Monday 21 December 2020

Coventry City, Christmas Day 1959




For my seasonal post this year, I'm offering up another snapshot of Christmas Day football. This time the location is Coventry City's Highfield Road Stadium, on 25th December, 1959. For my previous Christmas post, I showcased the matchday programme of the last ever professional football fixture to be played in England on Christmas Day - Blackpool's home game versus Blackburn Rovers in 1965.

When Coventry City took on Wrexham at 11am on Xmas Day 1959, the tradition of the Christmas Day match which had harked back to 1889 (the second season of the Football League) was already well on the wane. This Third Division fixture had actually been scheduled for December 28th, but in the programme notes it was explained that most people in Coventry would be back at work on that day. So a return to the 25th December would offer the supporters a better chance of seeing their team play. 

Coincidentally, it wasn't until a Christmas Day fixture in 1919/20 when Coventry City beat Stoke, that City managed to win their first ever match in Division Two having been promoted to the Football League from the Southern League after WW1. 

A good omen then, as on this Christmas Day match in 1959, City beat Wrexham 5-3. For the return game which was played at the Racecourse Ground on Boxing Day, City also won, this time 3-1.

The slim 12 page City programme has a tremendously powerful front cover design depicting a packed to the rafters Highfield Road with the word CITY in bold white capitals. There's a typical-of-the-era collection of advertisements accompanying the team line-ups, words from the manager, and pen pictures of the visitors. The cost of a coach journey from Coventry to Wrexham for the away fixture was 14/6 (seventy two and a half pence). I wonder how many coach loads of fans made that Boxing Day trip up to North Wales?


Coventry v Wrexham, 25th December 1959

Wrexham v Coventry, 26th December 1959


Here are some highlights from that Coventry City v Wrexham programme issued on 25th December 1959:














Just over 60 years on, Coventry will be UK City of Culture 2021, and the team are competing in the Championship, the second tier of the Football League. The club left Highfield Road at the end of the 2004/05 season, and are currently playing their home matches at Birmingham City's St Andrew's Ground before a planned move to a new site in association with the University of Warwick.
                       
Happy Holidays to all...


 

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Pop Pic Library comic 1965 to 1968 UPDATED


I still get the occasional enquiry about a post over seven years ago on 'After You've Gone' that explored the rather elusive history of the Pop Pic Library comic book. Since then, with the help of some eagle-eyed readers of this rather occasional blog, I've managed to add some titles to my ongoing and incomplete checklist.

Pop Pic Library was an oddity from the heyday of the 1960s pop-boom. It was a series of 68 page black and white comic books whose titles were all named after 7" chart-smashing hits by the key bands and crooners of the era. But apart from an uncredited colour photo of the artist on the back cover, everything within totally deviated from the actual lyrics of the songs themselves. Even the names of the band members, the songwriters, the producers and the record labels were omitted. 

The very first title was 'The Last Time' by The Rolling Stones - a single that was released in February 1965, so this dates the pocked-sized series to have commenced around then. The 18 x 12 cms sized comics were published by Wells Gardner, Darton & Co and printed in Redhill, Surrey - and according to the blurb that appeared below the last panel on the final pages, two titles were published on the 15th of each month. Pop Pic Library was distributed in the UK, and were also shipped out to "Australasia, South Africa, Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi". The interior art was not credited, but sometimes the covers were - No.4 was by Josep Maria Miralles, a Spanish artist who drew many romance titles for the UK market during this time. 

I wonder whether the bands themselves ever caught sight of these little rogue comic books that re-imagined bizarre sequential art versions of their hit songs for the price of one shilling? 

Examples of Pop Pic Library rarely surface these days, particularly the higher number issues, and there's not much information out there about just how many titles were published, or the size of the circulation for the digest-sized comic books. So far, it appears that the series ran to 1968 as the last number that I've come across is No.72, Congratulations by Cliff Richard, a Chart Topping hit which was released in the March of that year. 

Here is my updated checklist of 65 known titles - and I look forward to hearing from those who can help to fill in the gaps... 

Pop Pic Library - a partial checklist:
 
No.1 The Last Time - The Rolling Stones 
No.2 A World of our Own - The Seekers 
No.3 I’m Alive – The Hollies 
No.4 Set Me Free - The Kinks 
No.5 Heart Full of Soul - The Yardbirds 
No.6 The One in the Middle - Manfred Mann 
No.7 We’ve Got to Get out of this Place - The Animals 
No.8 You’ve got your Troubles - The Fortunes 
No.9 I’m Down - The Beatles 
No.10 Like We Used To Be - Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames 
No.11 Whatcha Gonna Do About It - The Small Faces 
No.12 Hark - Unit 4 Plus 2 
No.13 Yesterday Man - Chris Andrews 
No.14 Get Off Of My Cloud - Rolling Stones 
No.15 We Can Work it Out - The Beatles 
No.16 Don’t Bring me Your Heartaches - Paul & Barry Ryan 
No.17 A Must to Avoid - Herman's Hermits 
No.18 Keep on Running - Spencer Davis Group 
No.19 You Were On My Mind - Crispian St. Peters 
No.20 As Tears Go By - The Rolling Stones 
No.21 A Groovy Kind of Love - The Mindbenders 
No.22 Inside Looking Out - The Animals 
No.23 I Can't Let Go - The Hollies 
No.24 The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore - The Walker Brothers
No.25 I Put a Spell on You - Alan Price Set 
No.26 Pretty Flamingo - Manfred Mann 
No.27 Not Responsible - Tom Jones 
No.28 Sorrow - The Merseys 
No.29 Bus Stop - The Hollies
No.30 Paperback Writer - The Beatles 
No.31 Get Away - Georgie Fame
No.32 Out of Time - Chris Farlowe 
No.33 All or Nothing - The Small Faces 
No.34 Got To Get You Into My Life - Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers
No.35 I'm a Boy - The Who 
No.36 Bend It! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich 
No.37 High Time - Paul Jones
No.38 I Can’t Control Myself - The Troggs 
No.39 Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group 
No.40 Help me Girl - Eric Burdon & the Animals
No.41 In the Country - Cliff Richard 
No.42 Sunshine Superman - Donovan
No.43 Got To Get You Into My Life - Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers 
No.44 Let's Spend the Night Together - The Rolling Stones
No.45 On a Carousel - The Hollies 
No.46 Penny Lane - The Beatles 
No.47 There's a Kind of Hush - Herman's Hermits
No.49 Funny Familiar Forgotten Feelings - Tom Jones 
No.50 Dedicated to the One I Love - The Mama's and the Papa's
No.52 Silence is Golden - The Tremeloes 
No.54 Okay! - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch 
No.55 There Goes My Everything - Engelbert Humperdinck
No.56 All You Need is Love - The Beatles 
No.57 Pleasant Valley Sunday - The Monkees
No.58 I'll Never Fall In Love Again - Tom Jones 
No.59 Hole in My Shoe - Traffic 
No.60 Flowers in the Rain - The Move 
No.61 The Last Waltz - Engelbert Humperdinck
No.62 I Can See for Miles - The Who 
No.63 Hello, Goodbye - The Beatles 
No.64 Let the Heartaches Begin - Long John Baldry 
No 66 Daydream Believer - The Monkees
No.68 Thank U Very Much - The Scaffold
No.69 As You Are - The Tremeloes
No.72 Congratulations - Cliff Richard

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