Musical Conglomerate

I've been thinking about some of the stuff I put on my profile. There's just not enough room to elaborate. So here are some of my eclectic musical tastes.

Big Band and other 30s/40s - Glenn Miller was my first big band "love." I still like Miller, but now like Benny Goodman, Harry James, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, and others. I also got my first taste of the Andrews sisters from some old movies. They're still my favorite singers from that era. I've gotten most of the Time-Life Big Band CDs and Your Hit Parade CDs from 1940 through 1959.

The 50s were kind of lost for me, since I don't remember anything much before 1955. My mother would play the radio in the morning, so before school during the week I'd hear Eddie Fisher, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, etc. I guess some of them are OK, but I don't go looking for them. On Saturday morning we'd listen to Bernie Kosnoski's Polka Show. If I need a hit of polkas now, I see if the Big Joe Polka Show is on RFD TV. LOL We watched the King Family on TV, Frank Fontaine was on the Jackie Gleason Show, Judy Garland and others had their own shows, and Annette and Frankie sang on the beach. I never heard the new rock and roll at home, except occasionally on TV, like Elvis or Chubby Checker. Overall, I can take or leave that decade. Which is why I don't listen to those Your Hit Parade CDs from the 50s too often.

The 60s and 70s kind of overlap. I didn't ride a bus to school until Jr. High, but I lucked out with a cool bus driver who played the radio. I remember the whole bus singing along with "The Name Game," and the boys in the back would always try to do "Chuck" before the driver caught them. My first 45 was Petula Clark singing "Downtown." I like the Beatles, but never got an album, only a couple of
45s. I have 5 or 6 Simon and Garfunkel albums (and when I say albums, I mean LPs, not CDs), 5 or 6 Billy Joel albums, 3 Monkees, 3 Paul Revere & Raiders, "Tommy" by The Who, plus a few that make me wonder why in the world I bought them. I collected about 300 45s, too. I had a transistor radio (remember them? it took a 9V battery) that I'd turn on and put under my pillow so I could listen to the radio at bedtime. The battery lasted forever. I listened to either WABC in New York or WFIL in Phila. Then when I had some extra cash (not often), I'd go over to Korvette's (dept. store) and get a couple of 45s or occasionally an album. Folk songs, Mamas and Papas, etc. made their way into the mix along the way.

Classical - My mother had bought a few of those multi-record compilation albums of classical music, where you get one movement of this symphony, a snippet of that sonata, a whole piece in some cases, if it was short enough. And then there were Looney Tunes. They used a LOT of bits and pieces of the classics in those cartoons. And "The Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera Doc?" use almost whole movements from The Barber of Seville and The Ride of the Valkyries. So I contented myself with those until I started working. There was an older man in the office next to mine who was an opera and classical buff, so we'd get talking about music. He introduced me to a lot of pieces I wouldn't have bothered with otherwise. When "Fantasia" came out, I was in hog heaven. So, the CDs I have now are Beethoven, Copland, Gershwin, Grofe', Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Strauss, Verdi, and Vivaldi, plus one of Fiedler and the Phila. Orchestra and one of different marches.

More later.