What were your parents' tunes when you were little?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve only heard my father sing one time. We were in a karaoke bar in Tokyo in maybe 1987, and I was about 15. (Dad used to encourage me to “dress older” so we could go drinking together. It was fun.) It was one of these “upscale” karaoke places where they have a live pianist playing songs, and you can sit around the piano, which has a bar built on the edge of it for putting your drink on–very Hefner. If you request a song, the pianist will play it, and they’ll pass a microphone around to you and you can sing it.

I had never heard my dad sing in my life: not one single time. He was looking at the song list though, and saw “It Was a Very Good Year” on there, and to my astonishment he requested it, took a mic, and sang it right out. He had a really good singing voice, strong and deep; it sounded totally unlike his speaking voice.

I was shocked. I’d never even considered before that moment that my dad never sang; it never crossed my mind that he might sing someday. And here I suddenly found out that he had this whole other voice he could use that I’d never known about.

22

I first remember my mother listening to The Fifth Dimension, Captain and Tenille and The Carpenters when I was very young. I don’t know what my dad listened to, if anything. Most of the time he had the radio on it was for news or sports.

23

Mom and Dad didn’t, but Grandmother would always whistle “Santa Lucia”. But it wasn’t a whistle, more like a flowing or shshsh sound that had a slight pitch to it. I was pretty surprised when I found out that it was a real song - thought it was the sound Grandmothers made.

24

A few years ago, as a birthday present, I made my dad a mix disk with a bunch of songs he used to have in heavy rotation in his car when I was much younger (as they were all on cassete,and his new car had a CD player, he hadn’t listened to them for years). They were either from old mix tapes he made, or songs he particularly liked fom albums. It included - I’m working from memory here -

“Glory Days” - Bruce Springsteen
“You Can Leave Your Hat On” - Joe Cocker
“Braek on Through” and “The Crystal Ship” - the Doors
“Stop Dragging My Heart Around” - Tom Petty (and someone else - I forget who)
“Stronger Every Day” - Chicago
“Hold On (I’m Coming)” - Sam & Dave
“Tweeter and the Monkey Man” - Travelling Willburies
“Cocaine” - Eric Clapton
“Good Thing” - Fine Young Cannibals
“Shout” - Tears For Fears

And of course, our all-time favorite, the song that was guaranteed to get the whole car to sing along…

“Wooly Bully” - Sam the Sham and the Pharaoes

25

We must have had the same parents, because those were what my folks liked and played, and whistled and sang around the house. Rat Pack stuff, jazz vocal and instrumental standards, classical, and showtunes (“Guys and Dolls” and “My Fair Lady” were favourites, though there were many others). Also, from time to time, Big Band and Swing stuff.

26

My dad was a big band and be-bop musician back in the day. High five bro/sis!!!

27

My mother never really sung around the house, but my dad, who has a very deep bass, used to sing Where have all the flowers gone, The Sound of silence, various Flanders & Swann tunes, Tom Lehrer, The Goons, and he used to massacre “If you should go to San Francisco, be sure to wear a carrot in your ear”.

And my grandmother, too, used to sing Yellow Bird, because she was Caribbean.

28

Dad couldn’t sing a lick, and mom never had time. They weren’t very musically inclined.

I can remember my maternal grandmother singing good old Southern Baptist hymns around the house when I would stay with her. I can still sing a pretty good number of them from memory. On key, even.

29

As I said, my dad liked to whistle Yellow Bird. As far as actually singing, I remember these:

I lost my arm in the army
I lost my leg in the Navy
I lost my balls at Niagara Falls…
I lost my dick in a lady

and

*Peanut sitting on a railroad track
His heart was all a-flutter
Old Number Ten came around the bend
Toot toot! Peanut butter!

Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more
It ain’t gonna rain no more!
How in the dickens can I water my chickens
If it ain’t gonna rain no more?*

and

Two Irishmen, two Irishmen working in a ditch
One called the other one a dirty son of a
Peter Murphy had a dog, a dirty dog was he
He gave it to a lady to keep her company
She kept it, she fed it, ‘til one day on a hunt
It ran right up her petticoat and bit her on the
Country boy from Germany sitting on a rock
Up came a bumble bee that stung him on the
Cocktails, ginger ale, five cents a glass
If you don’t believe my story you can kill my royal
Ask me no quiestions, I’ll tell you no lies
If you ever get hit
With a bucket of s…lop
For goodness’ sake close your eyes!
(Sung by the Whorehouse… Quartet!)

30

Dad was a child of the Fifties and all of the music within. Put some Big Bopper on and he is in heaven.

