In the '40’s, a song had a great deal more importance than an arrangement by a particular artist. Most of the popular songs in the '40’s were recorded by several different big name bands or singers, and all could be heard on the radio the same week. In addition, many radio stations had their own studio orchestras and singers, and popular songs would often be heard sung live on radio shows.
On 1950s TV,Lucky Strike’s “Your Hit Parade” was an extremely popular TV show, with the top ten songs of the week sung by the four regular singers on the show. It was the song that was the hit, regardless of who the singer was. This was possible because the “boring” songs that everyone liked were the ones that ordinary people could sing or whistle, and the song retained its character regardless of the style of the singer of the embellishment of the arrangement.
What stuns me is that my grandfather was my age (40) around 1968. He probably saw the college-age students of that time as complete freaks who were destroying civilization. I just see current college-aged students as a slightly more naive version of my generational cohort with a lower attention span (but they probably view me as a hideous old fart).
I imagine there was a fairly huge gap between the music from rock groups that went on pop radio or the Ed Sullivan show and the deeper album cuts. I know my grandmother once saw a promo for the “Doors” and said she thought they were a “light” band, with “People are Strange” and “Light My Fire.” The whole oedipal lizard king side of their music never filtered through to them. To my grandparents, from what I remember of their reactions; the Beatles were relatively innocuous, if slightly grating and unkempt, boys who occasionally did a “proper” song like “Yesterday” or “Something.” “Happiness is a Warm Gun” or “Helter Skelter” would be off their radar.
Returning home from college for Christmas 1967, my dad was greeted by my grandfather - a WW2 veteran who fought under MacArthur - who mentioned that he had bought a copy of* Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band* and had enjoyed it very much. He claimed that his favorite song was “She’s Leaving Home”, because it was about family and how parents should play a part in their children’s emotional lives, and not just provide for them physically. A good man, my grandfather, but not a very subtle one.
This total does not include volunteers, but there were plenty of men in the applicable age group(s) who were never in the military for a variety of reasons.
My father was a WWII vet whose musical tastes were not mainstream for his time, based on the records in the family collection (I recall “Stone Cold Dead In The Market” sung by Ella Fitzgerald, among others which could hardly be called boring). I don’t think he was especially fond of what I was listening to at the time, but the only song I can think of that either parent actively hated was the Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” (which my mother loathed).
My father was barely old enough to enlist at the end of the war but too late to get into any fighting. He never really got out of the Big Band era. He was not a huge music fan but when he did listen he never listened to rock, even early rock. My mother was born 7 years later and is about the same age as Elvis. She was caught in the in between generation. She grew up loving Sinatra. In her early 20s when rock and roll hit in the 50s she had her hands full with babies and wasn’t paying much attention. She did learn to like Elvis and some of the early rock acts up to early Beatles but she mostly stuck with crooners.
I was just thinking basically the same thing; all these guys in their 40s during the 1960s seemed SO angry about all this stuff- hippies, “ni**er music”, long hair, etc…
I’m 43, and I listen to modern-day pop music and don’t find it particularly offensive. It may not be my style, or I may think that a lot of the performers aren’t terribly talented (Ke$ha, Juicy J (that guy is atrociously stupid)), or they’re assembled in a factory somewhere to a template (Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez- all 3 to the “young pretty latina” template) But I don’t hate the music per-se.
And I admit to being a bit perplexed by the obsession/mania about mobile devices among that crowd, but it’s not a hating sort of thing either- more of a curiosity combined with bafflement. (“Really? You think ANYONE actually reads your twitter feed? Bless your heart.”)
My grandfather preferred classical (which actually was pretty popular before the 1950s). My mother and father (though not a WWII vet – too young to be drafted) liked showtunes (as did I).
