[charlie brown]

We always talk about how influential various songs, or artists have been, to us, over the years.
So, it might be interesting/Fun, to know...What was YOUR first (remembered) encounter, with Rock
and Roll? (Positive, or Negative)

Mine, at age 6, was both positive, and negative. I was riding the the car, with my parents,
when Elvis's version of "Hound Dog," came on the car radio. I listend to it, loved the beat, but hated
the lyrics...as "I" thought, at that tender age, he was singing about not liking, and/or mistreating
his dog! LOL My parents just looked at one another, smiled (and chuckled), at my reaction.

What was your first memomry, of "Rock & Roll?!"

CB

[eggs]

I was perhaps 5 years old (1966)... My elder brother chucked a wobbly & kicked a soccer ball into my face... Absolutely wailing, my even elder sister retrieved me & took me to her room to console me... She played Elvis & Cliff Richard 45s of the somewhat schmultzier variety... I love my sister

Her boyfriend, & later Husband, introduced me to The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks & all things English... & I had the very great pleasure of going to The Stones last Sydney tour with him before he passed away... Rock On Eternally Duncan

[Greybeard]

charlie brown, on 08 December 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:

We always talk about how influential various songs, or artists have been, to us, over the years.
So, it might be interesting/Fun, to know...What was YOUR first (remembered) encounter, with Rock
and Roll? (Positive, or Negative)

Mine, at age 6, was both positive, and negative. I was riding the the car, with my parents,
when Elvis's version of "Hound Dog," came on the car radio. I listend to it, loved the beat, but hated
the lyrics...as "I" thought, at that tender age, he was singing about not liking, and/or mistreating
his dog! LOL My parents just looked at one another, smiled (and chuckled), at my reaction.

What was your first memomry, of "Rock & Roll?!"

CB

Honky Tonk by Bill Doggett was introduced to me by my first guitar teacher in 1957. I didn't realize how much that Honky Tonk beat would mean to all of the rock and roll I learned after that. That three chord progression has been burned into my fingers ever since.

[kytty]

In the late '60's my eldest sister was forced (by our parents) to take me to see Billy Thorpe in our then home town. In those days concerts were still by and large sit down affairs played in town halls. Being 6 or 7 I was actually too young to enter. The lady who ran the ticket box was well known to our family, so I was left with her while my sister went in to the concert. I was able to stand in the doorway in the foyer and got to see the whole show. I went home and bugged my mum for a guitar. The sight of him rocking out his Les Paul has stayed with me all my life.

[cunningham26]

[matiac]

My sister playing Beatles tunes when I was like 3 or 4. That mixed with all the C&W my Parents listened to...let's put it this way, I know who Johnny Horton is...

[sledge57]

This came out in 1959, I remember my dad playing it as loud as the "Hi-Fi" could go. Not sure if he got the album when it first came out but it's the first music I remember and still one of my favorite songs ever.

I was 2 in 1959 btw....

[Bender 4 Life]

my folks always played the local station in their car(s) and Mom always played the radio while Dad was at work, so my formative years were spent listening to the Southern Pop of the late 60s early 70s.
1st real standout musical memory is also "Elvis Pressleys' Greatest Hits" which I got w/an 8-trac player for my 7th b-day. and my Dads fascination with some young guy named Chuck Berry, whose "Greatest Hits" were also an 8-trac that I had, and still have on CD, it's in my trucks' player as I type this.
other early memories are 5th Dimension,Hendrix & his Demise, Joplin & her Demise, Jefferson Airplane (Moms name was Alice)Neil Young, Springsteen, Dylan, Mom loved The Mamas & The Papas....etc.etc.

[brad1]

I became aware of music at a young age.I was born in 1962. My parents did not play a lot of music around the house. And when they did, it was music from Sammy Davis Jr. or Tijuana Brass or stuff, as a kid, I did not gravitate too.
I was the oldest of two sons, and had no older brother or sister to learn about music. So my influence in Rock came from outside my home.

At the age of 5-6 I remember the neighborhood girls getting together next door in the back yard and dancing to songs by bands like "The Archies" and other bubble gum type stuff. My brother and I would peek through a hole in the fence and laugh at them. I also remember hearing "Hey Jude" on the radio ALL the TIME! It actually began to annoy me, even as little kid.

The very first time I remember listening to music that was completely new to me was when I went over to a friend's house one day and we listened to some of his older sister's records. I was about 10 or 11 years old. The "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album by Elton John was something we listened to, and I liked.

But it was listening to the Sly and the Family Stone album below, that really had an impact on me. I loved it! It wasn't just rock, it was funk and soul mixed in too.
And I had never heard anything like it. "You Can Make it if You Try" was my favorite off the album (and is still a favorite of mine today).

After that experience at my friend's house, I realized there was much more music around than what was just being played on the radio.
It kind of started me off on my journey of music exploration. Which, of course continues to this day.

[bobouz]

"Breathless" by Jerry Lee Lewis.

[milod]

I guess it'd depend on your current definition of "rock" as music of various sorts appeared in the 1950s.

It certainly was a different time.

m

[Dennis G]

milod, on 09 December 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

I guess it'd depend on your current definition of "rock" as music of various sorts appeared in the 1950s.

It certainly was a different time.

m

+1. Having been born in '46, I've seen such a transitiion in music through the 50's and early 60's that it's hard to say what your first "rock"influence was. I'd have to say it was probably early R&B morphed into rock, i.e. Holly, Elvis, et al, but certainly not limited to them.

[Notes_Norton]

Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock" on my big sister's pre-transistor, tube powered "portable" radio.

