What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by ufug »

Fun topic. There wasn't much music around at home. My mother had a only a few Ray Conniff Singers LPs that she would listen to over and over, and my dad had Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard 8 tracks in his truck.

This will really date me, but the first thing I really remember hearing and falling in love with was Wichita Lineman playing on an old radio that hung from a coat hanger in the dairy barn, always with the volume maxed and probably a 3" speaker. It seemed like it got played every day back then.

That song is still gold for me when thinking about arrangement or composition. And also a great lesson on getting a bass sound that cuts through a busy mix on tiny speakers.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by Nachei »

ufug wrote: That song is still gold for me when thinking about arrangement or composition. And also a great lesson on getting a bass sound that cuts through a busy mix on tiny speakers.
Just listened to Wichita Lineman (in my laptop speakers, as close in harshness as I can get to a radio in the barn right now :P ). My style of preference is more extreme music (metal, etc...), but I also have a sweet teeth for good melodies, and I think the song is great, when the violins kick in it has a bit of a Carpenters vibe... As for Harmony, they are very cute and all, but it's like a truck filled with cotton candy, too much for me... :lol:

Just fooling around, thank you for sharing...
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by ufug »

42low wrote:
ufug wrote:Johnny Cash
Nothing wrong with that. I love a lot of his music.
Yes, he was great! I was very lucky Johnny and June Carter were my first concert, the only time I remember seeing live music as a kid. Would have been late 1970s. I just saw his daughter Rosanne do a lecture/performance a few weeks ago and she's a remarkable person as well as a talented performer. Total class act.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by wjl »

42low wrote:
ufug wrote:Johnny Cash
Nothing wrong with that. I love a lot of his music.
Right. Sometimes it takes time to realize how good someone was.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by GMaq »

ufug wrote: the first thing I really remember hearing and falling in love with was Wichita Lineman playing on an old radio that hung from a coat hanger in the dairy barn, always with the volume maxed and probably a 3" speaker. It seemed like it got played every day back then.

That song is still gold for me when thinking about arrangement or composition. And also a great lesson on getting a bass sound that cuts through a busy mix on tiny speakers.
Wow, that's a memory!

I know exactly how that would sound, every dairy farmer had some beat up fly shit encrusted transistor radio in in the barn and despite the sound of all the cattle and milking equipment it's amazing how those AM Radio mixes would cut through anything. The next miracle was the longevity of those radios... literally decades running 24/7 in all weather environments, a modern bluetooth speaker would last less than a week and probably not project sound nearly as well :roll: :lol:
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by tnovelli »

Almost all of the above. :D
Fleetwood Mac all the time. Lots of country, country-rock, folk-rock... Emmlou Harris, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, Peter Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard. At one point Steve Earle was all over the radio, especially Copperhead Road 8). I definitely heard some Beatles, Stones, Clapton, Dire Straits, Deep Purple, Heart. And whatever was on the 80s pop stations and MTV, Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2, Enya, Eurythmics, Duran Duran, Genesis, etc.

Later my dad starting playing guitar again and listening to blues/jazz players like Jeff Beck, Danny Gatton, Buddy Guy, Duke Robillard. We went to a few of their gigs. Duke's my favorite of the bunch, played a lot of upbeat jazzy blues, got people out on the dance floor, very interesting lead style too.

My grandma was a church organist so I was also exposed to baroque music. Hard to believe these days, but she was the only musician I knew growing up who played Bach.

So much country though. Needless to say, I became a metalhead. :lol:
(Eventually started to appreciate (older) country in my 30s.)
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by tnovelli »

Oh yeah, I heard a little UB40 and Bob Marley growing up but I've only started getting into reggae in the last year or so actually.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by wjl »

42low wrote:Great bands you mention tnovelli.

What i miss in the reactions is reggae. No one listened to Bob Marley? The Specials? Black Uhuru? Peter Tosh? UB40 in there early years? Cokane In My Brain (you know, from Dillinger) ? :mrgreen:
Well *I* certainly did - but the question was about the parents' style and taste. Well well - guess I could categorize as a grandpa amongst some of you in here ;-) But we have a 12-year-old, that keeps you young hehe...
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by folderol »

Well, as I said my parents weren't interested, so were quite perplexed by my collection of singles, starting with Cliff Richards, and morphing though Dave Clark 5, Beatles, Stones, Animals,(and yes Bob Marley) then on to albums of Tangerine Dream, Moody Blues, Tomita, Jarre.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

