Developing your musical taste

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Bev’s nostalgia thread for 1973 started me thinking about the period when I began to develop a taste in music – 1956-58. (Mind you, I’ve been thinking a bit about that period recently, buying various albums from those years.) I didn’t get a record player until Christmas ’58, so I was restricted to hearing records people brought into school, what I heard at the Judean Club on Sunday evenings, on juke boxes and, most of all, the radio and, after 1957, when we got one, on TV. I didn’t like pop music at all in the early fifties; looking back, I think that the awfulness of the pop music of that period directly contributed to so many white kids suddenly getting black music in the mid-late fifties. And so it was with me, when rock & roll came along.

The first rock & roll I heard was Fats Domino’s ‘I’m in love again’, early in ’56, when I was twelve. It seemed significant to me even then; real music, even though the words were trivial; the rolling beat and the riffing of the band behind latched onto the main preoccupation of twelve year old boys – sex. Sex not love was what was being broadcast in the music; and it was hot!

Later, when I heard Elvis Presley, there was undeniable talent there; and anger; but not much sex. (Of course, I wasn’t a twelve year old girl, or I might have felt differently about Elvis. And indeed, about Fats, who didn’t look or behave at all like a sex idol.) So I appreciated Presley, but wasn’t a fan.

I was a fan of Little Richard, when I heard him soon after. I didn’t know that he had substantially the same band behind him as Fats Domino. I didn’t know anything, but his fervour, on top of that sexy beat again, got me. And ‘Long tall Sally’ was definitely about sex, not love; and moreover, adulterous sex. And that interested me, as well; my mother and stepfather didn’t marry until after my father died, but my mother and stepfather were ‘living in sin’ in those days and I was under strict orders not to tell my father, on the rare occasions I saw him. I was nearly thirteen by then. People were worried in those days that rock & roll was corrupting the young. Well, they were right as far as I was concerned; adultery was not a problem, it was a solution.

Shirley and Lee’s hit ‘Let the good times roll’ – another I didn’t know came from New Orleans – also hit me hard. So did a South African recording, ‘Tom Hark’ by Elias and his Zig Zag Jive Flutes which I think made #1 in Britain.

The Platters were about on the radio in those days, too, singing love songs with a passion that I recognised, as were a number of other doo wop groups, though few of them made the BBC. In fact, the only ones I can remember from ’56 are Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers’ ‘Why do fools fall in love’ and the Flamingos’ ‘I’ll be home’, though it was mostly Pat Boone’s version one heard. Boone, however, I thought of as a joke. As also Bill Haley and most British attempts at rock & roll. In fact the only British artist I didn’t consider a joke in those days was Lonnie Donegan, whose songs usually had good meaty lyrics, though musically they didn’t seem like anything to write home about.

Not having a record player, I didn’t buy pop magazines, so it wasn’t until we got a TV early in 1957 that I started seeing some of these artists and found out that they were mostly black; it wasn’t something I’d thought of before. By then, my attention had been drawn to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, then Jerry Lee Lewis and the Crickets. And I saw the Platters in person at the Bradford Gaumont, where my stepfather was assistant manager. The Platters were wonderful and I was seriously besotted with Zola Taylor (even though she didn’t have all that good a voice )

Late in ’57, now fourteen, I started going to the Sunday night dances at the Judean Club in Leeds. Phew! That’s where I learned to dance. And it was Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet petite’ that taught me. It was a much bigger hit over here than in the US, strangely. It was at that club that I heard another New Orleans group, a few months later, in ‘58, Huey Smith & the Clowns, whose ‘Don’t you just know it’ was a favourite of the DJ there. It wasn’t a hit in Britain, but the DJ had picked it up and we all stomped like crazy to it; for months!

