What music do/did your parents listen to?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I was thinking, as one does inevitably this week, about "Jazz on a summer's day". I got my Dad to take me to it, one Sunday, when I saw him in the last few years of his life. He thought it was good. He used to like a lot of the old Swing era singers who were still around. But my parents split when I was two, so I never knew my Dad very well; certainly not from that angle.

My mother liked general pop music. Perry Como was her favourite. I bought a few of his albums in 1960, for something she could enjoy. I was astounded, however, when I brought my first Duke Ellington LP home, in 1960, and she said she'd seen him live in the '30s!

But I wouldn't say her taste influenced me, not even as a teenaged reaction against it.

MG

Edited November 25, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[Shawn]

I lived with my Grandmother till I was 4, my first exposure to music was the records that my Mother & my Uncle had left behind when they both went to college. I fondly remember those 45's...Rolling Stones, Steppenwolf, The Beatles, The Guess Who, Badfinger, etc...plus albums like Bill Cosby's Himself, Pet Sounds, Beggar's Banquet...

Later when I went to live with my Mother I started listening to CSN&Y, Jim Croce, Seals & Crofts, James Taylor, Judy Collins, Janis Joplin, The Doobie Brothers, etc.

When I was 6 years old (1976) I discovered Kiss...that was when our paths diverged. I think the last album we both loved (at that time) was Heart's Dreamboat Annie. Kiss was followed by Boston, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, etc.

She got tired of listening to that stuff so she decided to turn me on to "higher quality" rock: Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Queen, Yes and others.

I diverged yet again when I discovered Iron Maiden & Judas Priest (1981 by this point). Again she questioned my taste and again she countered with bands that she enjoyed: Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple & Black Sabbath. I'll always be grateful for that..I still listen to them today.

(I've never quite figured out how I missed Zeppelin during the 70's, I listened to the radio all the time but I never owned a copy of Zep 4 until 1982)

It's funny that she has never gotten used to my love for jazz. She appreciates the talent involved but it just doesn't "hit" her. It's okay though, we can still hang out and crank In Rock to 11.

[Noj]

My dad only likes oldies, and my mom only likes pop music she can sing along to. Dad had oldies radio going in the car (if any music at all), and Mom played albums by John Denver, Anne Murray, The Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel, Carly Simon, Jim Croce, and others all the time when I was a kid. I have two older brothers, one of whom listens to nothing but 1980s heavy metal. My other brother likes 1980s alternative rock. So, the earliest music I had in my collection was hand-me-down tapes in a mish-mash of all of the above. Once I wanted to establish my own listening tastes, I parted ways with stuff my family liked and started listening to bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Firehose and other skateboard-punk bands. At the same time, I started to dig rap by groups like De La Soul, Public Enemy, Erik B. & Rakim, and even gangster acts like NWA.

I grew up playing basketball and skateboarding, so I had a very diverse group of friends because those sports attract participants across all cultural lines. I began to be exposed to many different varieties of music through my friends. A few friends were DJs spinning records at local parties, and they taught me about sampling in rap and how beats are laid down to rhymes. One friend used to get a cappella versions of rap songs and press the lyrics up to instrumental beats originally used for other rap songs. This was an intriguing process to me, songs could be transformed into other songs. I had cool audio cassettes for the car which would throw passenger friends for a loop, as songs would start with the beat with which they were familiar yet have the lyrics from a different tune.

I learned about sampling and began to love to track down the songs which were sampled. I found I liked these old songs much better than the rap songs which were created from them. At the same time, a good friend was given his father's jazz lp collection and I began to hear a lot of jazz over at his house. John Coltrane's Giant Steps and Africa/Brass and Horace Silver's Song For My Father were music listening epiphanies for me. I'd always been partial to instrumental music, and here was instrumental music which was so much more advanced and nuanced then anything I'd heard previously.

I think my early exposure to music was so shallow that when I began to understand the depth of what is really out there I was hooked on trying to know more. I now like to switch from genre to genre and keep the mood changing all the time. I love the diversity of sounds, and the fact that no matter how large my collection grows there's always more to hear. I love not being stuck in a rut, I'm not stuck to any genre, and I don't care what year something was recorded in. Jazz has grown to be my favorite genre because I find it the most rewarding, but I keep it sounding fresh and prevent myself from being bored by what I hear by diversifying my listening. Along the way I've started collecting blues, funk, soul, reggae, dub, salsa, afrobeat...

