The Postcard
A postcard published by Coastal Cards Ltd. of Clacton-on-Sea. The artwork was by Trow.
The card was posted in Hastings, Sussex on Wednesday the 12th. July 1961 to:
Mr. Lacey,
51, Middle Park Avenue,
Eltham,
London S.E. 9.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Mr. Lacey,
Having a grand time, and
the weather has been great
up until now.
The children love the sea,
and we don't see them when
the tide is out.
Hope you are keeping well -
John sends his regards.
Best wishes,
Mr. & Mrs. Heath".
Trow
"Trow" has been claimed as the pseudonym of Frank Eric Smith, who was born in Salisbury on the 2nd. March 1908, and who lived most of his life in Dorset and Wiltshire. He died on the 5th. October 1985.
According to Smith's family, he drew many seaside postcards in the late 40's and early 50's, and derived his pseudonym from 'Trowbridge', the county town of Wiltshire.
However, Smith claimed to have stopped drawing in 1952, whilst new cards signed "Trow" continued to appear in large numbers until the late 1960's.
It seems that the cards prosecuted by the DPP for indecency in the 1950's were in fact drawn by Thomas Trow (1909-1971) of Stoke on Trent, whose address appears on the reverse of surviving artwork, as the Greyfriars Art Studio.
The Crash of ČSA Flight 511
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 12th. July 1961, ČSA Flight 511 crashed near Casablanca-Anfa Airport in Morocco. The 8 crew and 64 passengers who were on the Ilyushin II-18 were all killed. The flight had originated in Zurich.
The accident investigation determined that the crash resulted from a controlled flight into terrain, but the reason why the aircraft did this was never determined.
106 days earlier, on the 28th. March 1961, another Ilyushin Il-18 operating on the same flight, ČSA OK-511, crashed near Nuremberg, Germany, killing all 52 passengers and crew on board.
'Temptation'
Also on that day, the Number One chart hit in the UK was 'Temptation' by the Everly Brothers.
Their version was a re-working of the old standard that was first published in 1933, with music written by Nacio Herb Brown and lyrics by Arthur Freed.
The song was introduced by Bing Crosby in the 1933 film Going Hollywood. Crosby recorded the song with Lennie Hayton's orchestra on the 22nd. October 1933, and it reached the No. 3 spot in the charts during a 12-week stay.
The song was used in the film Singin' in the Rain (1952) and later in the 1983 musical based on the film.
The song is also prominently featured in Valerio Zurlini's Violent Summer (1959).
An interpretation was featured in the first episode of The Muppet Show, with Miss Piggy, four chickens, four frogs, and two male pigs being led by Kermit the Frog in the Muppet Glee Club.
The Everly Brothers
The Everly Brothers were an American country rock duo, known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing.
Consisting of Isaac Donald "Don" Everly (born 1st. February 1937) and Phillip "Phil" Everly ( born 19th. January 1939), the duo combined elements of rock and roll with country and pop, becoming pioneers of country rock.
The duo was raised in a musical family, first appearing on radio singing along with their father Ike Everly and mother Margaret Everly as "The Everly Family" in the 1940's.
When the brothers were still in high school, they gained the attention of prominent Nashville musicians like Chet Atkins, who began to promote them for national attention.
They began writing and recording their own music in 1956, and their first hit song came in 1957, with "Bye Bye Love", written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. The song hit No. 1 in the spring of 1957, and additional hits followed through 1958, many of them written by the Bryants, including "Wake Up Little Susie", "All I Have to Do Is Dream", and "Problems".
In 1960, they signed with the major label Warner Bros. Records and recorded "Cathy's Clown", written by the brothers themselves, which was their biggest-selling single.
The brothers enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1961, and their output dropped off, though additional hit singles continued through 1962, with "That's Old Fashioned (That's the Way Love Should Be)" being their last top-10 hit.
Long-simmering disputes with Wesley Rose, the CEO of Acuff-Rose Music which managed the group, a growing drug usage in the 1960's, as well as changing tastes in popular music, led to the brothers' decline in popularity in its native U.S.
However Don and Phil continued to release hit singles in the U.K. and Canada, and had many highly successful tours throughout the 1960's.
In the early 1970's, the brothers began releasing solo recordings, and in 1973 they officially broke up. Starting in 1983, the brothers got back together, and continued to perform periodically until Phil's death in 2014.
The brothers were highly influential on the music of the generation that followed it. Many of the top acts of the 1960's were heavily influenced by the close-harmony singing and acoustic guitar playing of the Everly Brothers, including the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel.
In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked the Everly Brothers No. 1 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of 1986, and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
Don was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2019, earning the organization's first Iconic Riff Award for his distinctive rhythm guitar intro to the brothers' massive 1957 hit "Wake Up Little Susie".
The Deaths of the Everly Brothers
Phil Everly died at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, on the 3rd. January 2014, 16 days before his 75th. birthday, of lung disease.
Phil's widow Patti blamed her husband's death on his smoking habit, which caused him to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and recounted Phil's spending his final years having to carry oxygen tanks with him wherever he went and taking 20 different types of medications per day.
Don Everly claimed in a 2014 interview with the Los Angeles Times that he had given up smoking in the late 1960's and that Phil had stopped too, but started again during their breakup and had continued until 2001.
Don said that weak lungs ran in the family, as their father, Ike, had died of black lung disease.
He admitted that he had lived "a very difficult life" with his brother, and that he and Phil had become estranged once again in later years, something that was mainly attributed to their vastly different views on politics and life.
Music was the one thing they shared closely, with Don saying:
"It's almost like we could read each
other's minds when we sang."
Don also stated that despite their differences, he had not gotten over Phil's death:
"I always thought about him every day,
even when we were not speaking to
each other. It still just shocks me that
he's gone."
Don added that he had always firmly believed he would die before his brother, because he was older. In a 2016 interview, Don said he was still coping with the loss of Phil, and that he had kept some of his brother's ashes in his home. He added that he would pick up the ashes every morning and say "Good Morning", while admitting that it was a peculiar ritual.
On August 21, 2021, Don Everly died at his home in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 84.