THE BIG QUESTIONS
What was the No 1 album when I was born on October 23, 1962? Someone cool, like The Beatles? – N
It was The Best Of Ball, Barber And Bilk, a jazz compilation by Kenny Ball, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. It topped the charts for two weeks, separated by West Side Story, Original Soundtrack.
The Beatles didn’t have their first charttopping LP until May 11 the following year, when Please Please Me began a 30-week run at the top.
We were chatting about Elvis Presley, who stopped off in Scotland for only a few hours the only time he was on British soil, when my pal told me President John F Kennedy made his first speech in Scotland. True? – A
It is, but it was before Kennedy won the US Presidency. On September 3, 1939, just a few hours after Britain declared war on Germany, a U-Boat sank the SS Athenia, a ship heading
for New York. A total of 117 civilians and crew died.
Many survivors were American and, as Kennedy was staying in London with his father, Joe, the US Ambassador to Britain, he was sent to Glasgow, where he addressed the survivors in his first public speech.
My dad has a CD that I often borrow. It’s a collection of Bluegrass tunes – is there really blue grass in America? – G
Bluegrass is a genre of music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region of the US, blending country, gospel and blues music.
Early settlers looked at vast prairies covered in poa grass, which has seeds with a purple hue known as bluegrass, so the music which originated here was deemed Bluegrass.