For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song that reminds us of home, as you can see from his post, No Place Like It. I wasn’t sure how to take this, as there are plenty of songs about the comforts of home, but they weren’t personal to me, so I have decided to make this about my hometown, and one particular symbol of it which has been with me for all of my life.

I was born in Dover, in Kent, in 1953. As historians will know, that was just eight years after the end of WW2, during which Dover took a hell of a battering from Hitler’s bombers and shelling by cross-channel guns, causing 3,059 alerts, killing 216 civilians, and damaging 10,056 premises. For a town of around 40,000 people in 1939 those figures are staggering, and with mass evacuation the population was down to around 15,000 by the end of 1940. It became known as ‘Hellfire Corner’ from the constant bombardment. I grew up with daily reminders of the aftermath of this, as there were many bomb sites around the town which were part of a major rebuilding programme.

Obviously, I wasn’t around when the war was actually happening, but one of my childhood reminders is the song White Cliffs Of Dover, which was sung by Dame Vera Lynn, who became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart” for all that she did touring and singing to our troops. My Mum played piano and this was one of her favourite songs, and I have memories of singing along with her. It isn’t the usual style of music that I share, and I will be playing another afterwards, but this is part of deeply personal memories for me, and luckily it is a lyric video:

(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover was composed in 1941 by Walter Kent to lyrics by Nat Burton. It was made famous by Vera Lynn’s 1942 version, which has become a national treasure here, as did the lady herself. She continued to make music after the war, and in 2017, Decca Records released Vera Lynn 100, a collection of younger artists duetting with archive recordings by her. Issued to commemorate her centenary, it was a #3 hit, making her the first centenarian performer to have a Top 10 album in the charts. By the time of her death in 2020, at the age of 103, she had been active in the music industry for 96 years.

As an ornithologist will tell you, the likelihood of bluebirds actually appearing over the White Cliffs is zero, as the species is native to North America and isn’t known here. But the bluebird has been recognised as a symbol of hope and happiness in many cultures over centuries, so it was very appropriate for a song of hope for the end of the war. This has meant that it appears in other songs, too, and I thought I’d play you a couple of versions of one of those.

I first knew this from the version recorded by The Beach Boys, which was a moderate hit single here in the UK in late 1968. With the significance of bluebirds that had been with me since I first knew the history of my town, it was guaranteed to attract my attention. But I’m going with an earlier recording, which also has the benefit of being a lyric video:

Bluebirds Over The Mountain was written and recorded in 1958 by Ersel Hickey, a rockabilly singer. His original peaked at #75 on the Billboard Top 100 in May 1958, and at #39 on the Cash Box chart. In Canada it reached #8. Ritchie Valens’ cover version was released on his eponymous 1959 album, which was released in February 1959, just nine days after his death at the age of only 17 in the plane crash which also took the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper: ‘the day the music died.’

Another cover version of the song was made much more recently, by one of my favourite rock singers, and it has a nice animated video:

Robert Plant released his version, on which he was accompanied by Chrissie Hynde, on his album Carry Fire, which was released in October 2017, peaking at #3 in the UK and #14 in the US.

This may not have been what Jim was expecting when he set us this theme, but the imagery of the bluebird and its symbolism of hope and happiness is something which has been with me all my life. Growing up in a town which had suffered such dramatic destruction at the hands of a dictatorial tyrant made that symbol all the more important. I think we may need that symbolism now, perhaps more than at any time since 1945.

On that happy note I’ll take my leave for today, with my thanks to Jim for another great bit of hosting. See you again for Tuesday Tunes 🎶