Another record I heard first at that club was ‘Jennie Lee’ by Jan and Arnie. Jan and Arnie soon became Jan and Dean, as Arnie left to have a baby and Dean recovered from injuries in a car crash. So you know what that record sounded like! I’d never heard anything like it! Sure, there were bass singers on a lot of groups’ records, but Jan was riding roughshod over the whole record on this one. You really couldn’t hear the words; all you could hear was the bass voice; it was completely nihilistic! I loved it. So did the rest of us at the club; it was another unknown record in Britain, but an anthem to us.

So was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray & the Wray Men. It was great to dance to; a very slow, pounding groove, just right for hugging a girl and standing still, except for your hips. That record kind of opened me up to instrumentals, which I hadn’t bothered with before (‘Tom Hark’ being ‘foreign’), and led to Duane Eddy, and being open to exploring jazz and soul jazz.

How was it for you?

MG

[BillF]

Bev’s nostalgia thread for 1973 started me thinking about the period when I began to develop a taste in music – 1956-58. (Mind you, I’ve been thinking a bit about that period recently, buying various albums from those years.) I didn’t get a record player until Christmas ’58, so I was restricted to hearing records people brought into school, what I heard at the Judean Club on Sunday evenings, on juke boxes and, most of all, the radio and, after 1957, when we got one, on TV. I didn’t like pop music at all in the early fifties; looking back, I think that the awfulness of the pop music of that period directly contributed to so many white kids suddenly getting black music in the mid-late fifties. And so it was with me, when rock & roll came along.

The first rock & roll I heard was Fats Domino’s ‘I’m in love again’, early in ’56, when I was twelve. It seemed significant to me even then; real music, even though the words were trivial; the rolling beat and the riffing of the band behind latched onto the main preoccupation of twelve year old boys – sex. Sex not love was what was being broadcast in the music; and it was hot!

Later, when I heard Elvis Presley, there was undeniable talent there; and anger; but not much sex. (Of course, I wasn’t a twelve year old girl, or I might have felt differently about Elvis. And indeed, about Fats, who didn’t look or behave at all like a sex idol.) So I appreciated Presley, but wasn’t a fan.

I was a fan of Little Richard, when I heard him soon after. I didn’t know that he had substantially the same band behind him as Fats Domino. I didn’t know anything, but his fervour, on top of that sexy beat again, got me. And ‘Long tall Sally’ was definitely about sex, not love; and moreover, adulterous sex. And that interested me, as well; my mother and stepfather didn’t marry until after my father died, but my mother and stepfather were ‘living in sin’ in those days and I was under strict orders not to tell my father, on the rare occasions I saw him. I was nearly thirteen by then. People were worried in those days that rock & roll was corrupting the young. Well, they were right as far as I was concerned; adultery was not a problem, it was a solution.

Shirley and Lee’s hit ‘Let the good times roll’ – another I didn’t know came from New Orleans – also hit me hard. So did a South African recording, ‘Tom Hark’ by Elias and his Zig Zag Jive Flutes which I think made #1 in Britain.

The Platters were about on the radio in those days, too, singing love songs with a passion that I recognised, as were a number of other doo wop groups, though few of them made the BBC. In fact, the only ones I can remember from ’56 are Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers’ ‘Why do fools fall in love’ and the Flamingos’ ‘I’ll be home’, though it was mostly Pat Boone’s version one heard. Boone, however, I thought of as a joke. As also Bill Haley and most British attempts at rock & roll. In fact the only British artist I didn’t consider a joke in those days was Lonnie Donegan, whose songs usually had good meaty lyrics, though musically they didn’t seem like anything to write home about.

Not having a record player, I didn’t buy pop magazines, so it wasn’t until we got a TV early in 1957 that I started seeing some of these artists and found out that they were mostly black; it wasn’t something I’d thought of before. By then, my attention had been drawn to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, then Jerry Lee Lewis and the Crickets. And I saw the Platters in person at the Bradford Gaumont, where my stepfather was assistant manager. The Platters were wonderful and I was seriously besotted with Zola Taylor (even though she didn’t have all that good a voice )

Late in ’57, now fourteen, I started going to the Sunday night dances at the Judean Club in Leeds. Phew! That’s where I learned to dance. And it was Jackie Wilson’s ‘Reet petite’ that taught me. It was a much bigger hit over here than in the US, strangely. It was at that club that I heard another New Orleans group, a few months later, in ‘58, Huey Smith & the Clowns, whose ‘Don’t you just know it’ was a favourite of the DJ there. It wasn’t a hit in Britain, but the DJ had picked it up and we all stomped like crazy to it; for months!

