Not many people will remember Felix Mendelssohn & His Hawaiian Serenaders.

Out of the charts for more than 50 years, it was a chance mention in the Express & Star that brought the memories flooding back for Rowley Regis couple, Cyril and Ruth Taylor.

Ruth was just 17 when then boyfriend Cyril bought her their 78rpm record on their way home from Horace Sadlers’ afternoon dance in 1949.

After reading about “their tune” in the newspaper she dug out the old record, still in mint condition after 60 years, and 56 years of marriage.

Ruth, aged 77, said that reading about popular 1940s tune, A Rose in a Garden of Weeds, brought all the memories flooding back. She said: “We were walking home from the dance humming the song and Cyril, who was 22, told me he’d buy it for me.

“I said it would be too expensive, but he went into the record shop, now the Cake Emporium in Halesowen and got it.

“We can’t remember how much it cost, but it must have been less than half a crown.”

Cyril, now 82, met Ruth at a dance in the local working men’s club, on leaving the army in 1948, after serving in Palestine and Egypt.

The couple, of Oldbury Road, Blackheath, married at St Paul’s in the town in 1952 and have one son, Nicholas, now 48.

They became regulars on the dancing circuit, only giving up just three years ago after Ruth became ill.

Ruth, a former factory worker, and Cyril, who worked for Austin at Longbridge, danced every evening and twice on Saturdays. She said: “That was quite normal then. I started going at 14 and it would be Horace Sadlers’ on Saturday afternoon, then somewhere like the Borough Hall in Halesowen in the evening.”

After starting out ballroom dancing, the couple picked up bronze, silver and gold medals in Latin, before taking up American Square dancing in 1979.

And they still attend regular dance meets despite hanging up their dancing shoes.

Although their music systems are more up to date now, the couple still keep an old fashioned record player to listen to their old favourite dancing songs.

But of all the songs they have danced to, in all the dance halls across the country, it is Felix Mendelssohn & His Hawaiian Serenaders and A Rose in a Garden of Weeds that will always hold a special place in their hearts.

Ruth said: “We’ve bought a lot of records over the years, but this is the first we bought together and the oldest of our own.

“It will always be a special tune for us,” she added.