George Harrison was born in a neighbourhood which, as he once recalled, looked like Coronation Street, but saw out his days in homes which would have been beyond his wildest childhood dreams. A cramped two-up, two-down terraced house in Arnold Grove in Liverpool’s Wavertree area was Harrison’s first home.
The young George lived with his bus driver father, Harold, who had been a seaman for many years, and his mother Louise, who was of Irish descent, and his two brothers, Harry and Peter, and sister, also called Louise.The living room at the front of the house was barely used and the family used to gather in the kitchen for the warmth of the stove and the fire. The Arnold Grove house had an outside toilet, at the back of the yard, like most homes at the time, and, for a short while, a hen house. There was no bathroom, just a zinc bathtub which would be filled from the kettle and pans. As he recalled in the Beatles Anthology: “My earliest recollection is of sitting on a pot at the top of the stairs having a poop– shouting ‘finished’.”
When he was five, the family moved to a new council house at Speke after having spent many years on a waiting list. Like many other children he disliked school–in his case, Dovedale Road Infants –which he remembered smelled of boiled cabbage. Sharing a playground at the same time was John Lennon, although they were unaware of each other due to the two-year age gap.
Harrison has spoken of a happy childhood, during which he would listen to the family radio and hear old dance bands and the familiar voices of Josef Locke and Bing Crosby. But his earliest musical memories were of listening to Hoagy Carmichael songs and One Meatball by Josh White. Elder brother Harry had a portable record player which he would lovingly pack away after each use–and which the rest of the family were barred from touching. But fascinated George and brother Pete would sneak it out and spin discs, listening to artists such as bandleader Glenn Miller, whenever Harry was out.It was through a shared musical interest that he became friendly with Paul McCartney, who would catch the same bus coming home from school. McCartney, then 14 to Harrison’s 13, played the trumpet and they would often talk about their interests, later poring over chord books to learn tunes. The budding guitar hero would sit at the back of class at school, drawing guitars instead of concentrating on lessons.The flourishing friendship between George and Paul saw them head off on a hitch-hiking odyssey to Devon with barely any cash, sleeping on the beach in Paignton. Using a meths burner to cook along the way, the pair survived partly thanks to the goodwill of the people they met on the way and head back through Wales. Paul later moved away from Speke to Allerton, close to Lennon’s home on Menlove Ave, and he swapped his trumpet for the guitar.
Though still at school, Harrison and McCartney would try to get a bit more credibility by sneaking out, ditching their uniforms and hanging out at the nearby art college which Lennon attended.“I remember the first time I gained some respect from John was when I fancied a chick in the art college. She was cute in a Brigitte Bardot sense, blonde, with little pigtails,” Harrison said.“I pulled her and snogged her. Somehow John found out and after that he was a bit more impressed with me.”
In Their Own Words 
I was surprised to see Josh White mentioned because I didn’t know his records traveled so far. But it actually makes sense. He was blacklisted in the United States, and so had to restart his career overseas on the BBC.
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That is really interesting, wow. I found this on Wikipedia:
“With work rapidly drying up in America, White relocated to London for much of 1950 to 1955, where he hosted his own BBC radio show, My Guitar Is Old as Father Time, resumed his recording career, with new successes, such as “On Top of Old Smokey”, “Lonesome Road”, “I Want You and Need You”, “Wanderings”, “Molly Malone” and “I’m Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town”, and gave concert tours throughout Europe and beyond. However, back in the United States—the country of his birth—the McCarthy anti-communist hysteria had already greatly dismembered White’s career as early as 1947, when he lost his record contract and his national radio show, and was barred from appearing on other radio shows. His Hollywood blacklisting began in 1948, after completing his final film role in The Walking Hills, and he would not be allowed to appear on U.S. television from 1948 until 1963. Meanwhile, the 1940s politically Left-leaning social progressives who had survived the Red Scare, had begun reviving the folk music industry in America. They would keep White shut out from their folk festivals, their folk magazines, their emerging record companies, and their media and press for most of the remaining years of his life.”
Thanks for pointing this out!
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