Another record I heard first at that club was ‘Jennie Lee’ by Jan and Arnie. Jan and Arnie soon became Jan and Dean, as Arnie left to have a baby and Dean recovered from injuries in a car crash. So you know what that record sounded like! I’d never heard anything like it! Sure, there were bass singers on a lot of groups’ records, but Jan was riding roughshod over the whole record on this one. You really couldn’t hear the words; all you could hear was the bass voice; it was completely nihilistic! I loved it. So did the rest of us at the club; it was another unknown record in Britain, but an anthem to us.

So was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray & the Wray Men. It was great to dance to; a very slow, pounding groove, just right for hugging a girl and standing still, except for your hips. That record kind of opened me up to instrumentals, which I hadn’t bothered with before (‘Tom Hark’ being ‘foreign’), and led to Duane Eddy, and being open to exploring jazz and soul jazz.

How was it for you?

MG

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

[Dan Gould]

If this is all about first music, rather than how we found our way to jazz - some of my earliest recollections are listening to AM top-40 radio with my Mom. She says the first song I really loved was 'Age of Aquarius'. I certaintly wasn't as discerning as MG! By the time I reached my teen years, disco had driven me to Album Oriented Rock stations WPLJ in NY and I-95 in CT.

The reason I haven't participated in the other thread is that I discovered that my first LP, Beach Boys Endless Summer, was released in 1974.

[robertoart]

Was this 'The Judean Peoples Club' or 'The Popular Peoples Club Of Judea', I always get these two mixed up. There was a third one as well I believe.

Listening to extended Rock Guitar improvisation by Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin b/w 14 and 16 was my catalyst for instrumental listening. During this time Band Of Gypsy's was on the menu as well. Band Of Gypsy's stayed with me, and seemed somehow more authentic and 'adult', while the others remain forever attached in my psyche to juvenilia.

Heard Wes and Blood Ulmer at 17, Grant Green at 18. This connected me to the history of Jazz, The Saxophone and wider Black American Music.

Also at the same time, met a slightly older Electric Blues guitarist while doing my painting Studies at Uni. He was a Blues purist who mostly disliked Blues Rock, and through his music collection, I was able to connect the worlds of Blues and Jazz. I was always trying to find connections between the two. I also read vociferously anything I could find about (or from the mouths), of any of the Artists associated with this music.

Edited March 6, 2013 by freelancer

[A Lark Ascending]

Pre 1969 Didn't pay music much attention but was subliminally absorbing 'The Light Programme' - a bizarre mixture of 60s MOR, the more polite bits of contemporary pop and nostalgia from earlier decades; and the strange things that my dad had on LP and reel to reel tape - lots of musicals, Sinatra, Crosby, opera arias and classical lollipops.

1969 - 70 Became smitten with a girl who had a transistor radio to her ear all the time. Got no-where there but spent a year listening indiscriminately to Radio 1 and Radio Luxembourg.

1970 - 73 Got a record player of my own, started reading music papers and decided I was far too superior for mainstream pop; started following 'progressive' rock. Got my first taste of folk rock (Fairport) and jazz rock (Soft Machine); and all sort of classical snippets wedged into rock songs .

1973 - 76 The university years; more of the same but veering increasingly towards the second division bands (affecting a preference for Henry Cow over Led Zeppelin was my version of pretending to prefer Schnabel over Uchida). Started to listen to classical alongside - Sibelius, Mahler, Stravinsky, Bruckner - and a little bit of semi-jazz in Carla Bley and Keith Jarrett.

