THE OLD GRAMOPHONE PLAYER

The old gramophone player sat on a side table in my friend’s lounge room. I was aged about ten when I became friendly with Betty. Our love of dogs brought us together. Eventually, our friendship widened to include the music produced on this magical machine, the gramophone player. Betty and her family lived in a flat behind a shop in the main street of Port Kembla and I lived in the street behind the main street. Our houses were connected by a laneway. Betty would walk up the hill via the laneway on her way to school, collecting me on the way.

I had a blue cattle dog named Boz who barked at children on the way to school. Betty was not frightened of him as other children were. She showered him with love and attention and endeared herself to Boz. And so our friendship flourished. She would call into my house before and after school to play with Boz. Betty confessed to me that she would dearly love a puppy of her own. After much pleading, her parents gave her a black floppy eared pup with long legs, named Binky. Every day, we would play with, talk about and walk our dogs. The dogs consumed every moment of our small world until…..Betty’s older sister bought an old second hand gramophone player.

Betty’s sister was about ten years older than us. She was mature, beautiful and a worker. I looked upon her with awe….especially her ability to buy a gramophone player. Betty and I were thrilled with this new acquisition. It opened up a whole new world that most other families, mine included, could not afford. Every afternoon after school, I would collect Boz and race down the lane to Betty’s, allowing the dogs to play together while we shared an hour or so of pure musical bliss. I would look admiringly at this miracle sound machine knowing, at this time of the day, we had full uninterrupted use of the gramophone player.

The gramophone player was a sturdy piece of furniture, stained amber, box-like in design but to us it was new and exciting. On the front of the cabinet was the makers name HMV which we knew as His Masters Voice. Being dog owners we loved the symbol more so because of the small dog listening to his master’s voice via an antique gramophone player. Carefully, we would lift the lid and place the “78rpm” vinyl record on the turntable. Cranking the metal handle was fun but we had to be watchful not to overwind and break the spring-wound mechanism hidden inside the machine. Betty would then lift up the needle head and gently place it on the record. After a few scratchy sounds the needle engaged with the record’s grooves and Betty and I and Jo Stafford would burst into song.

Betty only had one record and we played this over and over. Sometimes, in our eagerness for sound or maybe it was that we didn’t want to break the gramophone, we didn’t wind the mechanism up sufficiently and the music would slow right down and the tone would deepen which sent us quickly to the machine to bring the song back to life. With the music restored, our voices, in harmony with Jo Stafford, were heard throughout the neighbourhood.

In those far off days, the “hit” song was on the so called A side of the record while on the B side or flip side a lesser known song was recorded. I have no memory of the name of the song on the flip side as it was not played very often but the A side is deeply etched in my memory.

“Shrimp Boats are a Comin’, There’s Dancing Tonight” was delivered with much gusto by all three of us especially during the chorus. How Betty’s mother endured the monotony of the song being continuously played while she was preparing tea, I do not know. Today, I think she must have been an angel and a martyr rolled into one.

That one song and the old second hand wind-up gramophone player is a world far removed from today young generation. They have no idea that our much loved old gramophone player is the father of the electric record player (which my family did not purchase until twelve years later) and is several generations removed from the compact disc. Now the MP3 age is upon us and inhabits the world of our grandchildren. I’m very sure that today’s children are not so very different from Betty and I, we just use and used different devises to achieve happiness and friendship.