What music did your parents listen to when you were little?
My mom listened to a lot of Air Supply* and Ann Murray, and a fair bit of Whitney Houston. My dad wasn’t much of a music guy, but he may have had some influence in our listening to Oak Ridge Boys and Alabama in the car fairly often.
We listened to C.W. McCall quite a bit on road trips, but that’s because my grandparent’s motor home only had an 8-track player, and that was the only cassette they had that was any good - although it does mean that we got to listen to “Wolf Creek Pass” while actually driving over Wolf Creek Pass once.
*I heard some Air Supply the other day and it brought me back to being about 7 years old.
Both sr. and junior. Cash, Hayward, Kristofferson, Rodgers. Dolly Parton, Emi Lou Harris, really most of the late 60s through early 80s country artists was what was playing on the radio or turntable in our household much to annoyance of most of my friends. How my dad from Newark New Jersey became a country music fan was always a mystery to me. But when the song “I was country, when country wasn’t cool” came out he said that described him perfectly.
Mom was into big bands, glen miller and tom Dorsey when they met but by the time I came along, youngest by far of 4 kids she, a girl from Brooklyn, was just as much a country music lover as he was.
My dad was mostly classical music with a bit of jazz and country sprinkled in. He had a reel-to-reel tape machine and had countless hours of classical playing in the background all day long.
If my dad wasn’t around my mom put on the oldies station that played Big Band stuff like Glenn Miller.
My dad (well, now my mom, though I’m not sure if she’s given it away or not) has an interesting jazz and classical LP collection.
My mom? Well, we had the basic must-have albums of the 1960’s: “Sound of Music” soundtrack, “West Side Story” soundtrack, Fifth Dimension album with “Age of Aquarius,” a few Tom Jones albums, Simon and Garfunkels’ “Bridge over Trouble Waters” some Herb Alpert albums (whipped cream!! She was NAKED!! And pregnant! under all that sweet sweet stuff!!)
(Fun note: my wife’ mom, who grew up in a different part of the country and with a different cultural background, had pretty much the same albums.)
Mom and dad listened to rock and roll. They grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. My dad played electric organ in a Doors and Emerson, Lake, & Palmer cover band in college. He also loved Led Zeppelin. My mom liked The Doors and The Beatles. I remember after I was born in 1980 dad was still into a lot of music and got into synthesizer type 80’s rock. He listened to Genesis, Tears For Fears, and some of those type bands then.
Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton to name a few. They also listened to modern stuff at the time, so I remember hearing Counting Crows, Green Day, Alanis Morissette around the house too.
I also had this thought. My kids tell me music I listen to ends up on Tik Tok a lot which is usually when they start appreciating it a little more. My kids are slowly liking what I like more and more. Two bands I love that my son has really gotten into are 311 and Arctic Monkeys. His friends are discovering new Arctic Monkeys stuff and he is playing them songs from when they were only big in the UK that they really like too. Score one for dad!!!