Israelites

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The Great Desmond Dekker

I have just flashed on a memory from the late sixties. A camping trip to Kinver -1969? Me, Phil Edwards and Johnny Jones. I seem to remember it was supposed to be a week’s adventure. We found a pitch outside of the town, not sure how far - a mile? One image, however is burned into my brain: the three of us heating up baked beans at the back of the community centre in the centre of that small town, having climbed over the fence to get into a narrow alley - why there of all places when we had plenty of space at the camp?
The upshot of the whole thing was we ran out of money and food after three days and had to phone my dad to come and fetch us. We ended up back at Winson Street...
The thing that fixes all that firmly and absolutely in memory for me is Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ - on the radio at the time and still in my collection of valued singles.

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