She said it was a new kind of music made just for us. My sister was enthusiastic about it and I liked it too.

The best I can remember is the radio looked like this:



I remember it being Motorola, but I remember it being a darker blue. But I was just a kid at the time so memories that old can get distorted. The swiveling handle was also the antenna and it had big, elongated cube shaped batteries in it.

Notes

[charlie brown]

milod, on 09 December 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

I guess it'd depend on your current definition of "rock" as music of various sorts appeared in the 1950s.

It certainly was a different time.

m

Certainly, that will apply, depending on which era one was born into. That's a given.
Not really looking for a "History" of Rock and Roll, IT's origins, or influences, in
this topic.

My main question was when were YOU=any member here, first conscious, of "Rock & Roll"
as it's called, or in any facet, regardless of the era, you were born in, or it's past
musical influences. For some, that would be Bill Haley, other's Elvis, The Beatles, or
British Invasion (1st or 2nd), Glam, Punk, and on and on. This topic wasn't meant to be
limited, to us "old Geezers," by any means.

In my case, as stated, Elvis, was my "first" awareness. Before that day, in the car, I was
unaware, or hadn't really noticed "Rock & Roll," even though it had been played, for several
years, prior. But, after that day, and my own newly acquired awareness, I seemed to hear it,
everywhere, by all it's various artists, and styles, at that time. There's always a point,
where one becomes "aware," of things (anything), where they hadn't really been so, or payed
attention to whatever it is, before. So, I guess that's more of what I'm asking, or curious
about. ;>)

Cheers,
CB

[milod]

CB...

I was plenty aware of Elvis - whom I didn't care much for although the girls around me did - Bill Haley and such. Maybellene... Doowop... all starting about 1955 and the term "rock and roll" more around age 12, I think. The concept was pretty new at the time.

That was around age 10 to 12 - the age in which most of us are making that shift of acculturation from Mommy and Daddy - assuming we had both in those days - into the greater world around us and our school and neighborhood friends.

We were figuring ways to put a motorcycle battery onto our bikes to power a tube car radio and such to hear the "young people's music" of the day that the high school kids were listening to. Our parents, of course, didn't think much of it and the banker once went next door to the ice cream parlor, asked proprietor Avon Plumlee how much the juke box brought in until the bank closed, gave him a cupla bills and unplugged the machine on his way out.

But the term "rock and roll" itself wasn't so much a big deal in ways because even the regional "rock and roll" station (remember Payola?) had such a wide variety of music compared to later "rock" station fare. You could jump from Chuck Berry to the Platters and here's one by Brenda Lee and...

Ah, the girls, tight sweaters and a scarf around the neck, poodle skirts long enough to go down to their bobby sox and saddle shoes... if the girls weren't wearing so many cancans that the skirt actually was around knee level. <grin>

What a different different world. For the boys a pair of engineer boots and leather Harley jacket were the ideal along with greasy fingers from messing with machinery of some sort. A pack of Luckies or Camels was mandatory by age 14 - hidden from parents around that age - and without a Zippo, you learned to light a ciggie one-handed from a book of paper matches.

Yeah, I actually was chuckling out loud writing those last two paragraphs. But it's all true. And I didn't even mention butch wax and Wildroot Cream Oil.

m

[Digger]

Bill Haley & The Comets, "Rock Around The Clock". Was it 1956?

I was 10.

Dig

[wiggy]

Probably around 64 or 65 (at age 4) when I started listening to my father's Lonnie Donegan and my mother's Johnny Ray 78's.

[Gaolee]

Rock and Roll was always around, but my parents were more interested in jazz, classical, and folk music. I was probably about eight when I finally got my hands on a radio and started listening to top forty. It was awful stuff. The real cultural shifts, at least for me, came as an awareness of the political aspects of music. I was ten when Kent State happened, and I lived in Ohio. That woke me up a bit. A little before that, there was a guy running for some public office, I don't remember what, and his campaign posters said "Love, Peace, and Justice" on them. I was amused as a kid and kept one. It made it to Seattle but I haven't seen it for a few years. I hope it's not gone.

Then, in 1972, the 60's blew through the little town I grew up in (we lived in the suburbs, where a block was five miles and Farmalls outnumbered cars). The art teacher, who had her own kind of weirdness, let us make ceramic bowls and paint them before putting them in a kiln. Then, when the school got a new acoustical ceiling in the lunch room, she had us make decorative panels on 24" x 48" newsprint sheets. Being kids, and being rural kids who pick up on all the iconography of the time, we decorated the bowls and panels with things like peace signs, red and white stripes, hang ten feet and the like. Real graphic creativity and innovative imagery were far beyond our reach, as was really knowing what was going on in the rest of the world except as it came to us on the radio or newspaper. But, there were others in the area who were aware that all of this was Communist! The peace signs were the broken cross sign of the Anti-Christ! It was a really big deal, and there was a big meeting in the regional high school. Some parent, who probably was more amused than afraid of Communists, brought up the fact that if symbols never changed meanings, then the early Christians sure pulled a fast one on the Nazis. That slowed things down for about two minutes, but the whole thing came to an end with us taking home the bowls and the art teacher nervously taking down the ceiling decorations and banning peace signs.

So, that's Rock and Roll.

[SNick]

I'm with Milod and Digger, All the groups from about 1954 on. Man what a ride it's been........

[Dennis G]

SNick, on 10 December 2012 - 07:15 PM, said:

I'm with Milod and Digger, All the groups from about 1954 on. Man what a ride it's been........

Two words: American Bandstand (the early D ick Clark years...okay that's more than two words LOL)