Birthday Blues No.1 #4 - The Tymes - Ms. Grace

On a Tuesday morning in January 1975, a 29 year old GP made a house call to widow named Lucy Crossley. She would be the first of three victims of Harold Shipman that day, and the first of several hundred overall.

Meanwhile, in Maidstone, I was snuffing out some candles of my own. Four of the bastards sat on a cake filled no doubt with the kind of wondrous E-numbers you just don’t see anymore.

I remember nothing of the occasion. I was four. And when I looked up what was number one on this occasion, I was none the wiser. No Proustian rush occurred. I wasn’t thrown back down the vista of years to some touching childhood memory.

I genuinely had never heard of Ms. Grace or indeed The Tymes and, even now, whilst I play it, can recall nothing of it except it feels like the kind of song you’d hear playing in the background of a filler shot in some mid-90s Farrelly Brothers comedy. Perhaps Adam Sandler is driving a monkey to his grandmother’s cremation for reasons too stupid to go into here. The service is 1400 miles away and he has only three days to make the journey and, I don’t know, maybe the monkey has a permanent erection.

It doesn’t seem fair for the makers of this otherwise fine film to have chosen this song to be playing as Sandler and the monkey, let’s call him Sonny, drive down some beautiful Kansas highway as the sun sets in the distance but that’s life. One minute you’re dressed like a particularly hopeful one day cricket team on Top of the Pops, the next you’re failing to trigger memories in a middle aged man’s blog, read by even fewer people than remember your song.

Ms. Grace is a lovely little thing, the kind of song they don’t write anymore, and I’ve been hammering it to death to try to work out what other song it really reminds me of. To no avail.

Current Ranking of Birthday no. 1 – 2

Final Ranking of Birthday no. 1 –  N/A

What Should Have Been Number 1 instead that week -  either Down Down or Never Can Say Goodbye.

 

 


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