Pitched somewhere between relic and treasure, the very name Vera Lyn encapsulates for me everything about British popular music before these charts began and in its own way it sets a clear marker between 'them and us' as the latest Grime recording blasting out from a pirate radio station. Co-written be Eddie Calvert* 'My Son, My Son' is a piledriver of sentimentality aimed squarely at the gut with all the grace and finesse of a demob suit as Lynn extols the virtues of her offspring for the world to marvel at: "My son, my son you're everything to me. My son, my son you're all I hoped you'd be". You simply cannot imagine anybody under the age of about forty deriving any kind of pleasure or enjoyment out of this at all; the grim, middle aged forcefulness of the tune and Lynn's no nonsense schoolmarm aura remind me of 'The Seven Steptoerai' episode of Steptoe and Son where Albert's pensioner friends see off Frankie Barrow's thugs with a display of geriatric kung fu. Except 'My Son, My Son' is devoid of any humour whatsoever - popular music was a serious business back in the fifties, but then so was polio and listening to this is about as enjoyable as catching that after a dip in the local pool.
* Calvert, of course, had already had a hit with the ghastly 'Oh Mein Papa'. Taking both these songs in tandem then maybe it's fair to say he had some parental 'issues' he needed to work through.
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