Mom was a child of the Seventies, though she does like contemporary country. Some Monkies and she is happy. Though I do remember her singing Delta Dawn on a pretty regular basis.

31

The one album that comes to mind is the Mercury Living Presence recording of "Th 1812 Overture ", complete with real canons and those amazing bells. Dad really liked to crank it up!

32

My dad played a lot of Neil Young when I was a kid, and CSNY. He is a terrible singer, but he does it anyway. He doesn’t listen to anything new. It’s not unusual for me to come home and hear him blaring “Needle and the Damage Done” or some old Rolling Stones, Steve Miller, The Doors, Eric Clapton, James Gang, The Who, and everything else from his youth.

My mom liked all of that stuff too, but she was also fond of The Beatles, some Motown stuff, Don McLean, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Tom Petty, etc. And she would buy new music when I was a kid - Pearl Jam, Candlebox (ahah), Sheryl Crow, Tracey Chapman - all that early/mid 90s music. She also stole Nirvana’s Unplugged in NY CD from my brother and refused to return it. But then I stole it from her.

So I grew up in a house with good music, IMO. I still listen to a lot of the aformentioned bands now, especially Neil Young.

33

:smack: A typo AND a mispelling in the same post, dang it all to heck.

34

There was a lot of Beatles in our house growing up. My parents sang The Beatles fan club song to us, replacing “The Beatles” with our names. (I think that song originally showed up in Bye-Bye, Birdie, but that’s a horrible musical, so I’ll just go with what my parents told us–Beatles not Conrad Birdie.) So it might go:

We love you, Purl, oh yes, we do.
We love you, Purl, and we’ll be true,
When you’re not near to us, we’re blue.
Oh, Purl, we love you.

Someone ahemmeahem rewrote the song to include the line “And when you’re near us, we’re pink!” after the third line.

Mom used to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to me when I was helping her in the kitchen. Only the first verse, not the creepy verses after it. She sang “Hush Little Baby” when we were really little, too. I remember demanding she sing the song to my dolls because I didn’t know all the words. I’m not sure that she did, but she was really good at making them up if she didn’t. There was another lullabye she sang all the time, too, but I don’t remember what it was.

We played The Name Game a lot. Mom would start the naughty names–Chuck, Rich, etc.–and then just smile mischievously when she got to the words we weren’t supposed to say.

Dad sang (and still sings) Tom Petty songs to Mom all the time. Or to anyone in the family who will hold still, really. I seem to remember him singing “When I’m 64” by The Beatles to her, too. And I have an agreement with him that if I’m ever thrown in prison, all I have to do is sing Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” into the phone, and he’ll send all three. Well, maybe not the guns.

Earlier this month, when I moved into my apartment and out of the family home for good, I was feeling pretty homesick. I called home and chatted with my mom for a bit, and then she said, “Here, Dad wants to say something to you.” He got on the phone and he sang that Tom Petty song about living in a two room apartment to me. You know, the chorus goes: “Yeah, I’m okay most of the time, I just feel a little lonely tonight.” I think it’s called “The Apartment Song.” I’m such a softie–it made me cry then and I’m crying now.

Damn it. Sometimes it really sucks to have a good family, just because then you have to miss them.

35

In many of my earliest memories from the early 1960s, I remember my mother always singing something from Annie Get Your Gun:

“Anything you can do, I can do better”

That’s sung in the show by a woman to a man. He goes “No you can’t.” She goes “Yes I can.”

36

Mum can’t carry a tune (which she’s a bit embarrased about being Welsh).

Dad used to strum the guitar and sing Irish folk songs of all things, the Irish Rover and stuff like that. Considering he’s definitely and completely English and was in the Army at the time this was a bit left field. He stopped when Irish terrorists started blowing people up in the late 60s. Old songs about the bold IRA didn’t have the same appeal after that.

37

My parents liked pretty much what people did who came of age in the 1940s. “Big Band”, swing, showtunes, and lightweight jazz. Add to that classical, and, especially with my dad, opera.

38

My parents sang folk songs and hymns.

Really.

That’s right, I come from a long line of fundamentalist preachers and teachers. Dullsville, especially when Buddy Holly, the Beatles and Broadway show tunes are Satan’s handiwork and listening to same would result in punishment or banishment.

Really.

39

Mom was a semi-professional musician. Played organ for the church and gave piano lessions.
When I was a kid I listened to classical music (between her soap operas) and learned to appreciate Mendelssohn, Rachmoninov, Chopin, and others.
I learned to appreciate classican music at an earlly age and did, indeed, become a musician myself.