What did the WWII Generation listen to?

It was an austere period and I think the opportunities for having fun were limited so folks would have made the most of them. I doubt many would have said 'I don't like that dance band so I'm not going to the dance this week' - it was probably more a case of 'I'm going to the dance this week and I'll have fun whatever band is playing'. I'm not sure how Leonard Cohen would have gone down in 1943.

 

It's the sound of people smiling while they are singing that I find hard to take. haha

 

Everyone likes Russian folk music.

 

Watch the Abbott and Costello movie "Buck Privates" for some contemporary popular music in the USA during WW2, like the Andrews Sisters.

 

And Vaughn Monroe. It doesn't get more WWII than this:



Drew

 

Does the OP mean during the war or after the war? Because don't forget that the WWII generation comprised a major segment of the record-buying public during the postwar hi-fi era.

 

Even the country/western music that was popular in much of the US during this period was related to big band swing -- it was called Western Swing and played by large groups rather than small ones.

 

The Nicholas brothers are taking a big chance with their instruments hopping around like that. So are the band too.

 

My Grandad was a naval radio operator, so Morse Code.

Lord Haw-Haw?

 

My parents were born in 1928 and 1930. My father loves the Clancey Brothers. My mother would have trouble naming five songs from any point in history. We lived a little north of NYC, and when I was growing up in the 70s the home radio was always on WHUD, which basically played Muzak. They couldn't get enough of it. I think of music to them being the same as candy - you liked it well enough when you're a kid, but it's not something you brought with you to adulthood.

 

This a classic video clip...Glen Miller and the Nicholas Brothers...

 

I have every goddamn other item on the planet belonging to my grandpa (for some reason, even though I never met him, his son passed down to me his bag of his personal items--his work IDs over the years, his memorabilia from WWII, his various driver licenses, his photos of him in the Army with actresses on his arm, he had also strangely a collection of roller derby cards featuring roller derby girls from the 1940s, his wallet which has been untouched since his death in 1975, including his OTB gold club card cause he was a big gambler....All that and not a single record or inkling of music enjoyed in the mix.

 

I'd like to know from you american citizens and music lovers: did anybody of your dads or grandads, maybe people from the south, listen to the blues in the 30's/40's?

 

I think plenty of people live their lives quite happily without it having a 'soundtrack'. Maybe he just wasn't that interested in music. I know I play music less and less as I get older: my obsession with it and finding the very best seems to have been a part of my younger self. If people are enjoying music in a room, I'll enjoy their enjoyment...the music that's playing isn't particularly important. Maybe your grandpa was similar?

 

My dad was in WWII and he liked country music, especially Hank Williams Sr. He really didn't seem to acknowledge any other music of the 60s, although if anything he might have liked some of the 1960s country music.

My mom liked the big band sound but she liked much of the music from the 1950 onward, including Elvis, The Beatles, Glen Campbell, John Denver, The Eagles, Motown, as well as 1970s country music, etc. She didn't seem to have many prejudices when it came to music, although she wasn't a fan of the harder stuff. I've always assumed I got my eclectic love of music from her.

I didn't know my grandparents so I can't comment on them, except my grandfather on my moms side had a love for opera. It sounds like a generation or two ahead of me had a lot of musicians in the family that would get together and play every weekend (way before my time).

 

I just asked my father. He grew up in NY and didn't know Blues or CW existed.

 

My dad liked classical & big band. But he also liked Steve Tibbits Yr album, The Beatles Revolution single & one of the John Paul Jones cuts from Houses Of The Holy. My mom liked Sinatra & singers of that style.

 

My parent were really into Broadway show tunes, the Great American Songbook music.

 

The good gurls liked Bing Crosby. The bad gurls liked Sinatra.

 

My paternal grandparent's 78s include LOTS of Bob Wills and Roy Acuff, and some Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, Jim Reeves, The Monroe Brothers, Lefty Frizzell, Red Foley, Earnest Tubb, stuff like that.

My other grandparents always watched Guy Lombardo on New Years and I HATED spending New Years there, I'd rather be watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve. They also (still, in their 90s) watch Lawrence Welk every Saturday night. They talk about all the people on the show like they are distant relatives.

 

That's what I was suspecting. Strong regional (and probably racial/social) divisions. Obviously I'm not talking about politics, I'm just curious about the diffusion of blues or country or bluegrass music in pre-secondworldwar years in the United States.

 

'Race records' stopped getting made, and I doubt they were widely distributed in the first place. Plenty of people only discovered a lot of this music through the Harry Smith collection and the seminal King of the Delta Blues Singers in the early 60s. Jazz was the only real crossover music between black and white audiences.

 

During the war there was a shellac shortage so hardly any records got made. If you were listening to records it was one less bomb landing on Berlin.

 

My Dad who was a kid at the time told me the whistling of falling bombs...