Sweet music from 1967

I bought this single, its one of the ones that Suzanne threw out of my small but perfect one bedroom + one other room flat when she squeezed herself and her belongings in there in 1982, I have never, and will never let her forget the destruction of my precious record collection.

Long John Baldry was a blues singer, a blond haired blue eyed blues singer, just doesn't sound right does it, but throughout the 1960's his bands Steampacket and Bluesology influenced much of the British bands of that time including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Erc Clapton and several soon-to-be famous names actually played in the John Baldry bands - Judie Driscoll, Brian Auger, Rod Stewart, Elton John and Jimmy Page anyone ?

The albums sold well but the singles never troubled the charts until he scrubbed up one morning and recorded a sort-of-blues number "Let the Heartaches Begin" which, if my memory serves it right (it may not) was the number one single in the UK for several weeks just before christmas, or maybe even over christmas in 1967.

The following year LJB was back at the top of the commercial singles charts again with his jaunty, definitely-not-blues song "Mexico" commissioned by the BBC as the theme tune for their morning TV (a first for the UK) presenatation of the 1968 Mexico Olympics and then re-used and slightly re-worded afterwards as "Texico" in the TV advertising of the petrol company of that name.

The album "It Ain't Easy" sits upstairs in my loft, a survivor of Suzannes 1982 purge of "this rubbish music", rubbish at the time we were listening to the New Romantics, I ask you.