Goodbye Edmundo Ros

News of  the death of Edmundo Ros has sparked a childhood memory.  The first records I can remember playing at home in the early 1970s were from my mother’s collection of 78s.  For all the young people reading this, 78 rpm records were pre LPs, pre CDs!  They were quite heavy and had to be handled carefully, being made of brittle plastic.  Anyway, my longest memory of a pop song is “Mr Cukoo” by Edmundo Ros and his orchestra.  We also used to sing his “Yellow bird” in infant school.

We’ve all had those conversations about the first record we bought or the first group we liked to listen to, or fancied.  My favourite group when I was in my pre teens was ABBA.  “Dancing Queen” remains in my view one of the greatest pop songs ever….this probably won’t surprise many people!  But although I still have all my old ABBA singles the first single I actually bought myself (or rather nagged my father to buy for me) was one hit wonder “Mississippi” by Pussycat.

And just to bring things right up to date, I bought my latest CD (curiously with a feathered theme) this morning – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, mainly because I like the single “What a life.”  I still prefer to have CDs to play at home or in the car and have resisted  getting an iPod.  Maybe this Christmas I’ll give in and annoy people on trains by playing my choice of music just loud enough to be faintly audible to fellow passengers.    And if anyone can find me a download of “Mr Cukoo” , I’d be very grateful.