Early Musical Influences

[Buc McMaster]

When I was a young boy in the mid-50s my Dad built a HeathKit mono hi-fi set. He bought a turntable and built what at the time seemed to me to be a very large speaker cabinet with angled corners on the backside so it could sit in a corner well. He was always bringing new records home and the music was quite varied. Music to me at the time was a sweet mystery......I had no clue how it was created and quite honestly it never occurred to me that I could learn to make music. (Didn't begin playing guitar until I was 21.) I remember lying on the floor in front of that big ol' cabinet for hours listening to whatever Dad put on the turntable. Fast forward 50 years and I find myself drawn to the music I remember clearly from those early days. In particular I love Jimmie Driftwood, a folk singer/songwriter from Arkansas that did some great stuff. The album Dad had was Newly Discovered Americana Folk Songs or something like that......long out of release. No less than Mr Chet Atkins played solo guitar for Driftwood on that album. There is a boxed set of Driftwood's stuff still available and it has all the tracks from the Ameicana album.....Old Joe Clark, Fair Roseamond's Bower, Rattlesnake Song......some very, very fine storytelling songs. I still know the words to many of them and sing them all the time from memory, not having heard the recordings since the late 50s, and can hum Chet's solos for many of them (can't play them!). Another record I listened to thousands of times was Songs Of The Sea by the Norman Luboff Choir, an all-male choir that is very impressive. Old sailor shanties and songs of longing for home that I still sing......beautiful, haunting songs. I did find a copy of this one on CD a year or so ago and it still raises the hair on my neck to listen to these voices. There are many others.....Chet Atkins, Burl Ives, Tennensee Ernie Ford.....all rattle around in my musical memory to this day. I am struck by the fact that though I did not even consider becoming a musical person until much later in life, this music still captures my imagination and sets me to singing tunes I haven't heard for over 50 years.

 

How about you? Do you have childhood musical memories that still haunt you?

[larryp58]

I remember as a kid being drawn to music. In the early '60's, rock 'n' roll was just blooming. I can remember listening to the radio for hours on end. Watching TV variety shows for new artists (Ed Sullivan, etc.). Mostly influenced by Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Brothers Four, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves. After I started playing guitar, my style was mostly influenced by Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, America, James Taylor, John Prine, and southern rock bands. Late night concert shows like Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and The Midnight Special. Wasn't life grand back then!!!

[EuroAussie]

Before we emigrated to Australia I was stuck in communist Poland until 11 years old .... so I was sort of limited to exposure of ahm, 'quality' music.

 

Although I remember hearing Tainted Love when I was 10 and that made a huge impression on me. Maybe thats why we cover Frankie Goes To Hollowood in our set ... never thought of that, a subconcious link to 80's pop ....?

[AnneS]

How about you? Do you have childhood musical memories that still haunt you?

 

My folks had a couple of country greatest hits albums when I was very young. I listened to 'em over and over, long before I started playing at the ripe old age of 7. (They had a two-cabinet blond record player/stereo speaker system...I can still see the little red power light that, like me, was at floor-level. Used to stare into that red dot for what seemed like hours, while I listened.)

 

So I heard Hank Snow and Marty Robbins and Billy Walker and Patsy Cline and George Morgan and Kitty Wells... Well, let's just say, a two-finger lead still gets me, every time.

 

I remember "Shake Me, I Rattle," - a song about a doll in a shop window. Listened to that one seems like a million times, although I can't remember at the moment who sang it. I haven't looked for it in awhile, but now you done set me on its trail again!

 

Thanks!

[E-minor7]

My grandparents had a piano and once in a while when feeling like it, I sat down and tried some keys as a child. Couldn't play at all, but found out that something could be made on the dark ones alone.Therefor I composed a little fairly dramatic piece on the deep blacknotes that lasted for a bit more than 30 seconds. I played this thing now and then during my whole childhood and never forgot it. Then many, many years later around 1990, one deep night I had the radio on when suddenly a tune remarkably like mine came from the speakers. It stunned me right there on the spot. Had to write the title down and investigate in the days to come. It turned out to be an internationally known hit from a few years after I was born, now completely burried here. My conclusion was that it must have entered my mind before I got old enough to approach the piano, and then – now off the airwaves – lingered inside of me as melodies often do, unconsciously finding it's way through my fingers when just sitting there fiddling. As it was a Japanese inspired tune, I took a chance and asked the sweet waitress about it last time I dined on a Japanese restaurant. She knew it very well and even hummed it for me and my good friend from the top of her head. Think she told us the lyrics was about the longing for home. The title of the song (which many of you probably remember) – was Sukiyaki.

