https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkLE4X-bbU
I don’t really remember her. Well, okay, I do. I know the name, I remember the voice, but how much of that is a true memory and how much has been added over the years?
My mother was telling me about the first woman to steal my heart (other than her I assume). I was very young. Supposedly whenever I would hear her voice I would come crawling from wherever I was in the house. Yes, I was too young to walk let alone run.
Which would place the romance about 1956 when I was old enough to crawl but not to walk. It was also when my parents bought their first television. Before that, if my family wanted to watch a show on TV they would go across the street to visit Mr. and Mrs. Bell, who had the first (and perhaps only) set in the neighborhood. I’m told they were quite happy to have people drop by to watch television.
No-one ever argued over what show to watch. Choice wasn’t a word people used when talking about television. Today’s 500 channel (or more) TV universe was found only in science fiction stories that no-one would believe had any shred of reality to them.
In Ottawa, if you wanted to watch television there was choice, as long as you were bilingual. The city had two channels, one English, one French. The broadcast day started at 4 p.m. and ended before midnight. Shows were in black-and-white, and there was no TV remote.
According to my mother, at a very young age I fell in love with an American singer named Patti Page, who had her own TV show. Just the sound of her voice would bring me from wherever I was.
Listening now I can’t figure out what the appeal was. She’s a pleasant enough singer, and I still remember some of those songs, especially “Doggy,” but they don’t have an emotional connection for me anymore. The passage of time I guess. Watching the videos of Patti Page singing, I don’t know what it was that appealed to someone still not old enough to walk.
However, even though I don’t have any memories of that time, it is somehow interesting, to me anyway, to have that knowledge of my personal history. I have worked in the music industry, on and off, for more than 40 years now. Apparently my love for music has always been part of my life, right from the very beginning.
random thoughts from lorne 
Petula Clark.
Other than “Downtown” I would be hard pressed to name any of Petula’s other hits offhand. I know there were other hits, and I seem to recall films too, but the titles aren’t jumping out at me. I guess that is why search engines were invented!