[Bright Moments]

[Rooster_Ties]

What one's parents didn't listen to probably matters too. I was born in 1969, but my parents were almost old enough to be my grandparents. (My mom was 36 or 37 when I was born, and my dad was 42 or 43.) Thus they were old enough to have never really listened to The Beatles, nor 50's Rock 'n' Roll even.

When I went through my own Beatles phase in jr. high school (around 1980-82, if my math is right), I was listening to music that my parents didn't particularly like all that much. They didn't out and out "hate" it, but it wasn't their thing either (except maybe "Yesterday" or "Eleanor Rigby".

But my mom also had some hip musical tastes, here and there -- hip for her age and era, anyway. She had the original Jesus Chirst Superstar concept albums when they very first came out, and she had even gone to the original concert version (circa 1970?) a year or before it was ever "staged" for musical theater. (She said she held her ears (as pseudo-earplugs), cuz the thing was so loud, but she loved the music.) I think she would have been about 37 or 38 at the time.

My dad's musical tastes were and are pretty much limited to polkas and marching band tunes -- enjoyed two or three times per year at most. He really isn't and wasn't musically oriented, and he never turned on the radio, nor did he ever enjoy recorded music for its own sake. Oh, he also liked barbershop quartet music, and good church hymns.

My "Hendrix" phase in high-school (circa 1985-86) really pushed their buttons.

Edited November 25, 2006 by Rooster_Ties

[Matthew]

Actually, there as never any music in my house growing up. The T.V. was turned on in the morning, and left on all day. It was only in the retreat of my bedroom that any music was played.

[paul secor]

My parents listened to 40's-50's pop music when I was young, and not even to much of that, so they didn't have much of an affect on my listening or tastes.

Shortly before my father died, he heard me playing a Lester Young/Teddy Wilson record and told me that when he was in his very early 20's and worked in NYC (1939-1941), he used to go to Harlem to hear the music in the clubs there. It was strange to hear that, since music never seemed to be of any importance to him.

[mikeweil]

My father (born 1907) was 47 when I was born and never intently listened to any kind of music! But he confessed that he liked Louis Armtrong as he did play a little cornet in a brass band in his youth.

My mother (born 1919) had the radio playin' all day, mostly classical music - and she put on records with Beethoven and Schubert symphonies, which I all knew by heart when I started developping my own tastes and began to appreciate only when I found a new approach to them when played on period instruments. She played a little piano, had to abandon her wish to become a dancer when WWII hit the world ..... woefully restricted her musical asctivities to that of a housewife tinling Xmas tunes ....

Now my brother (born 1941, 13 years older than me) loved rock'n'roll and always turned the radio's knob for AFN - when he moved out with his wife they left over a handful of records, mostly Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and the like, but there was a Vogue EP by a Lionel hampton Trio which I found strange, and a Metronome EP with the Modern Jazz Quartet's first Prestige session (Vendome etc.) which fascinated me - the subtlety as opposed to the highly emotionalized rock by hendrix and Joplin which was the hits of the day. When I started buying singles it was all pop, but when I switched to LPs it was three rock albums (Paul Revere & The Raiders, Cream, Pink Floyd's first) and then all jazz, well almost ....

Edited November 26, 2006 by mikeweil

[Jim R]

Similar discussion: My Dad's Questionable Musical Taste...

[chris olivarez]

Wasn't around either of them long enough to absorb their musical tastes.

[king ubu]

Interesting idea for a thread!

I was most certainly influenced by my parents' musical tastes in mostly a positive way - no need to rebel against their tastes, although my embrace of jazz quickly included areas they were unwilling to cope with - my father hates organ, though he has an original LP of Jimmy Smith's "The Cat", he also thought "Free for All" - the Blakey one - was "free jazz"... but at least he did own it, and give me a first chance to hear what I still consider the most exciting Blakey album.

