Little Sir Echo

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 428, 5 September 1947, Page 10

Little Sir Echo

TATION 2ZB’s Junior Request Session is just another manifestation of youth’s eternal striving towards adulthood, Indeed, but for the announcer’s interpolations, "Our next number is requested by Bobbie of Wairau, aged six-and-a-half," and the fact that, since it’s Sunday, we are still in bed, we might think this any other popular request session. Educators and others who think childhood a precious and irreplaceable thing may find it disturbing that a nine-year-old living in a lighthouse should request a particularly sob-choked rendition of "The Gipsy," and that a seven-year-old boy’s favourite recording is

"Sonny Boy," sung by the Andrews Sisters. Somewhat healthier was the demand of three members of a West Coast family (aged 7, 6, and 4) for "The Drover’s Song," sung by Buddy Williams, a cheerful ditty well garlanded with yippy-yays. But it seemed to me significant that there was no request for anything remotely describable as a

classic (unless "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" is regarded as a classic among popular songs) and that there was only one request for ¢ song that could be regarded as ae child’s song (‘Frog Puddles.’"’) Possibly the fact that the Children’s Hour has been sacrificed to the electricity shortage has something to do with it, since children now have little opportunity of hearing songs specially intended for them, But it is my considered opinion that it will take more thorough-going treatment to turn our precocious Junior into something nearer to Tust William. f