Your earliest musical memories?

Quantum Strummer

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According to my folks I was on-hand when The Beatles' first Sullivan performance happened inside our TV :) but I don't remember it. Which is odd because I certainly knew I Wanna Hold Your Hand by then. But I was only 3 & 1/2 and surely didn't get that seeing an English rock & roll band on American TV was anything special.

-Dave- (blushing)
 

rampside

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Me and my pal would listen to "Transfusion" by Nervous Norvus (1956) over and over on a little dinky record player. We would be rotf laughing the whole time. 78 speed, ultra high fidelity to boot!

Didn't get any better than that!:biggrin-new:
 

griehund

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Earliest music would be sitting at the bottom of the cellar stairs with a collection of my mother's pots playing drums. Growing up it was pretty much all Harry Belafonte. Then the big bands; Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gilespie, Duke Ellington. By high school it was a crazy mix of Tito Puente, Ray Charles, Everly Brothers and Bo Didley.
 

The Guilds of Grot

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My Wife and I just saw "Beautiful" on Broadway last Wednesday. It was awesome!!
 

Bikerdoc

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My mother and her sisters sang on the radio in West Virginia back in the late 40's. My earliest musical memory is my Mom singing "Old Rugged Cross" and other gospel songs. And then there were the songs of Gene Autry.
 

Zelja

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The first 4 & half years of mu life were spent in rural Croatia & Slovenia. No radio & no TV. I think my first musical memory was the guy across the road playing a piano accordion (you didn't specify first good musical memory)...:biggrin-new:

Got to Australia in '67 and honestly the first thing I can remember is probably The Beatles cartoons. The lady who was sharing the top floor of a terrace house with us in '68 also had a funky black Maton (Australian brand) electric guitar and she let me hold it & strum it. I thought it was super cool. Of course for my first musical instrument my parents bought me a piano accordion a few years later...sigh...
 

JohnW63

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My mom and dad listed to what I would call the 60s and 70s pop singers. Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, etc. I think my Dad was the one who brought in Chet Atkins records. They also had some classical stuff, like Grand Canyon Suite, and Rhapsody on Blue. Throw in some New Christy Minstrals and Kingston Trio, and you have what I grew up listening to. One birthday, I got a transistor radio for a present. I would turn it on at night, before bed. I heard John Denver doing Sweet Surrender , Annie's Song, and Sunshine on my Shoulders. I decided to learn the guitar after that. Before, I would pretend to play, listening to Chet.
 

adorshki

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The first 4 & half years of mu life were spent in rural Croatia & Slovenia. No radio & no TV. I think my first musical memory was the guy across the road playing a piano accordion (you didn't specify first good musical memory)...:biggrin-new:
Of course for my first musical instrument my parents bought me a piano accordion a few years later...sigh...
NUttin' wrong with a little gypsy influence!
ME? AM car radio: Belafonte's version of "Day-O".
Momma later told me I started singing along first time I heard it, I was like 3 years old.
Then at pre-school, they used to play "A-tisket A-tasket" by Ella Fitzgerald at recesses.
Gramma had an autoharp and played the "Marine Corps Hymn" and "Where Have You Gone Billy Boy?".
The sound of that thing was mesmerizing to me.
I remember thinking the "Baby, Baby" lyric from "Where Did Our Love Go?" was "Davy, Davy..." on the car radio.
By about '64 or '65 I was loving and singing lots of stuff from AM radio, just for the love of singing:
Petula Clarke's "Downtown" and "Don't Sleep in the Subway", "Chim Chim Cheree".
That one came back to me 40 years later and is still one of my all time favorite tunes.
 

Zelja

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NUttin' wrong with a little gypsy influence!
Can't remember too many gypsies around my neck of the woods though some must have wandered into town every now & again. The accordion was more of a folk instrument in those parts but was secondary to the more traditional tamburica stringed instruments/ensembles.

For a great film on gypsy music check out Latcho Drom - traces the culture & music from the sub-continent to Spain. Great music & players. Full film on youtube here:


 

dougdnh

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wow - I'm probably the oldest guy here. when i was about 10, i remember my older cousin playing his new 78 record for me - Bo Diddley. It totally changed my feelings about music, it was the most amazing other worldly thing i ever heard. I remember listening on my parents Zenith radio to Allen Freed playing Frankie Lymon, Little Richard, etc. The first record i ever bought was Santo & Johnny's 'Sleep Walk'. My first electric guitar was a shorthorn Danelectro.
 

fronobulax

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wow - I'm probably the oldest guy here.

My intuition says that there are a lot of folks who are in their sixties now and I can think of at least one who claims his 70's. No one has admitted to being in their eighties although it could be possible - there's nothing like music and the internet to keep the blood flowing. If I had to guess I'd say 1945-1955 contains the birth year of may 30% of us?
 

fronobulax

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Since it's on the table, I'm hurtling toward 74, so I'm sure that I'm at least in the Top Ten. :joyous:

Joe

I was thinking of you but was not going to "out" you. As I ponder I think I've met one other LTGer who claims 71 or 72 and there is a third I would not be surprised if s/he claimed 70+ but I need to take off my shoes to count the sixties.
 

matsickma

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I'll be 63 in Sept and my sweetheart turned 63 yesterday.
I find music is the one thing that connects us together in "my my generation"!
M
 

krysh

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since I'm one of the "younger" guys (50 three months ago) and my parents havn't been into music much, my first musical memories begin in the 70s disco aera (ABBA, Boney M. chic and even sweet). I think I got my first cassete recorder when I was around 10 and recorded songs from the german tv shows "disco 74/5/6..." and "hitparade" by placing the recorder in front of the tv, also my first Cssettes I got as a present have been ABBA and Boney M.. Later I recorded from radio until I got my first record player when I was 14. Then my first 2 records were Status Quo "Just Supposin" and AC/DC "Back in Black". then a lot more rock, then funk and soul and jazz....
Funnily enough I just started to play guitar in a Disco Cover Band. :playful:
 

strummer

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I'll check in at 62.My first musical memories are Cowboy tunes from t.v.(Roy Rogers?)I actually owned a red Roy Rogers 6 string as a little guy.Then I heard The Night Has A Thousand Eyes by Bobbie Vee and got my 1st transistor radio which may as well have been surgically grafted to my ear for a couple years.The Big Awakening,like many of us,was the Sullivan Show in Feb.,"64.I like the comment about everything changing because it is totally true.From that day to this music has been at my core and has colored my life pretty much every day.
 

Bill Ashton

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My father used to play this 45 by The Harmonicats...also remember Red River Rock by Johnny and the Hurricanes...but there were a lot of 78's around the house...
 
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