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!
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!
posted by Celia | October 23, 2010
5 Comments:
This is really fascinating. I'll read and comment on it all over lunch. :)
Fascinating article written by a kid. LOL
I have no idea who or what music he is writing about. My music tastes are obviously sideways. Broadway, classical, some jazz....keeping in mind that it is drug and drink inspired, folk still, blues, and I still love the Bee Gees. I like lady GaGa...that would drive my mother nuts. I spent my whole allowance on the music of the mid through late fifties, that did drive my mother mad. Little Richard did stir things up. I was a part of the Hollywood music scene in the 1960's peripherally, but now tinnitus drives the music away.
you are a little older than i am, but i remember my transistor radio with the earphone and going to sleep listening to it each night. i recall elvis presley going to germany - GI Blues was my first LP, a thrill beyond all others at the time since i felt totally grown getting an LP! my parents watched ed sullivan so we all watched the beatles' appearance together. they didn't like the long hair! they laughed at the way elvis moved around but did not seem offended by it. i think they liked his music - he had a background in gospel and country which they both liked.
oh, did i love "american bandstand" in the afternoons as a teen and its spin-off "where the action is!" i was pretty crazy about ricky nelson, paul anka, that whole "fabian, frankie avalon, annette" crowd, too, later moving into bob dylan, joan baez, janis ian, etc. i still love the late '60s and '70s rock and roll! it is a fav of my husband, too, who lived at a different time and on another continent! he is younger than i, yet came to the US with CDs of music from that time period!
my parents had their own music and hi-fi (cabinet style), and favored both country and big band. we enjoyed sing alongs with mitch miller and the dinah shore and hit parades shows when i was a young child. mother had a secret crush on frank sinatra, and today i am a huge fan of the older songs she loved, some produced in Rod Stewart's songbook CDs as well as by other singers in recent years. I also love classical music which i was not exposed to as a child and Broadway showtunes even though i did not attend live theatre until i was grown.
You inspire us. I've been missing you and hope you are ok.
my mother went through a brief kind of overly religious spell; once i had the radio on Bee Gee's singing Lonely Days, Lonely Nights, where would I be without my woman???? (Very early 70s). My mother said, "That music will drive the angels out of the house!"
I was a little shocked; altho we reguarly attended church, there'd never been much talk about angels actually being in the house. Given her later lifestyle, this whole phase was rather ironic.
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