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folderol wrote:Well, as I said my parents weren't interested, so were quite perplexed by my collection of singles, starting with Cliff Richards, and morphing though Dave Clark 5, Beatles, Stones, Animals,(and yes Bob Marley) then on to albums of Tangerine Dream, Moody Blues, Tomita, Jarre.
Cliff Richard to Jarre! Now that is a musical journey! :D. How great to be ringside in the 'golden age' of rock music and all the difficult social change that came with it. Those of us experiencing the lukewarm reheated 1960's through volume after volume of revisionist history really will never know what it was really like to directly experience those kind of positive and progressive changes, indeed watching much of it unravel before our eyes in current times makes it even more special. Cherish those memories! :wink:
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by Luc »

ufug wrote:Wichita Lineman
Wow. I remember that one from my childhood. I hadn't heard it since. :shock: Beautiful song. Thank you for sharing.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by Bree »

Love this convo!:)

My parents were like night and day, but always agreed on one thing: a stereo system should be able to rock the block. Dad did some home recording and had a nice home studio rig in those days. He loved country and rock-n-roll 50s/60s. Mom was Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, Otis Redding, Tina Turner and more RNB and Flower Power rock... She loves some early 80s and 90s performers like: Prince, Whitney Houston and on-and-on. And always Elivs Presley for XMAS. They were a great combo when it came to their sizeable vinyl collection, and certainly had the system to make it sound really good and throw parties.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by GMaq »

Bree wrote:Love this convo!:)

My parents were like night and day, but always agreed on one thing: a stereo system should be able to rock the block. Dad did some home recording and had a nice home studio rig in those days. He loved country and rock-n-roll 50s/60s. Mom was Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, Otis Redding, Tina Turner and more RNB and Flower Power rock... She loves some early 80s and 90s performers like: Prince, Whitney Houston and on-and-on. And always Elivs Presley for XMAS. They were a great combo when it came to their sizeable vinyl collection, and certainly had the system to make it sound really good and throw parties.
Hi!

Oh man that sounds awesome (kinda the polar opposite of my experience,lol)! Love your Mom's list!
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by ufug »

Bree wrote:Love this convo!:)

He loved country and rock-n-roll 50s/60s. Mom was Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, Otis Redding, Tina Turner and more RNB and Flower Power rock...
That's some great exposure! This put the Donny & Marie earworm "a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll" in my head, thanks.
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Re: What music did your parents play in the car at home etc?

Post by Veerstryngh Thynner »

No radio in the car, when I grew up. Audio cassette player and CD player yet to be invented. So we did all the singing ourselves, on the long journey to the annual holiday destination. Often in three voices. Spontaneously, without any prior rehearsal.

I'm from a musical family. My father's father, long dead, played piano, violin, and mandolin. At one point, he owned an electric 'Hawaiian" guitar I begged him (literally, on my knees) to pass it on to me - but he insisted on selling it. That said, though, I still own some instruments that were originally my grandfather's. None really playable any more, but still. A really curious one, long lost, was a thingy small enough to put under your tongue. In theory, credible bird song could be produced with it. Don't ask me how exactly.

My father, too, used to play the piano. Really well. Button accordion as well (although, perhaps, not quite as skilfully). That instrument, too, still survives. And, finally, guitar, I think. He also has the distinction of being one of the founders of the first 'C & W'' band in the history of the arch-conservative village he grew up in. And aged 80, he took up the flute - but abandoned it, after a year or so, for lack of anybody to make music with (apart from school kids).

My mother, her brothers and sisters, on the other hand, did a lot of singing, when young. And still do, occasionally. One memory popping up is of all my aunts and uncles gathering up in the huge attic of my other set of grandparents, singing popular songs of the day, accompanied by another uncle of mine on a gorgeous vintage jazz guitar. The brothers and sisters did so too at my parents' Diamond wedding celebration (minus that guitar): still some very fine singing voices in their ranks. And oh: the evening's band, too, consisted of seven members of the younger generation. Yours truly included.

Paradoxically, though, there weren't ever many records in the parental home. Some classical music, I think (I particularly recall a collection of rather depressing Clara Haskil piano concertos), some bits and bobs of dixieland, some second-rate Irish and Latin-American folk - and that was just about it, basically. But the living room contained a big, old-fashioned radio set. As a small kid, I built 'drum kits' in front of it, out of pots, pans, cardboard boxes, tin cans - you name it - found in and around the house. And next I'd be playing along, for hours and hours on end, with the popular songs of the day. It drove my mum nuts!

And then it was my turn for classical piano lessons, aged 6 or 7. To cut a long story short, I quit, utterly demotivated, 8 or 9 years later. As a cause of which I can't stand Scarlatti to this day. Him particularly, in association with that rigid daily discipline involved. Hand on heart. But even if completely devoid of all fun, in my memory, it's still piano that gave me the theoretical grounding for other musical instruments to follow. And, I suppose, a stepping stone to my later jazz years.

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