The record collection of my parents was pretty diverse - lots of classical (mostly from my mother), lots of pop/rock/folk stuff (never any hard rock, just lots of Beatles and Dylan etc - Dylan, thanks to my dad, still is one of my loves today, I started buying his CDs at age of 13 or so, which was just about when the CD came into stores, in the early 80s). They also had some indian classical and other "ethno" or "world" stuff, but that's an area I am only slowly getting started in.

Oh, and my mother loved "Amandla" from Miles... so I got into MD backwards, more or less. "We Want Miles" was one of the first CDs I had, probably even before "Kind of Blue" - I had gotten that from the library at school, but back then I muchly preferred the other Miles one they had, "Workin'". At the school library I also got into "Ascension" for the first time, and playing that aloud at home was something that made my parents... well, not exactly scream, but politely ask me to turn it down a bit and close my door...

Anyway, I guess I took a lot of hints from them (another one would be one of those early, maybe the first?, Sly & the Family Stone LPs my father had), but went places from there, getting into music much deeper than they ever did. The one area where they, mainly my father, are into deeper than I am is indian classical - they attend concerts whenever they can (I have seen Hariprasad Chaurasia, Zakir Hussain and others with them, on the few occasions I went along), and my father buys 10 or 15 new CDs a year on his frequent trips (business/NGO) to India.

(edited for some typos - I guess there are more...)

Edited November 26, 2006 by king ubu

[brownie]

Little music at home. And mostly off the radio in those hard times pre-TV years.

My father did not listen to music much but my mother tuned in when singers like Yves Montand and Charles Trenet were on. Not to mention Edith Piaf and Les Compagnons de la Chanson.

My parents had the good idea of acquiring one of those early radio-plus-turntable piece of furniture that enabled my brother and I to play vinyls as soon as we caught the jazz bug!

[sidewinder]

A mix of classical and easy-listening (Matt Monro etc.) in my parents' place, with one shipwrecked Buddy Rich Liberty LP ( ) which I homed in on. An uncle had quite a good jazz vinyl collection and was often playing Bird, Diz, Wardell Gray, Buddy Rich, Oscar Peterson etc. I borrowed 2LPs on Stateside (I think) of the 'Wardell Gray Memorial Album' and the damage was done. Those LPs are still two of my favourites.

[Jazzmoose]

We always had records around, and I was encouraged to play them. I think that, as I close in on 50, my parents musical taste has a larger influence on me now than it did when I was younger. Dad was big on C&W, and that was something I rebeled against. Now I love it. His jazz selection was pretty limited, a Sarah here, an Ella there, and a couple of Jack Teagardens, so I don't know if that affected me at all. I think the main effect was just that music was supposed to be a major part of life, even if you didn't play it yourself...

[jazzbo]

I was definitely influenced by the music I heard in my home. My dad had Bach, Beethoven and Mozart mainly in the classical world, organ music records as well (because he had researched the life of my great great great great great grandfather David Tannenberg, who was a pipe organ builder) by E. Power Biggs and others, and swing music by Miller, Goodman, and even a few Ellingtons. My mom had a few Brubecks (Jazz at Oberlin, Time Further Out, and Bossa Nova USA) and a few singers (Haymes, Clooney) she listened to.

Oh, and dad is a Gershwin nutball, has all kinds of George all the time.

[Dan Gould]

My parents had Sinatra, Benny Goodwin and Ella Fitzgerald records, though they really didn't listen all that often. The Ella and Louis records were most critical to me, because they were familiar to me when I heard them again in my early 20s. At that point I was looking for something new to listen to, growing bored with late 80s radio, oldies, classic rock, and decided to give jazz a chance.

[jmjk]

My dad only likes oldies, and my mom only likes pop music she can sing along to. Dad had oldies radio going in the car (if any music at all), and Mom played albums by John Denver, Anne Murray, The Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel, Carly Simon, Jim Croce, and others all the time when I was a kid.

I general, my parents were very much like Noj's. Dad usually listened to Doo Wop and 50s/60s oldies, Mom was in the Soft Rock Zone. Records by Dan Fogelberg, Barry Manilow and Bread were common in my house, as well as Anne Murray, John Denver, etc...

Dad can be a little more hip. He likes it loud (still does--my parents were 21 when I was born

in 1969---they tell me that's around the time the ear-splitting volume started ). He still loves going to rock concerts.

Edited November 28, 2006 by jmjk