What music did your parents play that rubbed off on you?

Al Martino had a great voice. Spanish Eyes has always been a favorite.

I think my step-dad had whole albums of Acker Bilk - he was really into that Euro Big Band sound. My parents are the type that watch Sabado Gigante even tho they don't speak a word of Spanish because they like that old school variety song and dance stuff. James Last still looms large in their audio world...

 

Funny my parents didn't play music at home even though they had a console, that my mother "mat-tacked" in the 80s. Ohhh the horror!


sean

 

My mother was a great music fan and her influence on me was profound. Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Little Richard (a whole bunch of 50's rock 'n roll) Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland and tons of Big Band Swing. My dad never really showed much interest in music. I remember being a kid and asking him, what kind of music do you like dad? He thought for a minute and said very matter-of-fact, Mariachi. I had no idea what he was talking about until years later and I have wondered ever since if he was just pulling my leg.

 

Glen Campbell
Burt Bacharach

 

Glenn Miller and a few other big bands, Sinatra and to a lesser extent Bing Crosby.

I think that was mostly my dad's influence, but my mom became the bigger fan of the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Not solo Simon, though. To this day (at age 86) she still thinks Simon went downhill when S&G split up. My dad, on the other hand (at age 90) is still listening to Glenn Miler. Someday he'll grow out of it, I'm sure.

 

Parents and music...
My dad only listened to (and listens to) Big Band Jazz, Dixieland and some Jackie Gleason Orchestra stuff... nothing that's really in my DNA, but I recognize most of the Big Band hits.

He played trumpet and was in the Amherst College Big Band when he was in a meteorological program during WWII (which kept him out of infantry action and is probably the only reason I exist).

I used these pictures for artwork on a series of Big Band CDR's replicating the sequences that he'd compiled on cassette. The Amherst band was called THE COUNTS OF CADENCE!




Just last week I uploaded 2o-odd CDR's worth of compiled music on his computer/iTunes so he doesn't need to set-up his stereo in the assisted living apartment they're moving to later this week. My brother and sister and I are all pitching-in, we're leaving in a U-Haul truck and passenger van this Saturday. My 90-year old dad was pretty amazed that every song he loves is now available to him at the click of a mouse on his laptop (in Apple lossless). My mom is 85 and I think she's happy he'll be mainly listening on headphones now... some things don't change with the generations.

 

My mom used to listen to The Fifth Dimension, Stevie Wonder, Deodato and Lenny White. I'm more into rock and classical but I still like all of these artists.

My dad wasn't into music at all.

 

Elvis Presley (they grew up in Memphis, went to Humes High, and were only a few years older), Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Harry James, Ella Fitzgerald, Brook Benton, Nancy Wilson, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Mills Brothers, Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams (Sr.).

And on the radio, the Penguins, the Flamingos, the Moonglows, the Platters, the Coasters, the Drifters, Jackie Wilson.

For people who never seemed cool, they had good taste in music.

My mom's gone, and my dad has hearing problems so he doesn't listen to anything now except the TV turned way up. Enjoy what you have while you can.

 

The Jam, Elvis Costello, Frank Sinatra.

 

I guess my dad gave me some appreciation for the Carpenters (Karen Carpenter was always his favourite vocalist as far as I can remember).

 

slayer

 

There were a few. Beatles, CSN/Y ... I think the rest was gospel and such (which I do like).

I didn't come from a terribly musical household. Turned out ok, as they had no idea what was in my collection and therefore never bothered me about it much.

 

Nothing that they played once I was around. Except Jim Croce, it was mostly 70s & 80s easy listening country. And it was the same stuff over and over because they just had a few cassettes. I still remember wondering why this guy kept telling his woman to keep the home fries burning. Why would he want them burnt?

So imagine my surprise when in HS, I found my dad's old records and after flipping through Olivia Newton John and The Judds, I hit his stuff from when he was in HS. The Doors, Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Zeppelin, The Beatles. My mom also had The Beatles and some early Cat Stevens.

So while they didn't actually play any music that would rub off on me (Croce's good, though), their music taste from before I was born eventually influenced my interests. Aside from Cat Stevens, I imagine I would've found those artists anyway, but maybe not. I actually was already quite aware and quite uninterested in Alice Cooper, but was blown away by my dad's Greatest Hits LP and instantly became a fan of the original group. I may have never looked into the older stuff without that chance to hear it.

 

I inherited all of my father's vinyl collection. Lots of Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, Django Rheinhardt LPs, almost 1000. I trimmed the collection a bit, but kept most of it and I am slowly cleaning it on an Okki Nokki. It was the music I grew up with.

 

I rejected mostly everything my parents tried to rub on me.

 

My mom- Elvis
Dad- Hank Williams Sr

Some hippy at a record store--Dylan.

 

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Lou Rawls, Glen Campbell, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Patsy Cline

 

Easy listening and country, various compilations. Funny, when I was typing that, the auto correct came up with 'complications'. Let's not go there....anyway, I still like those genres. My late grandad liked Nat King Cole and big band stuff, which I liked, but he couldn't stand Sinatra. Later, I found how Frank had misbehaved in Australia in the mid 70's...hoo boy...I think I know why now...

 

My father and I have bonded over music in the past year or two. Strange that it took until my mid-30's for it to happen. We are always telling each other about the artists we are getting into. So far in 2015 he has turned me on to Waylon Jennings' music in a big way.

 

Mancini

 

They listened to Jackie Gleason, show tunes (South Pacific, My Fair Lady), generic twist music, Allen Sherman, Julie London, Vaughan Meader, but the only thing I took from their now-gone collection is Harry Belafonte's "Calypso." Still have it.

 

Your mother had a nice range of music that she listened to.

 

Big band. We heard a lot of Glenn Miller, Sammy Kaye, Tommy Dorsey, etc. I still enjoy "I Can't Get Started With You" by Bunny Berigan, and "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree" by Glenn Miller. The last concert that I was able to take my Mother and Dad to was the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Buddy Morrow.

 

Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. They rubbed off on me big time.

 

Thanks! In retrospect it's kinda unusual because she was in her late 30's when I was born in 1964, so she was in her mid to late 40's when she was listening to all this jazzy R&B stuff. And she was born and raised in Montpelier VT and was (and is) the straightest, most conservative personality you could possibly meet, and yet Lenny White! She never liked rock music though. To this day she says the Beatles had no talent and what made them big was the fact that they screamed and shook their hair in unison in the middle of songs. I once played her Deep Purple's Come Taste The Band on a whim (I'd just bought the album and she was feeling generous enough to humor me) and she liked that well enough.

Another thing just occurred to me - she loves Leon Russell! I remember in the early 80's she had some live album by him which had "Jumpin' Jack Flash" on it, and I was always somewhat puzzled that she hated the Stones with a passion but dug it when Leon covered that song. It's not like he sweetened it up!