1976-77 A mixture of punk and growing disappointment with rock began to get me looking elsewhere and experimenting with more classical and jazz.

1978 + Regular pay checks allowed for more experimentation. Listening now jumped between classical and jazz with an ever decreasing number of rock records. I didn't want to abandon rock, hating the idea of becoming an 'I only listen to posh music' type. But I found it harder and harder to connect to except for the occasional thing that spoke to me - XTC, early REM, more recently Porcupine Tree. Round about 1980 I widened to folk music, going to folk clubs, festivals and buying lots of English and Irish folk records.

Since then the core has been a revolving interest in classical, jazz and folk. In the 90s I added country and bluegrass, in the 00s a fascination with Scandinavian folk and I've also had periods of interest in African music and even reggae (I'd never have predicted that!).

As I've got older, rather than refine my tastes (I hate the idea of being a 'Discriminating Listener' [which doesn't mean I don't discriminate]) I've just found them expand out of control. I also find increasing joy from listening to the music that first caught me interest 40 years ago, finding the enjoyment in things I'd been silly enough to think I was above in the 80s.

I find a lot of pleasure currently in exploring areas of the classical repertoire I don't really know - my centre of gravity there has generally been the early 20thC. I'm enjoying going back to Baroque and beyond (Bach to Schubert I've long enjoyed) but, especially, in exploring contemporary classical - the latter is something I've banged my head against for 40 years and am only now making some headway with.

Edited March 6, 2013 by A Lark Ascending

[JSngry]

I never know how to answer to stuff like this, because I've been listening, actively listening, to music for literally as long as I can remember. Most of my earliest memories have records playing along. so,,,I don't know. Children's Record Guild? Little Golden Records? Ames Brothers? Frankie Carle? Big Joe Turner's "Flip Flop & Fly" 45? Bing Crosby? Glenn Miller? Louis Armstrong? 60 Years Of Music America Loves Best? American Bandstand? Jim Reeves' "Billy Bayou"? 78s being played at 33 1/3 & 45 because I didn't know any better and then me breaking them in half because they didn't work right?

That was then, but geez, it's not like that was my foundation and everything has flowed from that...when something comes along that feels right, hey, I go with it and see where it goes. Never does it lead back to where I was before, like, well, that was fun but it never really happened.

[Big Beat Steve]

Great first-hand reminiscences, MG!

And could it be that we are about the same age, freelancer?

When I started listening consicously to radio (must have been in early 1974) I was 14 but somehow most of what was current and in the charts or what was "the thing to listen to" among my age peers never clicked with me.

Time and again I've tried to remember how it came about that the then-current pop on the hit parades or even all that hard rock etc. never caught my ear but I really cannot recall.

Pop fare on the charts must have sounded inspid to me (disco was total no-no anyway and total anathema to my developing tastes in music by black artists from Day One) whereas hard rock, prog rock (or whatever) appeared over the top and a bit like overamplified noise (with a few exceptions, see below).

I guess music was to be no-frills and straight to the bone for me because what immediately held me spellbound, OTOH, was 50s rock'n'roll on the one hand (Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and above all Eddie Cochran were early r'n'r favorites) and jazz from "dixieland" (o.k., beyond the inevitable George Lewis' "Ice Cream" which was an early ear-catcher, a lot of it would qualify as "classic jazz") to swing (big bands and beyond) as well as whatever vintage blues sounds radio had to offer.

Luckily radio had a few good shows where you'd learn about a lot of jazz and blues artists in a short time. Another early influence was a weekly history of country music on AFN that introduced me to a lot from Hank Williams to oldtime string bands.

Soon after I started buying records in the spring of 1975 (my first two records ever bought were LPs by Duane Eddy and Johnny & The Hurricanes , certainly due to radio oldies show exposure), jazz and blues records followed, and reading on music matters must have helped a lot, particularly Joachim Ernst Berendt's Jazz Book.