[fretplay]

Hey Buc, Ah yes times gone by!

 

Living in the UK in the fifties the highlight of the week was Radio Luxenbourg, Sunday night about seven, not easy to pick up' some times better than others. Then you could listen to loads of boring crooners just to catch a one track hearing of Presley,Ricky Nelson,Everlys,Little Richardo or Gerry Lee Lewis. The DJ always put them down first but what the hell it was worth it.

 

I had a friend who's father was a sailor and sailed from Liverpool to Gaveston. He was gone a long time and I remember his return was as you can guess a big occasion. His family all came round on his return and in the evening we local kids would come round and gather in the basement to see the presents of button down shirts and jeans with studs, things we fiftes UK boys only saw in the films.

 

But for me it was the music! My friends dad brought home that pounding Southern USA guitar music that I had never heard before and would make my hair stand on end. Only years later did I realise where John and Paul got it from.

[dhanners623]

My brother is 10 years older than I am and in the early '60s he was always playing albums from the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, the Smothers Brothers, etc. I was in grade school at the time. I think that over time, I must've developed a subconscious appreciation for John Stewart, then with the Kingston Trio. Later in life, as I got older and learned to play guitar, Stewart's solo work was a real inspiration.

 

I had to dive my stepson and three of his soccer teammates back to college in Iowa last night. It's a five-hour roundtrip and after dropping them off in Mason City, getting gas and getting a diet Mountain Dew for the drive back to the Twin Cities, I popped Stewart's "The Phoenix Concerts" into the car's CD player. Maybe it was just driving across flat Iowa at night, with storm clouds in the distance illuminated by the full moon, but my god that's a great album. Stewart was such a fine songwriter, and that record is filled with energy and great writing. He really was one of the founding fathers of Americana, but I'm always amazed at how little recognition he gets and how few people actually know his stuff.

 

"...Yeah, I have not been known as the saint of San Joaquin

And I'd just as soon right now pull on over to the side of the road

And show you what I mean...."

[Daryl M]

When I was growing up, it was traditional county, and 70's rock that caught my attention. All these years later, and I still have a good collection of both playing in my truck on a regular basis. I guess good taste is timeless.

[bkharmony]

My Dad was into 70s rock (BTO, CCR, Led Zeppelin, Guess Who, Bad Company, etc.), so I listened to a lot of that, and graduated to 80s metal. I have yet to revisit any of that stuff, and I hope (pray) I never will.

 

My Grand-Dad was into 50s and 60s Country, however, which I have musically invested in heavily.

[L5Larry]

My parents grew up, and "came of age", during the big band years of the 30's & 40's. The first music I heard around the house as a child was big band jazz (Basie, Ellington, Goodman, Miller) and crooners like Sinatra, Nat Cole, Mario Lanza and the like. Even with everything else I heard from the Beatles on, I still maintained a love (and interest) for that music.

 

Turn the clock ahead 50 some-odd years and what's my main guitar gig, playing in a 20-piece jazz big band. My parents have been gone for over 20 years, but there isn't a time I walk out on stage with the big band that I don't think about them and wish they were there to see it. Not to get too mushy, but I always wear my dad's 1941 Longiness wrist watch for our concerts.

[zombywoof]

LOL - I am still have a pair of Heathkit mono amps.

 

Growing up in my house it was an odd combination of opera, Jackie Gleason's Music for Lovers, and folkies like the Kingston Trio and the Weavers. My Dad had been and still was a big Gene Krpa fan so there was also some jazz. I took to the folk stuff. Went from "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. This lead me into the blues - Lonnie Johnson, Victoria Spivey, Bessie Smith, Son House, Barbecue Bob, Blind Willie Johnson, and such. My first band was me on guitar and a friend on harp. We played stuff like House's "Death Letter Blues." No gigs but we got together every chance we got and tried to copy what we heard on the records which I had taped on my father's Roberts reel to reel recorder.

