So many little anecdotes about The Ink Spots in my personal experience - where do I start?
First of all something about them appealed to me when I was just four or five. I remember being in my gran's house and hearing "Bless you, (for being an angel)" and being struck by it even then - I think it was Bill Kenny's talking bit as well as the melodic and harmonious sound and when my gran mentioned the name - The Ink Spots it struck me as so strange.
Then in the early sixties I was going out with a girl called Adele. Her mother was divorced and one night we all went out together, Adele, me, her mother and a new boyfriend of her mother. We all went back later and it transpired that her mother's boyfriend (a guy called Paul) used to be an artist who drew for The Radio Times - yes really! He also played the guitar a bit and had it in the flat. We were all a bit tiddled but he played for us and sang that night (not greatly but pleasantly enough) a song which I wasnt familiar with at the time. I had never heard it previously but he told us it was an old one by The Inkspots. It was "Whispering Grass". A few years later it was a number one hit for Don Estelle and Windsor Davies on the back of their popularity on "It Ain't Arf Hot Mum".
Years later I bought a tape of The Inkspots Greatest Hits and played it in on the music system in a club I used to go to. The number of people who wanted to borrow it I cant tell you. On a Saturday afternoon I used to meet up with an old pal (once a very good boxer and a pretty hard man). He once knoocked out Dave Charnley as an amateur for those who know a bit about boxing. He is now deceased.). We used to always play a few music tapes while we had a pint or two (or possibly a little more). We were in the middle of the Inkspots tape when he broke down and cried. It was because a certain track had been a favourite of his mother's - "When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano".
I also remember Elvis Presley saying how much he had been influenced by Bill Kenney of the Inkspots and if you listen to certain Elvis songs it becomes obvious.
Fond memories for me then of this marvellous singing group. Their music lives on.
R I P - The Inkspots.
The Inkspots, The Andrrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers. Like Frank Sinatra said - "You can sit around and hope, but you wont see their like again."