Wikipedia and Billboard will tell you what the teens and the avant-garde were listening to at the time - beat music, surf rock, improvisational jazz, etc etc. But what else was playing at the time? What did car salesmen or store managers who failed to be hip to the kids listen to? Kids way out in the sticks who dropped out of school to become farmhands? Parents who couldn’t make sense of all that newfangled rock? I’m thinking of US, pre-1965, but experiences around the time or in different places are welcome.
Well, if we look at the songs that made #1 on the Hot 100, there are definitely some pretty square tunes in that era that were popular enough to top the charts. For instance;
- “Theme From *A Summer Place” by Percy Faith & his orchestra (#1 for 9 weeks in 1960)
- “Calcutta” by Lawrence Welk & his orchestra (#1 for 2 weeks in 1961)
- “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” by the Highwaymen (#1 for 2 weeks in 1961)
- “Stranger on the Shore” by Mr. Acker Bilk (#1 for 1 week in 1962)
- “Dominique” by The Singing Nun (#1 for 4 weeks in 1963)
- “Ringo” by Lorne Greene (#1 for 1 week in 1964, probably because the teenyboppers thought it was by Ringo Starr)
Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets” was the #1 single of 1966. Can’t imagine any hippie teenagers listened to it.
Folk music was very popular. Peter, Paul and Mary, Kingston Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, Pete Seeger and others were popular. There were a couple of TV variety shows that were folk music themed, Hootenanny being one.
Cover albums by people like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were very big. They might spend as much as a whole day in the studio recording one.
Some albums would have “themes”. E.g., Martin did a couple country albums and a latin music album.
The early '60s was largely a musical dead zone, with many of the original rockers either dead, in the Army, having gotten religion and so on.
“The teens” were mostly listening to pop vocal dreck by a succession of forgettable performers. This listing will give you an idea of the stuff that was circulating at the time.
Teens were still the major buyers of 45s, so that music reflected their tastes. Adults had a wider range, including classical and Broadway show tunes. In addition, artists from the 40s and 50s were still doing their thing.
Also, some of the most popular albums of the early 60s were comedy albums – The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Allan Sherman’s My Son, the Folk Singer (and a couple of its followups), The First Family all were number one, and Stan Freberg was also very popular.
Just get yourself down to the local thrift store of any variety. Check out the vinyl LP records (if they have a stack). The answer to your question rests in those extremely common titles.
The early 60s seems to be when my parents’ musical tastes were formed. I remember from my own youth that their record collection contained film and Broadway soundtracks, folk, classical, comedy, standards, Christmas albums, but no rock.
Easy listening pop orchestras were very popular. Mantovani was my parent’s favorite. I have their old albums now and enjoy them too.
Henry Mancini and Ray Conniff are other Favorites from that time.
Folk music was “hip” in a way. Pete Seeger was still blacklisted as a Commie as the 50’s ended. The Kingston Trio & New Christy Minstrels were “pop” folk. Peter Paul & Mary were Village folkies formed into a group by Albert Grossman; commercial success was their goal but they were some of the first to perform songs by Grossman’s other client–Bob Dylan.
After the Beatles hit & Dylan went electric, there was some complaint from purist folkies. But many a younger folkie decided to plug in, turn on, etc. Rock had been moribund, due to Elvis getting drafted, Jerry Lee Lewis marrying a teenage cousin, etc. One long-ago Creem genius complained of “the heinous Frankie-Bobbies of South Philly.” But Del Shannon & Johnny Rivers were cool.
There was plenty of “pop” music–some of which was played on stations that played more rock. (Some of that rock was soft-centered–like the dreadful Lou Christie.) Those same stations played Motown & other black talent; you could hear the funkier stuff on black stations.
Show tunes were big. As was elevator music by Mantovani & Tiki sounds by Martin Denny. “Lite” jazz had wide appeal–again, the farther-out stuff had a more specialized audience.
There were still many Country fans.
Great. You just gave me a particularly awful earworm :mad:. Thank you very much…
But there’s a *lot *of great stuff on that list! The conventional wisdom that rock & roll “died” in the early '60s is mostly rooted in the fact that so many of the greats of the '50s were out of action in those pre-Beatles years, but really: we had surf music of both the vocal (Beach Boys) and instrumental (Ventures) strains; the girl groups/Phil Spector’s hit machine; Chubby Checker and the dance crazes like the Twist and the Watusi; the Coasters were still around, Del Shannon, Little Eva, Booker T. & the MGs, and so on and on…it was nothing like the wasteland it’s painted as. Sure there was a ton of dreck, too. There always is.
That was one of my parents’ old records and my first favorite song I remember. It must have been around 1972 when I was four years old, but I learned to handle our record player and wore out the grooves. My other two favorites from those times were “Hot Love” and “Metal Guru” by T. Rex we had on a hit compilation album. Go figure…
Let us not forget Rock & Roll’s mortal enemy Mitch Miller. His show warped the TV airwaves in the early 60s and its influence was felt far and wide. But as Biffy noted above, the time wasn’t nearly the wasteland it is made out to be. Living in SoCal at the time meant surf music was everywhere, and that scene was hopping!
I’ve been listening to a lot of Syd Dale, which is listed on YouTube under “Bachelor Pad Music”. 
An uncool oboe player?
Unpossible!
(Mitch played on the Charlie Parker with Strings sessions in 1950, along with a small classical string section and a jazz rhythm section. He was the only wind instrument present, aside from Bird. No word on whether he shot up any heroin with Bird during the gig, but he may have skin-popped a little just out of politeness’s sake)
[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew]
But there’s a *lot *of great stuff on that list!..Chubby Checker and the dance crazes like the Twist and the Watusi
[/QUOTE]
:dubious:
That song and its ilk make me wanna puke. Anything musically without electricity
powering it–at least back then–sucked.
Bluto, is that you?