The Greatest Generation: Music and Affection

Cafe Society
1

Music has come to be, since the 1960s, the “soundtrack to our lives.” What we love in music may define us as individuals and separate us from the herd. The music we listen to, and the subcultures or identities that come along with such music can come to be part of our overall identity. Music is a powerful, transformative force. PDA has also become a big part of our culture, as has affection in general.

My question is, for those here who had “Greatest Generation” parents…Why do you think music wasn’t very important to them? Why wasn’t displaying affection important?

My parents were both born in 1954. My mother’s parents were born in 1920 and 1927. My dad’s parents were born in 1929 and 1933. Neither of them remembers music being at all a staple of their respective households, or of their parents dancing together. Neither can recall their parents ever saying “I love you” to each other, or to them, nor do they recall seeing their parents kiss or openly display affectionate behaviors in front of them. Such open displays of emotion just weren’t common it seems. Obviously, my grandparents had affection in their marriages: My mom’s parents had children between 1949 and 1963, and my dad’s parents had 7 children between 1954 and 1970.

My mother, actually, was shocked when I uncovered a photo from a yearbook from 1967 of her parents - she was shocked because my grandfather had his arms wrapped around my grandmother. Even that level of affection isn’t something she remembered seeing growing up. Yet here evidence of it was in plain view.

But the question is, why were the Greatest Generation as they have been called so repressed when it comes to both music, and displaying affection? Was it simply something they kept hidden from the kids, or was it that they just weren’t into it? If so, why?

2

The Greatest Generation DID like music. They listened to music, they danced, they sang, they bought records. They just didn’t regard music as a statement of their identity.

People liked Glenn Miller, but they didn’t obsess over Glenn Miller the way some people obsessed over the Beatles.

As for affection, remember two things:

  1. Every generation thinks it’s the first to discover sex. Well, Grandpa and Grandmadid it, too. And they probably liked it as much as youbdo.

  2. The degree to which people display affection openly depends more on culture and ethnicity than on generation.

3

Not only did members of the Greatest Generation like music, but they sang enthusiastically about potato salad while literally tying themselves into knots.

4

I’ll put it this way. My grandpa is alive and not senile, and he is 88. I could not tell you a single song he likes. And in all honesty as curious as I am about him, and the things that make him a person in terms of his personal identity (music, memories, films he love(d) growing up, etc), I’d feel weird asking. Both of my living grandparents - my mom’s mother, and my dad’s father - are very repressed in this respect. I don’t want money from them, or anything. I’d just like to know them as three dimensional people rather than simply the anecdotes they’ve told me, but that seems impossible with that generation

5

Maybe that’s your grandparents. Mine were the exact opposite.

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6

My grandparents would be even older than that, and I’d have no trouble telling you their musical tastes. Maybe it’s just your grandfather.

The only difference between then and now, music-wise, is that they didn’t carry their favorite music with them wherever they went, because they couldn’t.

7

My parents were both born in 1913. All through my childhood, my father listened to classical music or Broadway and played piano, while my mother listened to old standards. Music was a big part of their lives.

As far as PDA is concerned, I never saw them hold hands or kiss or even dance together.

8

I don’t get the OP. Each of my parents loved music before rock. What about teeny boppers going nuts for First-Gen Sinatra? Listen to Jump Blues like T-Bone Walker or Louis Jordan - folks went nuts for that stuff.

:confused:

9

My parents loved Broadway; my grandparents loved classical. So music was a part of their lives – but was wasn’t all-pervasive. They never played the radio while they worked, for instance, and didn’t listen to records except when they wanted to listen to records.

They were not physically affectionate (at least, not in public – they had three sons and my mother was on the Pill when I was college age). Public displays of affection were frowned upon and that carried over to private life.

10

Please read a book on popular music history. Music has always been central to American culture.

People used to get together for concerts, sing-alongs, and general celebrations using the folk music of their culture, from Irish reels to German oom-pah bands to southern banjo and guitar, as well as upscale waltzes. Pianos became the first sign of upward mobility as families moved into the middle class; they listened to someone play and sang popular songs from the predecessors to vaudeville. Sheet music sold by the millions.

The phonograph moved that up an order of magnitude and radio boosted that. The 20s were called the Jazz Era because the young spent their time going out at night to dance. Big Bands toured the country by the hundreds and dominated radio. Glenn Miller was a sensation never to be exceeded, except that the furor over Sinatra did. (It helped that Miller died during the war.)

Broadway and movie musicals produced hundreds of hit songs that were the soundtrack for those years, and people tuned in every week to hear what the top ten were on Your Hit Parade. As soon as television hit, music became visible and in everybody’s home. The new long playing 33 1/3 RPM records created a craze for hi-fi, high fidelity music consoles.

That’s just hitting the highlights off the top of my head. Music was always omnipresent in almost every cultural niche in America since the beginning. Some people may not have cared for music, in the same way that some people didn’t care about sports. That doesn’t take either music or sports out of their predominance.

Using two people to generalize about a generation? Gently put, that’s nuts.

11

I don’t know anything about the OP’s grandfather. What I would say, based on broad experience and generalization is… knowing the songs he liked probably wouldn’t tell you much about him. Since the Sixties, people have sought out different types of music. Hence, the music they embrace gives you some clue what they’re all about.

In my teen years, if a kid was into Yes, King Crimson, Rush and ELP, you knew: intellectual, precocious, slightly alienated nerd.

If he was into Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell? You get a certain picture, right?

If he was into Liza Minelli, Bette Midler and Peter Allen? You get a picture in your head, don’t you?

If he was into Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden? Again, you get a picture in your head what kind of kid he was. Music is very personal today. There are MANY genres, and the genre you embrace gives us a clue to your personality.

If I tell you my 10 favorite albums and my 10 favorite books and my 10 favorite movies, you probably COULD get a good idea of the kind of person I am.

But my grandmother? Suppose I told you her favorite singer was Bing Crosby, her favorite author was James Michener, and her favorite movie star was John Wayne (all true, incidentally). What could you conclude about her/

Not much!! EVERYBODY liked Bing Crosby in the 1940s! Everybody read James Michener in the Fifties. John Wayne was EVERYBODY’S favorite actor for decades. In short, my grandmother liked what practically everyone in America liked!

There wasn’t nearly as much variety in pop culture in your grandpa’s day as there is now. Ergo, his likes and dislikes wouldn’t tell you a lot.