Within a year or so this cautiously led me to explore Diz and Bird of 1945, and upon listening through that entire Prestige twofer it sounded quite logical to me from the start (contrary to my initial fears). So things went on from there ...

I must unconsciously have been pigeonholing certain things,though, because while I did pick up blues records by John Lee Hooker, Lightnin Hopkins or Elmore James or even Ma Rainey and Robert Johnson pretty early on (at 16 or 17), for some time I didn't quite know what to make of R&B and Jump Blues acts such as late 40s/50s Louis Jordan or Buddy Johnson. File them under swing or not? Took me a while to appreciate this sort of "crossover".

I guess most of my age peers considered my music tastes quite oddball, and IIRC except for the perennial classics of 60s British bands (such as the Beatles and Stones) Ten Years After were almost the only common ground (somehow their blues rock and ability to rock & roll if called upon - the Recorded LIve album is one that's still a keeper - did manage to grab me). And when it came ot the Moody Blues, for example, I preferred to stick with their (just-reissued at the time) first Decca LP which appealed much more than their later psychedelic affairs. And I remember that while I never was that impressed with those hard rock guitarist heroes of the 70s, after listening to the likes of Elmore James on record or to Big Joe WIlliams on stage in 1977 I figured to myself that anything beyond the gutsy essentials of blues guitarists like them was likely to be just gimmicks ..

Ah well, youthful folly and a lost cause for mainstream stuff from the start, I fear ...

Edited March 6, 2013 by Big Beat Steve

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

[BillF]

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

If this is all about first music, rather than how we found our way to jazz - some of my earliest recollections are listening to AM top-40 radio with my Mom. She says the first song I really loved was 'Age of Aquarius'. I certaintly wasn't as discerning as MG! By the time I reached my teen years, disco had driven me to Album Oriented Rock stations WPLJ in NY and I-95 in CT.

The reason I haven't participated in the other thread is that I discovered that my first LP, Beach Boys Endless Summer, was released in 1974.

Oh yes, very early recollections are good. My earliest memory is singing along with my mother to 'Open the door, Richard', which must have been early 1947, so I'd have been three and a bit. There were about a hundred and fifty versions of the song recorded in 1947, so I don't know which version it was

MG

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

[BillF]

If this is all about first music, rather than how we found our way to jazz - some of my earliest recollections are listening to AM top-40 radio with my Mom. She says the first song I really loved was 'Age of Aquarius'. I certaintly wasn't as discerning as MG! By the time I reached my teen years, disco had driven me to Album Oriented Rock stations WPLJ in NY and I-95 in CT.

The reason I haven't participated in the other thread is that I discovered that my first LP, Beach Boys Endless Summer, was released in 1974.

Oh yes, very early recollections are good. My earliest memory is singing along with my mother to 'Open the door, Richard', which must have been early 1947, so I'd have been three and a bit. There were about a hundred and fifty versions of the song recorded in 1947, so I don't know which version it was

MG

>

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

You've forgotten your Leeds geography, MG! Oakwood Lane leads off from Roundhay Road at the bottom end of the Soldiers' Field. Remember the Oakwood clock tower?

No. I was never a prefect. I was too much into deviant activities like jazz (as it it was seen in those days) for that. Under the heading of Conduct/Manners, my final school report read, "Abrupt, but rarely offensive". Perhaps I was into cool.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

>

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

You've forgotten your Leeds geography, MG! Oakwood Lane leads off from Roundhay Road at the bottom end of the Soldiers' Field. Remember the Oakwood clock tower?

You're right, of course. The road I was thinking of, now I've looked at the Google map, is Old Park Road. Not sure about the clock tower; was there a cheap cinema (ie fleapit) down by there?

MG

[cih]

i drive past that tower quite regularly, taking the kids to 'Tropical World' just up the road, where they have various animals of a tropical persuasion. The old man in the photo is still there today.

[BillF]

>

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

You've forgotten your Leeds geography, MG! Oakwood Lane leads off from Roundhay Road at the bottom end of the Soldiers' Field. Remember the Oakwood clock tower?