 

Then came the Beatles with those electric guitars. Man, I knew I had to get me one of those. The years that followed are kinda hazy.

[Johnt]

Hey Buc, Ah yes times gone by!

 

Living in the UK in the fifties the highlight of the week was Radio Luxenbourg, Sunday night about seven, not easy to pick up' some times better than others. Then you could listen to loads of boring crooners just to catch a one track hearing of Presley,Ricky Nelson,Everlys,Little Richardo or Gerry Lee Lewis. The DJ always put them down first but what the hell it was worth it.

 

 

On yes FP were you a member of the "under the bed clothes club" (so innocent in those days but nowadays such a phrase would waken a Wilyfool)

 

God life was cr*p in UK in the late 50s!

Lux, even the Pinky & Perky show and Family favourites would occaisionally have something other than crooners!

 

Full cirle now bud!

 

These days I turn on the radio on the M25 and have to listen to Lady GooGoo and Cheryl (expleteive deletive) Cole before I get to listen to Ricky Nelson etc.

 

1. What goes around, come around!

2. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

 

 

Ho Hum!

 

Ps Anyone want to buy an Excellente?

[Doin Montary]

duane allman, however listening back, it was probably dickey betts.

[onewilyfool]

I'm a child of the 60's.....so I grew up with , Beatles, James Taylor, Rolling Stones, Donovan, etc.......it was really the golden age of music, I consider myself blessed to have been exposed to such great music in my formative years.....

[devellis]

OWF - I grew up on the same stuff and also feel that it was a very special time in music. I wonder, though, if everyone feels that way about the music they grew up with. I know a lot of people in the generation before mine felt that way about Big Band music. As inconceivable as it seems to a Boomer like me, kids growing up with Lady Gaga will probably have the same affinity for ger that I do for the Beatles.

 

Michael Jackson is a good example. I'm old enough (soon to be 64) to have looked down my nose at MJ. I can remember friends comparing his rendition of some song (don't remember which) to the version Isaac Hayes had done and MJ wasn't coming out on top. I considered him as sort of a clown rather than a serious musician. But people a bit younger than me whose judgment I respect think he was an absolutely incredible singer, other aspects of his life not withstanding.

 

So, how much is the actual merit inherent in the music as opposed to the nostalgia we attach to it -- the cascade of memories it evokes every time we hear it, the friends whose faces push through the smog to appear in our mind's eye, the milestone events with which it's inexorably entwined? I can't separate myself enough from the music I love to even begin to answer that question. I, like you, am convinced that music has never been better than it was during my high school and college years. I just need to remind myself sometimes that other people have similar attachments to music that doesn't move me in the least (or may even strike me as annoying). Music and our reactions to it are mysterious things.

[MR GIBS]

As you know I live in Bulgaria - the time I write about was the time when my country was a part of the "Eastern block" and the communist regim was powerful. Almost no western music...

It was in 1972 or 73... I was about 11 or 12 years old. My grand father was a physician who went to work 5 years in Algeria. He took with him my grandmother and my oncle too. So my oncle lived 5 years in Algeria, studied in a french Lycee in the town of Constantin and took some "western influence" there.

When they returned in Bulgaria my oncle brought some records. Well - most of them were The Beatles records and this is the time when I first saw The White Album. I was fascinated by the fact that there are not one but two vinils inside and so many pictures and a big peace of paper like some newspaper with the lyrics of all the songs on the one side... We even had no "gramophone" in the house (as we still call in Bularia the device to play the vinil records). And my oncle took it from his friend.

This was the time when I felt in love with The Music and the first song that I wanted to sing was "Ob-la-di Ob-la-da" of course ;-) I did not know a word in english language by that time but I copyed the lyrics and I tried to sing alone with the record without understanding what exactly I sing... This was a really great time for me - I discovered a Whole New World...

[ol fred]

My earliest influence was probably the Collins kids in the fifties. My parents used to drag me to "Cliffie Stones Hometown Jamboree on Satudays. I had th hots for Lori Collins and her little brother Larry was a wild child with a guitar.