When I was little, I listened to a lot of music. At a very early age, I was able to change records on the small record player that my parents had on a shelf in our dining room. My parents bought me several children’s records. My favorite was a 45 on the Peter Pan Records label called The Teddy Bear Dance. The flip side of this record was a song called Teddy Bears on Parade. I listened to this record almost all of the time. It would still get played when I got older and we purchased more advanced stereo equipment. I even took this disc to college with me and entertained my friends lip syncing to the songs.
At some point going back and forth to school, I lost this disc. I always remember the songs knew The Teddy Bear Dance well enough that I would occasionally perform it for small groups. About 12 years ago, I decided to try and find a copy of this record. I did searches on the internet with no real success. I thought that eBay might be an option. I had done searches for other records on eBay in the past. At this point, it was hard to find individual 45’s for sale on eBay. Everyone was selling records in lots, usually in quantities of 25, 50 or 100. Sometimes in the sales, they would have the individual titles listed. When I was seriously looking for this record, I spent many hours looking though these listings with no success. On the rare occasion I did find the record, the set was well beyond the price I wanted to pay. There were a handful of sets where the seller had not listed the individual titles. I sent these people messages asking about The Teddy Bear Dance but no one had a copy available.
One Monday, I received a follow-up email from someone that had already told me that they didn’t have what I was looking for. She had been at a yard sale over the weekend and had run across a copy of The Teddy Bear Dance. She purchased it and wanted to send it to me for free. When they saw that our address was in Jackson, TN, she replied that she grew up in Jackson.