Little Children and Their Records

Seeing this image made me want to start a thread. Little kids and their records. Or maybe their parents or siblings records. Photos. Memories.

Are the little kids the most open-minded music listeners? I think so. Put some Tuvan throat singing record on and a 3 or 4 year old will probably smile!

How did you discover records yourself and how did you get them? Did your parents give you (or your siblings) your own record player? Did you have to beg for a new record? Did you get one every birthday?

Why is it that some adults feel that kids only want Christmas records?

 

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher told all the kids to bring their favorite record to school the next day and we would play them all. She expected kids to bring those Golden records of nursery rhymes and the like.





But in my house, we didn't have these records. We had my mother's 78s of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and jazz singers. So, I brought in my favorite. Lead Belly singing John Henry. I had the 78, not the album



My teacher refused to play my record and made a point of it. I was pretty upset. It took me many years to understand why she would not play it. She knew who Lead Belly was, as he was quite famous due to his song "Goodnight Irene" having been #1 (by The Weavers). He was news.

 

But now, I collect these as well as Lead Belly

 

When I was little, my Dad would bring home records of Scottish Bagpipe Bands.

My sister really did not like them. My Mom would go to another part of the house and I would go outside and hit crabapples with my baseball bat[Mod: copyrighted photo removed]

 

My favorite as a child was Jimmy Boyd. But it wasn't his Christmas records, although I had some of those too.
It was "Tell Me a Story" and its flipside "The Little Boy and the Old Man" sung with Frankie Laine that was my favorite and I still have the 78 RPM and a floor model Philco Radio with a phonograph to play it on.

 

Related to your comment about kids being open-minded listeners; I was recently listening to Can’s Ege Bamyasi, and it’s fair to say my wife was enjoying it less than I was. When Soup got to the weird and noisy bit she finally said “this is horrible, it’s not even music.” She then turned to our 5-year-old son for confirmation and asked him what he thought. He looked up from his position; sitting right in front of one of the speakers playing with his Lego, shrugged at her and said “I like it; it sounds like spy-movie music”, and went back to his Lego.

I got the mumps when I was about 7 or 8 and remember it was the first time I was allowed to put a record on Dad’s turntable myself (he wasn’t there, mind!). By the age of 9 I was touring London’s 2nd hand shops with my brother using the underground, and coming home with piles of records (there were no cds in our house until 1993). That was the late 80’s, so the most expensive thing I bought was generally the train ticket into town.

 

I loved Popeye so much that I ate canned spinach when I was a kid. Even my father wouldn't touch the stuff. I keep this record on display in my house.

 

If you like those children's Golden Records, check this site out

Where Did All the Golden Records Go? |

 

Whereas many kids sleep with stuffed animals, I slept with my brothers' Beatles original pressing albums. I tell myself they were already in bad shape.

 

I had a ton of Power Records and Peter Pan Records.





I had a bunch of those. Planet Of The Apes and all the super heroes. But musically the first thing I remember is Hendrix "Crash Landing" (which I have mentioned in a Hendrix thread or two). I was probably 5 or 6 and my brother bought it and we listened to it all the time. Also the first Bad Company record.

So I have my older brothers to thank for my music.

 

There was a time when kid's records were made in both 45RPM and 78RPM (for the families with kids record players that only played 78).

What kid would not be inspired to achieve anything by this song

 

Well here is the song. My wife has occasionally caught me listening to this song if she gets home early. She has told me that I will never achieve much if that is my fantasy. And she adds that I have never been spotted wherever there is danger.

 

Excellent parallel/shadow thread to the Audiophile one:

Can you be an audiophile if you don't own "great/expensive" equipment..?

 

I still have my Disneyland album of Tubby the Tuba narrated by Annette Funicello. Side 2 has songs all about music. I've had it since I was 9 in 1963. I now teach music in a Montessori school and I bring my portable record player to class and play records for the kids. I played all of Tubby the Tuba for them and they were really into it.

 

This was also a favorite. I had the 78 RPM version.

 

Other than a few classical E.P.s of my father's, we didn't have records at home when I was a pre-teen, so my earliest listening experience was Children's Favourites on Saturday mornings, on the BBC Light Programme.
Children's Favourites

I remember Beep Beep (The Playmates, but the UK version), I Know an Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe, The Runaway Train, and The Ugly Duckling; my very favourite songs were Buckingham Palace and The Laughing Policeman, but Danny Kaye's Mommy, Gimme a Drinka Water I found to be quite frightening.



The Laughing Policeman - Charles Jolly / Penrose

 

I always hoped they would have released more of the old Peter Pan records on cd. I know they had the two christmas collections from years ago but there was so much more in the library to release.

 

I got my first kids LPs at the age of four. So in 60-61 it was three Hanna Barbera cartoon soundtracks on Colpix, Specifically Huckleberry Hound, Pixie And Dixie, and Yogi Bear. These are extremely hard to find in good condition because they all ended up like mine. Trashed beyond all hope.

Also I had a cartoon soundtrack album of Deputy Dawg on RCA Camden. Same deal as the above.
Got my first Beatle albums in 64, bought my first single with my own money in 65(Eve Of Destruction).

 

The first record experience where I fell all the way down the rabbit hole was this one, played on the giant console hi-fi while I lay on the living room floor flipping through the picture book inside the gatefold.



I found a battered but intact copy at Bop Street in Seattle a few years ago and I enjoy playing it now and then on my expensive 21st-century stereo. A cover version of "Forest of No Return" by Nine Inch Nails would let me die happy.

 

My first records.

 

My parents bought me this album when it was released in 1957. Our whole family liked Danny Kaye, so I liked it, even though I felt I was too old for some of the songs. A real classic.

It includes propaganda songs with subversive messages, such as:

"I Like Old People, Don't You?"

Then there is the lyric: "Mom, what'd you have to go get a new baby for?"