Australian singles charts:
The Days of Pearly Spencer entered the Kent charts on 8 June 1968 and peaked at #42.
Songwriter:
David McWilliams
Producer:
Mike Leander
Record label of Australian release:
Decca
Wikipedia:
Days of Pearly Spencer was written and originally performed by Northern Irish singer-songwriter David McWilliams.
The song had, according to Stuart Bailie of Radio Ulster, a “flickering, almost documentary style” in which it took listeners to the more run-down parts of Ballymena (a town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland) where people walked through rubble bare-foot looking old beyond their years. Due to the title of the song, many listeners believed that the song pertained to an individual harrowed by a poor lifestyle and poor-quality alcohol; McWilliams said he had written the song about a homeless man encountered in Ballymena.
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Pearly_Spencer
Lyrics:
A tenement, a dirty street
Walked and worn by shoeless feet
In silence long and so complete
Watched by a shivering sun
Old eyes in a small child’s face
Watching as the shadows race
Through walls, and cracks and leave no trace
And daylight’s brightness shuns
The days of Pearly Spencer
Ah, ah, ah
The race is almost run
Click for full lyrics
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