My parents listened to Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, The Mills Brothers, etc. they weren’t really my cup of tea, but I didn’t run creaming from the room (not that I would have been allowed to in the first place). It’s still not my first choice, but I’ve grown to appreciate it as I’ve aged.
Oh yeah. Lot of big band swing stuff like Glenn Miller, jazz ala Herb Alpert and a bunch of traditional classical i.e. Bach, Beethoven, etc. Good music is good music.
I can do almost every hit song Al Jolson ever recorded. 
Mammy!!!
Doesn’t count unless you’re in blackface.
My parents, born in the mid-late 30’s, didn’t collect much music, and didn’t listen to it much at home when I was growing up in the early 60’s. In the living room was a brace of maybe 20 LP’s next to the record player. Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Holst, Prokofiev, that sort of thing. Also jazzier stuff like Herb Alpert, George Benson. I listened to all of them, and liked some more than others. I loved Bugs Bunny in my single-digit years, so Liszt’ Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 had/has a special place in my heart. 
My parents’ generation listened to 60s and 70s Soul and R&B, to the point I remember tons of 45s with the Stax and Motown logos everywhere in the house, with the typical transition to funk and superbands in the 70s. I still listen those. Where we deviate is they still follow Soul and R&B artists even now and I stopped once I left for college, so they’re always amazed at the stuff I haven’t heard.
I inherited my love of Simon & Garfunkel and Joan Baez from my parents.
My mom used to blast classical music on Sunday mornings to wake us up. Listening to the beginning of the Spring section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is still a traumatizing experience.
Well, of course it is. You’re supposed to use the third part of the William Tell Overture to wake somebody up. Didn’t your mother ever watch cartoons?
My mom and dad listened to a lot of pop music from the 70’s and 80’s when I was growing up, as well as the pop music that was going on when I was a kid. I generally liked most of the music my dad played a lot of, and consider some of his favorites my favorites too. Elton John, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, etc etc.
Neither of my parents were into any alternative, hardcore, or weird stuff. So I never fostered any love for underground bands or anything like that. I do like them when I hear them, but whenever I hear people talking about bands they have discovered, it always seems like such an alien experience to me. I just stick to pop music, and that seems to be what my parents did too.
My Dad liked 1940’s Big Band, light classical, and in later years watched Lawrence Welk reruns. When I was young, I didn’t care for anything that wasn’t rock, but now I’ve come to appreciate big band swing very much. Still can’t stand the saccharine nature of Lawrence Welk and Welkish ilk.
I don’t know about that, Lawrence Welk could push the envelope at times:
Gail Farrell and Dick Dale singing “One Toke Over The Line.”
:rolleyes::smack:
Literally grew up on Big Band. I knew Artie Shaw and Tommy Dorsey, et al., before I knew who the Beatles were.
When they weren’t listening to BB, they had the singers on: Sinatra, Bennett, Martin, Fitzgerald, Cole, Day, London, Darin, among many, many others. Classical, jazz, and show tunes were also very popular, which fuels my love of old musicals to this day.
My dad was all over the map. He loved bluegrass (the old timers like Flatt and Scruggs) but I also remember him playing The Kingston Trio, the soundtrack to “West Side Story” and he introduced me to Beethoven’s 6th Symphony.
I consider ELO to be the gift my mother gave me. My dad tried to give me The Carpenters, but I shipped them right back. I ***hate ***The Carpenters.
My mom liked Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, and Elvis. But she also liked Tom Jones and Helen Reddy.
My dad liked Johnny Cash and The Animals.
So all in all, not bad. I went through a mid/late teen phase where I couldn’t stand their music but I came back.
My mom mostly listens to folk, a taste I share with her.
Dad, I don’t think actually had any taste in music at all. His sole criterion for whether he’d listen to something was whether it was Christian. With no Sturgeon filter in place, this meant that 90% of what he listened to was crap. Still, the 10% that wasn’t, I like OK, and he had a great voice for singing spirituals.
Love Spike Jones, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Nat Cole and show tunes. Never a fan of Slim Whitman or those guys on Midwestern Hayride that my Dad watched every week.
My father played around with guitar and sang a bit. “Sunshine (Go Away)”, “Sunshine on My Shoulders”, “Song Sung Blue”, that sort of thing. My mother didn’t play or sing, but occasionally turned on a country music station. I found it all inoffensive to mildly pleasant, but never did much with music myself other than listen to it, so it wasn’t apt to be the ground for big generational conflict.
I’m not sure our generation has timeless songs being made right now but then again, I bet kids in the 60’s and 70’s thought the same, maybe not?
My mother loved Benny Goodman, her biggest thrill ever was when my father arranged for Benny to be at her table at a UN Day dinner. I listen to the CDs of the Carnegie Hall concert frequently.
She had a 78 of Spike Jones’ version of Laura, I have lots of that. She liked show tunes also, and they had a copy of Rock Around the Clock. She also liked light opera. So we were pretty compatible.
My kid discovered that learning Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues stood her in good stead when she went to college.