You're right, of course. The road I was thinking of, now I've looked at the Google map, is Old Park Road. Not sure about the clock tower; was there a cheap cinema (ie fleapit) down by there?

MG

Yes, I thought you meant Old Park Road, where the school entrance was. Still off the mark with Oakwood, though. No fleapit, but to help you get your bearings, you can just see to the immediate left of the clock tower in the photo a hint of the red roof and white wall of a house at the bottom end of Old Park Road. You lived at the top end of OPR; the school entrance was in the middle.

[BillF]

i drive past that tower quite regularly, taking the kids to 'Tropical World' just up the road, where they have various animals of a tropical persuasion. The old man in the photo is still there today.

I'm afraid my knowledge of the area is more than 40 years out of date. But I did go to another part of Leeds last March - Seven Arts in Harrogate Road - to hear Eric Alexander in a Dave O'Higgins quintet. It takes something very special to get me across the Pennines nowadays!

[jazzbo]

I heard a LOT of music within the family growing up. My mother's father played banjo and later organ in the parlor. He was a crusty old salt of a guy but he could play and if I could be still and observant, I could hang. My father's mother played keys and in the dining room there was both a stand-up piano AND an organ. My dad played clarinet and bass-clarinet in school but I NEVER heard him play a single note. Music was on the stereo very often though, a lot of Gershwin (and he pointed out to me very early on the coolness of the clarinet glissando in Rhapsody in Blue) and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and two records each of Ellington and Brubeck. I also seemed to have a part-time job at his church (my father was a minister from my age 2 to 11, then a Peace Corps Deputy Director, then Director til I was 17, then a minister again til he retired about 15 years ago) as we were always there for services, dinners, etc. and I set up chairs, ushered, read, etc. and there was always music.I got a good dose of the church music (most of my childhood my father's church was predominantly African-American and there was a lot of good music!). The neighborhood had a lot of radios going in cars and out of house-hold doors too, and I lived three houses from a corner bar that had great sounds coming from it as well. I had that Philly soul sound going in the street.

Then after Philly it was Africa. . . I heard Ethiopian music on the radio and in the air, and was fascinated by the church music there when we attended services more than thrice. And after Ethiopia, it was on to boarding school in Swaziland, where we students had access to BBC over the airwaves and to Radio Lorenco Marques, and there I mainly heard British bands and the American bands that BBC played, a different sort of music. I remember my whole "dorm" (which was a big room split by a stairway rising to the back and with four bunkbed cubicles with two boys in a cubicle, not totally enclosed, on each side) stayed up illicitly and listened to all of "Abbey Road" being played on the radio, that was a trip. Also in Swaziland a Peace Corps volunteer under my father's direction gave me a handful of records, three of which were jazz titles he didn't want: Leo Wright's "Blues Shout," Slide Hampton's "Sister Salvation," and Charles Bell and the Contemporary Jazz Quartet's "Another Dimension. Those records were like Greek to me at first, but I still have them, and have listened to them (on lp, on tape, on cdr) ever since. I think those three records cemented my probably inevitable gravitation towards jazz.

[jeffcrom]

I'm loving the Roundhay School reunion - too cool!

My parents always had a variety of records - mostly classical and big band. When I was very young - I'm guessing around three or four - I wouldn't go to bed until they played "Cool Water" by the Sons of the Pioneers.

And growing up around Atlanta, the blues were kind of just "in the air." I could play some blues piano as a kid, without knowing exactly how I learned.

When I started buying records, around age twelve, I was into Chicago (the first few albums, before they really started sucking), Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Grateful Dead, none of which sounds as fun as the music some of y'all discovered in your youth, and none of whom I listen to any more. Around the same time, my grandmother gave me a box of 78s - all kinds of stuff, from Bing Crosby to Benny Carter. It fascinated me, so I was listening to old stuff at the same time I was listening to current rock.

