Alvin and the Chipmunks

My husband and I have bought quite a lot of old records recently. His favourite includes the violin, trumpet, guitar and jazz music and he looks for records with good recording. Being a practical person, I am not that particular. "Value for money" is my first consideration, with some exceptions of course.

In our collections, there are albums by Elvis, Beatles, Bee Gees, Tom Jones, Cliff Richard and many other artistes who were our teen idols. In those days, there were no computers and internet, listening to pop songs was teenagers' favourite pastime, a real "cool" thing in that era!

Last weekend, in our usual routine of treasure-hunting (looking for records and other collectables in the flea markets), I came across three albums of animated music by "Avin and the Chipmunks". Over excited with the rare find, I grabbed them all without hesitation and forgot even to bargain as I normally did. "Avin and the Chipmunks" was one of the favourite TV series which I watched together with my children many years back. I had never missed any of its episodes. Their songs were just beautiful.

To be more specific, I love songs by all animated groups. And as I recall, it was not "Alvin and the Chipmunks" that had first enchanted me. Yes, it was another group, "The Grasshoppers", in the 60s when I was around ten. The "singing bugs" were brought home all the way from Singapore by my uncle. Very attractive album cover, depicting three grasshoppers, wearing straw hats and bow-ties, leaning against the piano and singing joyfully. Songs in the album were lively and catchy and I learnt my first English song, "how much is the doggie in the window" with these grasshoppers. May be that's the reason I have deep feelings for songs by animated characters!

Introducing my "Alvin and the Chipmunks" collections to my husband, I could not wait to spin them on the turntable. "Songs by the chipmunks? I didn't know chipmunks could sing!" I heard him mumbling to himself as I walked into my room.

I turned on the record player. The needle was making its journey through the record groove. I was excited to hear the sweet voices of the trio wafting through the air.....

It was the album - "Around the world with the Chipmunks". The Chipmunks were singing in Japanese .....

All of a sudden, my husband peeped his head through the door I left ajar, "Chipmunks are really clever; not only they can sing, they even know Japanese...." 

Frankly, you may laugh, I also thought so when I first heard the "singing bugs" (grasshoppers could sing!?), not knowing that it was a technique of speeding up the playback to get that higher pitch voices.....