I’ve Got Those Bell Bottom Blues
Alma Cogan & Me
I fell in love with the singer Alma Cogan in 1954, aged seven, when I first heard her version of the Leon Carr and Hal David song ‘Bell Bottom Blues’. It was a true love that has never left me.
When I first heard that song one summer morning on the BBC’s Light Programme (Housewives Choice I think) I knew I had to get a copy of the recording: have Alma just a little bit closer.
Back then I worked for my father in his bakery on a Saturday morning cleaning tins and sweeping out the flour loft and bashing the fleeing cockroaches to death.
The old man paid me four shillings for a morning’s work, which was more than enough to buy a recording of Alma’s ‘Bell Bottom Blues’.
On Saturday afternoons I’d often go out delivering a few extra bread orders with Gordon the local butcher who, after closing his shop across the road at lunchtime, did an extra hour or two for my dad.
With four bob in my jean’s pocket I convinced Gordon to make a detour to Stratford so I could buy my Alma Cogan record; which I did at an electrical goods store on Wood Street which had recently opened a record department.
The rather prim young man behind the counter told me that ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ was number four in the Hit Parade and would cost me two…
