presley was the top star those years.

It was always a joy then to get together, sing the latest hits or sing by yourself if you are not allowed to go out. The songbook was a good reference and a source of entertainment and comfort for many a teenager then and a healthy one too. Wish I had kept mine. Hats off to Doris for keeping her precious songbook for 61 years.

This was how we, teenagers survived without the cellphone (you become a prisoner because of this) or social media then.

No matter the time, the lyrics are lovingly penned on the song book with

much care and concern, without mistakes. But mistakes do happen...

Thanks to Ms Doris Chua who supplied the images from her song book and

Mrs. Daisy Koh, who wrote this article.

Article and Images have been copyrighted.

The Cliff Fans vs. Elvis Fans Rivalry.

Love Letters: Elvis Presley

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra [Official Video]

YouTube Video from Elvis Presley.

Connect with another Song Book article below:

https://singapore60smusic.blogspot.com/2020/11/yesterday-once-more-hand-written-song.html