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

Yesterday Once More = Hand-Written Song Books

UP TO 1,000 VIEWS, 55 CHATS, COMMENTS

Song books were a big deal during the golden years of popular music. These books were actually lyrics of popular songs written personally in script. Above is a few shared by Freda Hanum keyboardist from The TEEPEES, who uses them professionally.

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...

Daisy Koh

The Hobbyist

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.

A personal book of lyrics for reference, just in case requests were made during her stints in hotel lobby lounges in Singapore where Irene Yap appeared sometimes. Her mainstay strongholds were in nightclubs. No books.

Irene Yap

The Singer

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!

Freda Hanum

The Keyboardist/Singer

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...

'Yesterday Once More' by the Carpenters. Video by amyanne16 on YouTube.

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