My parents are a little younger than the generation the OP refers to (dad born in 1933, mom born in 1940). Neither of them were ever big fans of rock / rock & roll; when they were in their 20s and 30s, they’d listen to folk records at home (particularly the Kingston Trio); my mom was also a fan of Nina Simone.
When I was old enough to be cognizant of such things (early 1970s), I thought that my parents were fans of “beautiful music”, because they listened to that radio station all the time (Mantovani, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, etc.) But, the truth was that, at that time, the cars we owned only had AM radios, and the beautiful music station was the only station that wasn’t top-40 rock or country…so, they were listening to what they considered to be the least-objectionable format.
My mother was exactly the right age in the '60s, and she loved Benny Goodman especially. She thought the bobby soxers who went crazy over Sinatra were nuts, and so was not a big fan. But she did like various show tunes from the late '30s and '40s.
Though it was not called an oldie station, WOR in New York, and Rambling with Gamblins specifically, played mostly popular music which would be in the oldies category today.
She also had a Spike Jones record, Laura, in her 78 collection.
They did own Rock Around the Clock, but I suppose almost everyone did, and she was hardly a rock fan.
My mom was born in 1935 and avidly read the music column of Time magazine, buying quite a few albums praised there. That’s why my sisters and I grew up listening to the Beatles, Herb Albert and the Swingle Singers.
My mother (b. 1917) liked music by Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, Perry Como, Guy Lombardo. The focus was on songs, not personalities. I remember asking her, “Do you like (performer)?” She’d reply, “I like (song) by (performer)”.
I concur that the music industry used to ignore anything old in favor of new ‘product’. When I was a pre-teen in the early 1970’s, I went to a record store looking for a Chuck Berry song. The clerk acted like I was crazy. “Do you know how OLD that song is?!” There was more money to be made convincing peer-pressure-sensitive kids to spend their allowance on the latest thing than reprinting and stocking oldies. Oldie records were basically ones that hadn’t sold - when I bought the Beatles’ album “Let It Be” around 1975, all available copies were cutouts*.
*For those not old enough to remember, these were albums which hadn’t sold - for some reason perhaps involving cataloging, record stores would punch a hole in the upper left hand corner of the album sleeve (missing the vinyl disk of course) before putting them out for sale at a reduced price.
My father never expressed any enthusiasm for any music. But he did buy a hi-fi in the early 60’s for my mother. She liked Dixieland jazz, Tony Bennett, and adored Al Martino. She hated Sinatra and Bing Crosby. We would all watch Sing Along With Mitch Miller on tv. But her one true passion was polka music, she adored polka music as much as any emo goth adored The Cure or 12 year old girl adored Justin Bieber. It was a lifetime thing with mom. Sunday, a local polka hour on the radio. When she got old and I was shuttling her to doctors appointments, I had a cassette tape of polkas in the car and she loved that.
Reflecting what others have said… Both my parents were born in the mid 1920s, and when they put music on it was almost always Show Tunes-- Oklahoma particularly registers in my memory… The raciest (pardon the pun) music they would play would be Hari Belafonte.
And Annie-Xmas is exactly correct that folk music was UUUUUUGE in the early 60s. But that was for younger folk, not so much people my parents’ age.
I had a cousin six years older than I was. I envied his huge collection of folk records. Why, he must have had a dozen!
By the time I was able to buy records on my own the Beatles had intervened. I didn’t get back to folk music until the late 60s. There was no place that a young teen could hear it.
I’m ten years older than the OP so I can tell you what my parents listened to on the radio in the 1960’s: some Johnny Cash, Andy Williams, Burl Ives, Sinatra and Dean Martin, Kenny Rogers, Roger Miller, Tennessee Ernie Ford, some Elvis and the easiest of the Beatles: “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby”. They’d probably be fans of country music instead of rock/pop today, but they didn’t listen to “country” music.
They were teens during the depression and early years of WWII. They had radio, but their favorite thing to do was go to the polka dances (this was in the upper Midwest). Lots of their music experience was live, first-hand, and even self-made; my mother could play piano and the accordion, for instance. Lawrence Welk in the 1970’s and 80’s were their “classic music” from their youth, but that’s not not really what they listened to in the 1960’s.
In the 1960s, my parents (1927-1937) listened to Herb Albert, Sergio Mendez and Brazil 66, 101 Guitars, Latin dance music, tons of soundtracks like Hatari!, operas, and various Disney records. Mom sang professionally at weddings and other venues, Dad volunteered conducting a local free orchestra. My brother and I had guitars and a xylophone before we got new (as opposed to second hand) bikes.
Listening to it just now, I realize I do not like the song! :eek: The only part I like starts at 1:13 in the Nat King Cole version — the bars my Mother used to sing.
My mother liked to tell of the time they visited a piano bar with friends a decade or three after the song’s heyday, requested The Immortal Stardust, and were dumbfounded when the piano player said he’d never heard of it.
Hatari! The Baby Elephant Walk! I haven’t heard that in 50 years!
I had a turkey dinner prepared the other day, so I searched the entire refrigerator for the cranberry sauce. I knew I had an open container. I pulled out all the shelves and peered behind everything. When I finally gave up, defeated, I went into the living room. And found the container of cranberry sauce i had already taken out.
But I remembered Baby Elephant Walk as soon as I read the word Hatari! I’m *that *age!!!
I’ve always liked Herb Alpert. My older brother (b. 1947) dug him too in the '60s, to the exclusion of just about everyone other than Marianne Faithful (and, earlier, Hayley Mills). My mother, OTOH (b. 1927), was firmly ensconced in C&W (especially Johnny Cash, which was cool, and then Glen Campbell, which was somewhat less cool) while my dad (b. 1921) always had a “beautiful music” station on his car radio. Aside from some Borscht Belt comedy LPs (no, he wasn’t Jewish), the only records I remember him owning were of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians (no, he wasn’t Canadian, either).*
All of us listened to the Borscht Belt comics. Even down here in Texas. On Ed Sullivan or the Tonight show, we learned bits of Yiddish from these guys. And lots of attitude. (It must have been the summer when we listened to Tonight–we wouldn’t have been able to stay up late on school nights.)
Interesting fact: Herb Alpert’s records inspired Johnny Cash to add horns to “Ring of Fire.”
On TV, yeah. So did I. I was telling Borscht Belt jokes before I even knew what Jewish humor was. (***MAD Magazine *** was a great help in figuring this out!)
But to have an LP collection consisting of Jewish humor, Guy Lombardo, and **nothing **else? In the '60s? You gotta admit, that’s a bit … odd.