My mom really planted the seeds of my corruption by giving me a jazz album - Budd Johnson's Ya! Ya! on Argo - when I started playing the saxophone. She presumably picked it out of the cutout bins because it had a picture of a guy with a saxophone on the cover. I like about half of it right away, and the rest grew on me. But Richard Davis plays a wonderfully bizarre solo on a tune ("Exotique") from that album that I think "tuned" my ear to the unusual and the avant-garde. Thanks, mom.

Edited March 7, 2013 by jeffcrom

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

>

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

You've forgotten your Leeds geography, MG! Oakwood Lane leads off from Roundhay Road at the bottom end of the Soldiers' Field. Remember the Oakwood clock tower?

You're right, of course. The road I was thinking of, now I've looked at the Google map, is Old Park Road. Not sure about the clock tower; was there a cheap cinema (ie fleapit) down by there?

MG

Yes, I thought you meant Old Park Road, where the school entrance was. Still off the mark with Oakwood, though. No fleapit, but to help you get your bearings, you can just see to the immediate left of the clock tower in the photo a hint of the red roof and white wall of a house at the bottom end of Old Park Road. You lived at the top end of OPR; the school entrance was in the middle.

Oh, that's the way we went on cross country runs into the bottom of the park and up through it. Of course, once out of the park, the route ran past our place and I used to stop off for a cuppa

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

And growing up around Atlanta, the blues were kind of just "in the air." I could play some blues piano as a kid, without knowing exactly how I learned.

Wow! What a line!

The Atlanta R&B scene has fascinated me since 1980. When you were a teenager, theCounts were down there, recording for Aware Records.

Surprised your teenaged youth never ran accross this

MG

[BillF]

>

Some interesting stuff there, M G! There's even a chance we were at school together! I lived in Leeds from 1952 till I went to university in Manchester in 1958. Lots of people from my school, Roundhay School, went to the Judean Club. I think it was somewhere near Street Lane, though as a goy I never got near the place.

Sorry to say it was Bill Haley that first got my attention. I bought all his stuff on 78s in 1956 when I was sixteen. I vividly remember Tom Hark's "Penny Whistle Jive" though.

Good grief! I was at Roundhay Grammar from 1955 to 1958! I lived in Street Lane, at the bottom, just by Roundhay Park.

MG

Those were the years I was in the 6th form - I managed to clock up 3 years there! I wouldn't have known you as you were only a sprog in those days. I lived off Oakwood Lane and had a one mile walk to school.

If memory serves, Oakwood Lane was the turning off Street Lane, going down to the school. Our place was opposite the top of Oakwood Lane.

I probably knew you, Bill, because you'd have been a prefect and thus to be avoided

MG

You've forgotten your Leeds geography, MG! Oakwood Lane leads off from Roundhay Road at the bottom end of the Soldiers' Field. Remember the Oakwood clock tower?

You're right, of course. The road I was thinking of, now I've looked at the Google map, is Old Park Road. Not sure about the clock tower; was there a cheap cinema (ie fleapit) down by there?

MG

Yes, I thought you meant Old Park Road, where the school entrance was. Still off the mark with Oakwood, though. No fleapit, but to help you get your bearings, you can just see to the immediate left of the clock tower in the photo a hint of the red roof and white wall of a house at the bottom end of Old Park Road. You lived at the top end of OPR; the school entrance was in the middle.

Oh, that's the way we went on cross country runs into the bottom of the park and up through it. Of course, once out of the park, the route ran past our place and I used to stop off for a cuppa

MG

Glad you used to stop off for a cuppa. You were better placed than us reluctant runners who used to hang out in The Castle in Roundhay Park:

We used to hang about there while the keen runners went all the way to distant Shadwell and back and we would then fall in behind them for the final stretch home. One day we mistimed this and came in unconvincingly early. The teacher (called Dobson, BTW) asked me if I'd been all the way to Shadwell. When I replied "Of course", he asked me to name the pub at Shadwell ,which I couldn't, never having been there. Asked why I couldn' t name it, I said I'd run past too fast. Dobson concluded by saying it was too late to reform me (now 18 and in the 3rd year 6th form), and asked me not to get the younger kids on the same game. Definitely not prefect material!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Nice story Bill

MG

[A Lark Ascending]

I remember my whole "dorm" (which was a big room split by a stairway rising to the back and with four bunkbed cubicles with two boys in a cubicle, not totally enclosed, on each side) stayed up illicitly and listened to all of "Abbey Road" being played on the radio, that was a trip..

