The music that we ‘baby boomers” listened to as we were growing up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s seems to have stuck with us like the music of no other generation did before, or has since. This may surprise some and others may argue, but I really do think it’s true. If not, how do you explain the continuing popularity of “oldies” radio?
One of the reasons that this is so, I believe, is that the music of our time defined us and united us as a generation. We listened to music that reached deeply into our core. There were songs that made you feel good and there were songs that made you cry, and whatever mood you happened to be in at the time, when you turned on your radio or dropped a record onto your turn table, that mood could be intensified or changed, depending on the song. The music could reach into the depths of your soul and take your emotions to higher, or deeper levels
As I’ve grown older I’ve come to realize more and more just how much the music has meant to me. Lately I’ve taken to calling it the “soundtrack of my life”. I think this is so because, as we all know, the older we get the more memories we have and cherish. Music has a way of helping us to recall those memories and the feelings that we had at the time the memories were made. It takes us back to those times and places like almost nothing else can. Those times and places that shaped us, became a part us, and helped to make us of who we are today.
Since I’m now well into my 70th decade of life, I have lots of memories that I hold onto which makes the soundtrack of my life a rather long one. There aren’t enough records, compact discs or cassette tapes to hold all of the music that makes up my personal soundtrack. A great deal of it is, however, stored in my personal music collection which, by my best estimate, includes well over 2,000 individual songs from the ‘50’s, 60’s and early ‘70’s stored on one or the other of those devices and on my Rock-Ola juke box that I fire up from time to time.
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There are obviously too many songs connected to too many memories to include in this writing, but here’s just a small sampling of the music and the memories that are a part of the soundtrack of my life.
1957 - I was just ten years old in the spring of 1957. I remember a bus ride to our elementary school’s annual, year end, school “picnic” at Arnold’s Park (Lake Okoboji) Iowa. Someone had a transister radio on the bus and I’ll always remember hearing “Party Doll” by Buddy Knox on the radio several times that day. That song always takes me back to those fun times at Arnold’s Park.
1959 - My family took a vacation trip to our cousin’s Wisconsin dairy farm in the summer of ‘59. I vividly recall that they had a radio in the barn and and it seemed that “Lipstick on Your Collar” by Connie Francis and “My Heart Is An Open Book” by Carl Dobkins, Jr were played on that radio each afternoon at milking time. Hearing either of those songs today instantly takes me back to Wisconsin, that barn, and the fun we had on that visit, even now some 55 years later.
1960 - New Years Eve. I remember my brothers and I listened to the radio that evening as KOMA radio from Oklahoma City played the Top 100 Count Down from the year 1960. I remember waiting to hear where some of my favorites would place on the final list. Songs like “Devil or Angel” by Bobby Vee, “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Brian Hyland or “Alley Oop“ by the Hollywood Argyles (as you can tell, my musical tastes were quite eclectic). I often get taken back to that time and place when I hear any those songs.
1961 - I believe it was during ‘61 that Dick Biondi, the venerable DJ from WLS in Chicago started using the Shirelles “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” as his opening theme song. Every time I hear that song today I think back to my room on the farm north of Heron Lake listening to Dick Biondi spin the records each night from WLS in Chicago.
1963 - I turned 16 in 1963 and the musical memories of that year bring back old time feelings constantly. I fell in love at a school dance in January of ‘63 dancing to “Roses Are Red” by Bobby Vinton and, when things didn’t work out so well a few months later, I cried myself to sleep at night listening to “Out of My Mind” by Johnny Tillotson, "The Rhythm of The Rain" by the Cascades, and “End of The World” by Skeeter Davis. Then, that summer shooting hoops in my backyard and listening to the radio strategically placed in the garage window I got invigorated by songs like “Walk Like A Man” by the Four Seasons, along with the Beach boys “Surfin USA” and “Shutdown”, and Jan and Dean’s “Surf City”. How I‘d like to be able to go out in my backyard now, crank up those tunes and drain a few three pointers and reverse lay-ups. My neighbors would probably call the cops.
1964 -The Beatles arrived. The first time I ever heard a Beatles song I was at my friend Butch Hanson’s house and “She Loves You” came on the radio. I was hooked instantly and every time I hear that song, or “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, today I remember where I was when I first heard them.
1969 - I spent a fantastic winter in Watertown, South Dakota, student teaching at the junior high school from January through March of ‘69. Some people might recall that winter was one of the coldest and snowiest on record. I’ve always fondly remembered my last weekend in Watertown in late March cruising around town with two of the other student teachers who had become good friends. The sun was out, the snow was melting and “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival was playing on the radio. It was a great day and Proud Mary takes me back there each time.
1972 - Early in ’72 I met the lady who would become my wife. Around that time Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” had hit the charts and it seemed like whenever I heard that song I would think of her. I had been searching for a “heart of gold” for a long time and sometime in the spring of that year I began to realize that I might have found one. We were married in April, 1973 just as Stevie Wonder’s “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” was hitting the pop charts. Thinking back on that time I’ve come to understand that those two songs pretty much sum up that time of my life. In my search for a “heart of gold” I finally had found “the sunshine of my life”. We’ve been together for 42 years come next April and the sun is still shining!
Of course, all of that is just a part of the story. I hope that each of you has your own soundtrack. We were lucky, we “boomers”, because our music was either so positive and uplifting or so emotive and impassioned. I think that many of us have turned out better because of it. I worry about those who grew up with the music that came later. It seems to this old curmudgeon that today’s music is lacking in so many of those qualities that made our music great, that allowed it stand the test of time. Our music truly was “here to stay, and it will never die"!
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