Music of the 1950s

¶ … Music

How old are you? I was born June 3rd, 1940

That would make you ten years old in 1950, what can you remember about the music? It certainly wasn't crazy like the music is today. Today's music is all crap, drugs and sex and things like that. You were bad if you smoked a cigarette during those times, not like today's world. You could walk down the street safely, leave your doors open, compared with today things were a lot different.

How were you introduced to that music? I had an older sister that taught me a lot about music, in fact I received a record player that played seventy eights and forty fives. I had to share it with my sister, who took voice lessons and her and my mom sang a lot around the house. My Mom always let us get new records.

Who were some of the people you listened to early in the 50's? Dean Martin, Doris Day, Patsy Kline, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Tennessee Williams, Ernie Ford those were the big singers of the day.

Later in the 50's we started listening to groups along with Elvis Presley. Of course, six years later I was already married. The music did not change with my marriage but what I listened to sure did change. After I was married I started listening to a lot of classical because my spouse did so.

When we first got married, we would listen to record after record on the hifi, which was really a good deal. It had a record player and a radio all with high fidelity sound.

What do you miss from that era? The music to me was a lot more pleasant to listen to, and it made a lot of sense. The innuendos and words used in today's music is just atrocious.

We had a lot of sock hops. We used to go to Kit's Ice Cream Parlor and would hang out and dance to the jukebox. Then on Friday nights we would go to the school for dances and we also went to the skating rinks and would dance on skates, that was fun! We could also go down to the local church's auditorium where they would hold dances for all the kids. All the places we hung out at had jukeboxes.

I don't remember ever going to concerts when I was a kid, but on television they would have like big western hayrides that were really popular. The concerts they had back then did not include such things as mosh pits. Like I said before, the biggest sin you could commit back then was smoking, and drinking was unheard of.

The values have changed so much that sometimes I just get sick thinking about it. I guess I shouldn't generalize, but it sure seems that way to me. Along with the technological progression, has come such things as pornography and those kinds of things, everything nowadays is so accessible.

When did the music start to change? I really did not notice any changes until the late 60's, Woodstock era was a dramatic change, especially with the hippies and all that backwards nonsense. That's when I noticed that the music really started going down hill.