I remember hearing the whole of Abbey Road on the radio too, just before release. In Cornwall, though, not Africa.

[A Lark Ascending]

When I started buying records, around age twelve, I was into Chicago (the first few albums, before they really started sucking), Crosby, Stills and Nash.

That was about all the American music I could cope with in my early days.

There was loads of blues based rock, soul etc in the air in those days but I reacted against it. I had to discover jazz first which then pointed me to the enjoyment in blues music.

[John Litweiler]

Aha! Thanks, Goldberg. For about 55 years I knew the popular song "Windy" by Paul Gayten (of New Orleans) was based on a South African song. Now because of you and Youtube I hear that Gayten's recording was a direct imitation of "Tom Hark."

(I may have written this sometime before.) As a boy I loved rock-and-roll music, the real stuff, as on for ex. Atlantic records. When I read hype about this new white performer Elvis Presley, and then finally heard his first record, I was convinced that he would be the death of rock-and-roll. I was right.

Shirley and Lee’s hit ‘Let the good times roll’ – another I didn’t know came from New Orleans – also hit me hard. So did a South African recording, ‘Tom Hark’ by Elias and his Zig Zag Jive Flutes which I think made #1 in Britain.

[medjuck]

The first rock & roll I heard was Fats Domino’s ‘I’m in love again’, early in ’56, when I was twelve. It seemed significant to me even then; real music, even though the words were trivial; the rolling beat and the riffing of the band behind latched onto the main preoccupation of twelve year old boys – sex. Sex not love was what was being broadcast in the music; and it was hot!

Later, when I heard Elvis Presley, there was undeniable talent there; and anger; but not much sex. (Of course, I wasn’t a twelve year old girl, or I might have felt differently about Elvis. And indeed, about Fats, who didn’t look or behave at all like a sex idol.) So I appreciated Presley, but wasn’t a fan.

I was a fan of Little Richard, when I heard him soon after. I didn’t know that he had substantially the same band behind him as Fats Domino. I didn’t know anything, but his fervour, on top of that sexy beat again, got me. And ‘Long tall Sally’ was definitely about sex, not love; and moreover, adulterous sex. And that interested me, as well; my mother and stepfather didn’t marry until after my father died, but my mother and stepfather were ‘living in sin’ in those days and I was under strict orders not to tell my father, on the rare occasions I saw him. I was nearly thirteen by then. People were worried in those days that rock & roll was corrupting the young. Well, they were right as far as I was concerned; adultery was not a problem, it was a solution.

The Platters were about on the radio in those days, too, singing love songs with a passion that I recognised, as were a number of other doo wop groups, though few of them made the BBC. In fact, the only ones I can remember from ’56 are Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers’ ‘Why do fools fall in love’ and the Flamingos’ ‘I’ll be home’, though it was mostly Pat Boone’s version one heard. Boone, however, I thought of as a joke. As also Bill Haley and most British attempts at rock & roll. In fact the only British artist I didn’t consider a joke in those days was Lonnie Donegan, whose songs usually had good meaty lyrics, though musically they didn’t seem like anything to write home about.

How was it for you?

MG

Almost exactly the same as what I've quoted. I do remember hearing Rock around the Clock first in '55 but '56 was the big year. I saw Elvis the second time he was on the Dorsey Bros show which I think was early in the year. By that summer I knew Rock and Roll was here to stay and I loved it.

BTW That was in a small town in Canada. Globalization was beginning to happen.

Edited March 10, 2013 by medjuck