there were no recordings around the house.

Lots of MUSIC around the house, but no recordings.

I suspect that might be true for lots of us, Linn. I was for me. We had a piano that none of us could play (Wertheim upright with 3 pedals; I never did work out the function of the third pedal) but the bloke next door would often visit and he could accompany almost anything we cared to sing, so there were a lot of songs sung; G&S, popular from the 1890s through to the 1950s would cover the most of them, although there were quite a few "scout songs' that were originally English folk songs.

Cheers, Rowan