NPR - Music That Drove Your Parents Crazy

On her Facebook my sister pointed out this NPR blog and asked what our parents listened to and a discussion followed about what music we and they listened to: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2010/10/22/130749993/music-that-drove-your-parents-crazy?sc=fb&cc=fmp. It was interesting to see the answers. She is 20 years younger than I and I was a little stunned to see how much things had changed in the world of musical equipment by the time she was in high school compared to myself or compared to now. I was the age of transistor radios, a virtual dinosaur, she was early CD players, all the way to the current crop of MP3's and on. I still have some tapes and a tape player. What did your parents listen to and did your music bother them?


My parents had a photograph, a portable phonograph in the loosest sense of the term portable. They kept their record albums in a small cabinet Dad had made out of plywood and varnished. Plywood was a lot nicer in 1940. My maternal grandmother Grace had a mahogany console with a 78 rpm turntable and a built in radio including short wave, much fancier. I spent many hours sitting in her lap listening to the Grand Old Opry, an imprint which remains. When I was around four years old, 1946, my two year old sister and I would whirl around the house to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" and Khachaturian's "The Saber Dance." The parental units had quite a collection of classical music as well as stuff like Nat King Cole, the Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, and other WW2 dance band records (real records). My favorite was Helen O'Connell's singing "Green Eyes," those cool and limpid green eyes. Sigh! Mom used to tell us that during the war that in order to buy a new record you had to turn in an old one. Early recycling in a material short world. Later Mom got Barbra Streisand, Helen Reddy, Sergio Mendez, and Herb Alpert. Dad added some recordings of Japanese folk music and bagpipe music.

Later Mom began dialing up "easy listening" am stations, probably because they were playing music she already had and liked, she stuck with them for the remainder of her life. I wasn't allowed to have any records until I was nearly out of high school and there was only one radio in the house, my mom's. We did have a TV by then, a Hoffman Easy Vision. It had a greenish screen that was supposed to be easy on the eyes. I think I was about 13 when that was acquired. However when Elvis came on Ed Sullivan my mother got all huffy and turned him off and I missed seeing all of that milestone event. So I guess my answer is ELVIS drove my mother crazy. But we could watch "Your Hit Parade" until it exited in 1959 the year I started college and "American Bandstand." My junior year in high school Dad who traveled to Japan often then, returned with a state of the art portable transistor radio for me. Transistor radios the new thing.

Mom and Dad got a new phonograph that played 45s and we were off to the races. I had a job and could buy whatever I liked with my money. Records and clothes, and so it began. Turned out it wasn't the music they objected to, it was paying for it. Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, the Sherelles, as well as Ike and Tina Turner who I saw in one of those big reviews that used to come to Seattle in the late 50's and 60's. I'm still a big Creedence Clearwater fan. And, Seattle turned out to be a hotbed for new music.

Now, like my mom I have some old favorites, and I like some of my sons' music, including AC/DC, some Iron Maiden, and later Nirvana and company. I love Yoyo Ma. The last CD's I got or was given were Nightwish, a Finnish heavy metal band with operatic overtones; I prefer the early ones with Tarja Turunen their original soprano; a Dave Mathews, and a replacement disc for a damaged Chieftains' CD that I had played to death, and a five disc collection of soul and R&B. Rock on!

Homesick

Sometimes I get homesick. I never actually lived in my parent’s last home they shared together. Peculiarly it seems like my old home to me. They stayed there longer than anywhere else. It surprises me how strong the desire is to be back there. For just a bit I want that feeling that I’m home and I’m somebody’s kid again. I visited mostly in the summer and that’s the season in my memory. There’s Mom sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning with her coffee and her magnified mirror relentlessly pursuing chin hairs. She got up early to have some alone time. She’s in a terry tank top she liked to wear in the summer, white and lime striped. The kitchen table sort of blocked the entry and she sat on the kitchen side relaxing in her territory. She’d stay up late sometimes and clean the kitchen. You could hear the rumbling of the dishwasher in the downstairs guest room after everyone had gone to bed.

Dad would go get the paper in the morning, everyday after he retired. Sometimes times I’d walk up to Safeway with him to get it. We’d get the paper and wander around inspecting the veggies and fruit and maybe buy something else and walk home. He’d wrap his head with a cloth Japanese style and go out and trim the hedges, mow, and pull weeds until he needed to hire someone else to do it. He still pruned though.

There are really only a handful witnesses to my early childhood left. Part of me is disappearing like a dream. It’s as ancient history as any. Dad’s work kept us moving often, 14 schools in 12 years, and more houses. Because of that constant moving the two older of us don’t have childhood friends. They didn’t buy a house and stay put until I was a junior in my third high school. The second house they bought was where they stayed.

It’s funny that while they were alive I lived my life most adults do, but when they were gone, I discovered I had possessed a feeling that if anything went wrong there was someone who cared and had an answer just for me and that was gone too. I remember Dad saying home was a place where you could always come for a hot meal, a good night’s sleep, and a loving word. He was talking about his home, and that’s how I felt. I have never quite slept so soundly as I did when I visited there.