I trace my folkie roots back to my mom. Back in the early sixties, when I was young enough to be impressionable, but not old enough to reject them because they were, yanno, …Mom’s, she brought home lots of folk albums, that I borrowed, fell in love with and scratched all to hell and gone. Among the ones I remember playing over and over on our giant piece of furniture stereo console were:
My dad didn’t have any records, but my mom did. While I enjoyed a few things from her collection, the only one that I still listen to now is Jonah Jones’ Muted Jazz. Actually my vinyl copy is long gone, so I had to grab the nearest CD version called I Dig Jonah. He does my favorite version of St. James Infirmary.
Their collection is entirely pre-rock (they were born in the late 1920s/early 30s), and mostly classical and Broadway shows. Plus a lot of weird 50s stuff like Persuasive Percussion and those Jackie Gleason albums to get drunk to, whatever they were called. The ones I eventually adopted were Calypso by Harry Belafonte (the only folky one) and Jazz Samba. I still have both of those. I’m surprised in retrospect there were no other jazz records.
I’ve picked up a few of those weirdo Enoch Light LPs in years gone by but I never listen to them. Is there an Aged Hipsters’ Home I can give them to?
What was so weird about those? Some (all?) were recorded on 35mm multi-track mag-coated, sproketed film with the very best studio musicians and they were the cutting edge of tech at the time. Do they sound too much like elevator music nowdays?
Turns out they didn’t really like those bands (apart from the Beatles) - they were gifts from relatives trying to get them into music. The stuff they liked was:
Dad had some homemade cassette tapes he either made himself or had someone else make for him. Mostly folky stuff. Some songs I have vivid memories of listening to on one of those old, single-speaker tape recorders:
“Puff the Magic Dragon” – Peter, Paul and Mary
“Leaving on a Jet Plane” – Peter, Paul and Mary
“Blowing in the Wind” – Bob Dylan
“Richard Cory” – Simon and Garfunkel
“The Ballad of Ira Hayes”-- Johnny Cash
“Commanche” – Johnny Horton
“Jim Bridger” – Johnny Horton
Same here. The records in their collection that I liked included Peer Gynt Suite, various Christmas LPs (some of which I have), and a few anthologies that included things like Sarah Vaughan’s “Broken Hearted Melody” and Brook Benton’s “Kiddio”. Also some comedy records – The First Family, Bill Cosby’s Wonderfulness, and a Jonathan Winters record (I think it was Another Day, Another World).
My parents had a huge record collection but none of it was very memorable. One day I sat and listened to their 45’s for several hours. Only a couple were catchy, but I can’t remember now what they were.
There was a time though in elementary school that I discovered their vinyl copy of Simon & Garfunkle’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. I must have listened to that album five times a day for about a year. Just yesterday I was scrolling through my iPod for something I haven’t heard in a while and rediscovered it. I was amazed how it still holds up and what a great album it still is. Terrific stuff for a couple of teenagers.
I credit my folks’ record collection with making me a Bob Newhart fan. The Button-Down Mind records were awesome. To this day, when I want to make fun of a company I think has shoddy prodcuts, I refer to it as the “Grace L. Ferguson [whatever] and Storm Door Company.” Depressingly few people think it’s funny when I say this. Maybe it’s my delivery. I don’t have Bob’s super-dry style.
Roger Miller (greatest hits)
Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers (The Boys Won’t Leave The Girls Alone; Isn’t It Grand, Boys)
Ray Charles (greatest hits double album)
Harry Belafonte (greatest hits, also a double album, I think)
Bill Cosby (Wonderfulness; Revenge)
I still listen to the Clancy Brothers quite a bit. I think my least favourites were The New Christie Minstrels and The 12 String Guitar of Glen Campbell. Oddly enough, once my dad switched to cassettes, he only listened to country music.
and an album that they got as as a premium at a gas station featuring American music - it had Rhapsody in Blue, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Adagio for Strings, Putnam’s Camp (Ives), the Overture to Candide and A Real Nice Clambake from Carousel. An interesting mix, and it helped me appreciate various forms of music.
My Dad grew up in 1960s Liverpool, UK, so you can guess what he was listening to. Yep, country and western. Buck Owens to be precise and the Bakersfield sound - must have had 20 albums.
Never made much sense to me - he had some more mainstream country stuff like Merle Haggard, Charlie Pride, Waylon Jennings etc that was good to listen to as a kid.
The only records my mom ever had were some Vicki Lawrences and some Olivia Newton Johns and maybe a Carpenters or two. I think my dad had a record of fishing songs once.
If it weren’t for my uncle, I don’t think I’d even know what music is.
Like others, I didn’t take much to their general music collections, but I listened to their novelty records over and over. Mostly Bill Cosby’s “Wonderfulness”, “I Started Out as a Child”, Allan Sherman’s Peter and the Commissar, and a bunch of 45s of Stan Freberg, Homer and Jethro, and Spike Jones.
I can’t hear Stars and Stripes today without thinking of the chorus of Homer and Jethro’s Crazy Mixed up Song.
Raiding has that secret quality to it and I never did that, but I borrowed stuff from my dad all the time. I still do when I visit home, except now I just load it onto my iTunes. So we skip the stage where my dad can’t find his copy and blames me for not putting it back. I got most of my Band albums from him, and a lot of Hendrix and Allman Brothers shows. I’ve done some extensive raiding of my little brother’s CDs, too. That’s where a lot of my Coltrane albums come from. I got Blue Train, Soultrane, and Dakar from his collection.
I got most of my Band albums from him, and a lot of Hendrix and Allman Brothers shows. I’ve done some extensive raiding of my little brother’s CDs, too. That’s where a lot of my Coltrane albums come from. I got Blue Train, Soultrane, and Dakar from his collection.