I can’t recall any of them making comments about out music, other than the one time my mother asked me to explain Frank Zappa. :eek:
I have no idea about vets’ reactions, but I have to join others in defending WWII era music. If you expand backwards to include all of the '30s (which anyone old enough to have fought in the war would have lived through) you encompass some of the greatest music-writing years in the history of the United States: Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, to name a few. I bet more of it will stand the test of time than things from the latter half of the century.
Now that I think of it, I do have one data point re. the vets’ reactions: my grandfather, a vet, warned me in the early '90s against listening to the Beatles and their ilk. It wasn’t a response to their music, I think, so much as to the kind of counter-culture stuff they represented. At the time I thought it was silly (though of course I listened and nodded politely), but with some hindsight I kind of understand: it must have been difficult to live through the turmoil of the latter '60s
No need to wait. The current era is about as removed from the Gulf War as the late '60s is from WWII.
Why would you think that? Do you know a lot of millennials who listen to music from the '30s? Feel free to Youtube search those you listed, only a White Christmas breaks 5 million views. Amusingly, one of the most viewed Cole Porter uploads is Anything Goes…as heard in Fall Out 3. Oh, the humanity.
My parents objected more to us playing it loud than to us playing. Plus there was also concern about spending too much money on frivolous things (they grew up in the depression) and not concentrating on school work enough.
But there probably a far greater gap between 1945 and 1969 than there is between 1991 and 2016
There was a thread a couple years ago about what rock stars, if any, had served in World War II. Surprisingly, the first rock ‘n’ roll singer of them all–Jackie Brenston–was a WWII vet!
• Big band
• Jazz
• Broadway/show tunes
• Blues (i.e., “race records”)
• R&B (i.e., “race records”)
• Country and western/hillbilly
• Bluegrass
• Folk
Note: There was a division between “white” and “black” music that was racist, stupid, and unfortunately a thing. That doesn’t mean that white people only listened to “white” music and black people only listened to “black” music.
Add to the above lots and lots of novelty, vocal, dance, instrumental, and other types of records.
I agree with the fact that the 30s were a fantastically creative time for the American song. In addition to those you mention, there were also Jerome Kern and Harry Warren.
By the 40s, they were well established, and 40s music just doesn’t measure up. It wasn’t until the Beatles that popular music started regaining its luster. The major exception was showtunes, which had a golden age from about 1948 to 1965.
I just don’t see a big difference between big band, Jazz, blues, and R&b and back then, it’s not like 1940’s country had different types of country like the 60’s and 70’s had. Johhny Cash, Kenny Rodgers, John Denver and maybe Willie Nelson all had really different styles. I just don’t see that type of differences in the 40’s.
I’m not trying to bash music from the 40’s, but the music that came out in the next generation is probably the best music that came out in the history of the world. I guess what i’m trying to say is that with how great the music was in the 60’s/70’s, i’d be surprised if WW2 vets or anyone from “The Greatest Generation” didn’t like it, at least a little, but at the same time, I can see them being very stubborn in not wanting to like their kids music. This was probably the biggest counter culture clash America ever saw.
Let’s address both these statements. In 1944 a bandleader named Moe Jaffe reworked an old English folk song. By the end of 1945, Bell Bottom Trousers had become one of the most popular, and most recorded, songs of the decade. Listen to these versions and tell me you don’t hear a difference between:
There’s another issue that hasn’t been mentioned much in this thread: the social implications of music.
Muisic in the 40’s may have been boring to some. Or, on the other hand, maybe the 40’s had as many different styles as the 60’s. But either way, there is still a huge difference between role that music played in American society during the 40’s, vs the 60’s .
The 40’s music was boring to people like the OP because of one thing: it was all respectable. Even the “forbidden” music, (say, jazz played by blacks) was respectable–its audience consisted of adults wearing suits and ties, and it could be studied by professional musicolgists.
Nobody felt threatened by it.
The 60’s of course, were totally different. Music was part of the new changes in society.
And older people had good reason to feel threatened and scared…their lives were being changed by forces beyond their control. And the music was a very noticable and “in your face” aspect of those changes.
