I come form a very large family. I've got five older sisters, yes, five.
But it was wonderful to be the only boy in a family of girls.
Life was paradise, until one day my mother surprised everybody,
including my father I think, and at the ripe old age of 45 she gave birth
to another baby boy. And his name was David.
But it's the sisters. You see, our older sisters played all of their
beebop records on the radiogram in the front room where we lived.
The front room. It was the center of our world, because that's where we
helt all of our family parties. Any excuse for a party, really.
Weddings, birthdays, funerals, you name it. A party would take place
in the front room.
But it was my big sisters. You see, they put on records by pop idols of
their generation. People like Johnny Ray and Perry Como.
The girls did all the latest dances with their most recent boyfriends.
And it's interesting to note that the dances they did resembled the
various boyfriends. They did the creep, the smooch, the boogie woogie,
jive, right down to early rock 'n roll.
Now, my big sister had a certain record and my mother refused to have
this record played in the house, because, according to mum, it had
sexy lyrics. But whenever mum was out of the house, my sister would
entertain her boyfriend in the front room and my young accomplist,
David, remember him?, he'd get the record in question and put it on
the radiogram and I looked through the key hole into the front room
to see how my sister was doing, and at the appropriate moment
I'd turn up the volume and the whole house would throb to these
sexy subversive lyrics.