“Your” music may be showing your age!

I read an interesting article about favorite music for each of us this morning. It states that for women, their favorites when they were 13, for men that age is 14.

So that means, my favorite artists should be the likes of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Johnny Horton, Lloyd Price, Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Bobby Darin, The Browns, The Fleetwoods, Santo & Johnny, Ritchie Valens, The Platters, The Everly Brothers, Dion and the Belmonts, The Crests, Brook Benton, Connie Francis, Pat Boone and The Drifters. I admit that they are some of my favorites. But for me, there is another group of favorites that came along later in the 60’s; The Beatles, The Stones, Aretha, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Billy Joe Royal, Tommy James and the Shondells, Linda Ronstadt, Dusty Springfield, The Motown Sound (The Supremes, The Miracles, The Temptations and The Four Tops,) Steppenwolf, The Doors, The Byrds, Merilee Rush and the Turnabouts, Lulu, Peter and Gordon and many more. In fact this latter group of favorites is bigger and more prominent in my memories that the earlier group in my memories.

So, if you were to chart my favorite tunes by year you would have one that looks like a suspension bridge with two towers, one for each peak. But like that bridge there are a lot of tunes before and after the peaks that make up my personal favorite’s list. According to the author of the article, my chart is different. That is appropriate; I am a bit different too. That second tower is situated squarely in the middle of my first job in radio, spinning the tunes at WCOS. I was living in the middle of the music of that time more than any other in my life.

I remember having a conversation with a co-worker a few years ago about music favorites. She was born in ’69 and her favorite period for music was the early 80’s. Note the 13 year old theory indicates that her peak year would be 1982. So we have anecdotal corroboration of the theory.

I would like to add my corollary to this theory. It states that as you go back in time from the date of your birth that every 10 years or so, you would have a minor hump. For the lack of a truly scientific name I call this the “Music Generational” hump. Personally, I have an affinity for the music that my parents loved; Benny Goodman – “Swing Swing Swing”, Frankie Laine – “Moonlight Gambler” and songs by Patti Page, Debbie Reynolds, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis and many more of that time. According to that theory, I came to love those songs by listening along with my parents in the living room or in the car while growing up.

When I went back on the air in 2007 at WUSC-FM on the campus of the University of South Carolina, I was often astounded when an 18 – 21 year old student would walk in and tell me that my music brought back happy memories for them. When I asked them about how they could remember those songs when they were so young, they responded that Mama and Daddy loved those songs and that is how they heard them. There was a period a few years ago when that didn’t happen so much, but lately, it’s happening again; only it not Mom and Dad but Grandma and Granddad. This peak is not as strong as the one ten years ago but it is early in the cycle. We shall see.

The other thing that they remember is the radio experience of the 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s. As you may remember, the DJ style was very different from what it is today. There was a much stronger flow to the show with the DJ starting to talk over the tail of the song that was ending and then talking over the instrumental head of the song that was just beginning to play, ending the moment before the vocalist sang his or her first word. This practice had a name; “Walking up the record and hitting the post.” There are few DJs today that can still do that. The commercials of the day were delivered in that fast paced, strident style and then there were the jingles. THE JINGLES! The most popular jingles of the times came out of a pair of companies in Dallas Texas; Pams and Pepper-Tanner. They eventually merged but their short tunes were burnt into our memories as deeply as the number one songs on the charts.

Now in all honesty, I’m not one of those of a certain age that think that everything that came out after 1975 is no good. I do like certain tunes from the 80’s and the 90’s and even some from this millennium. There are some good songs coming out even today. But they don’t call to me as strongly as “my songs” do. At a risk of being called a curmudgeon, there are a couple of things that I detest in modern music. The first is Autotune. Its artifacts make me grind my teeth. The second is the tendency of many of today’s acts to use synthesizers instead of real instruments. This is usually a cost cutting measure, but to me, you can’t beat a real horn band or a full orchestra. I love my sax and violins.

So, if you are reading this, Google the top 100 songs of the year you were 13 (or 14 if you are a guy) I bet you will be able to remember every song on the list, and even sing most of them from beginning to end. Oh MY!