When I was a girl, we mostly lived in the mid-South (Memphis) area and on many weekends and always at holidays we'd make the trek up to the Ozarks to visit the folks. Mom and Dad often played old-timey radio for the drive, and this being the 60s/70s, that meant golden age of radio music like Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby and the like. In that gloriously analog world, you'd sometimes hear the crackle as the needle lovingly slid down the spiraling groove of the record. For this reason, great classics from the 1930s-50s radio seem so right for cold weather. THAT feels like a holiday to me. It doesn't have to be Bing singing White Christmas-- pretty much any Duke Ellington or Doris Day will work to evoke that warmth for me, and it's all just toe-tapping, good-feeling music.
This is one I remember from those drives with the bayou along one side of the road as the terrain morphed from flat farmland to the gently rolling hills, and finally into the proper mountains. Sometimes there would be snow, but it was always cold, and at the time I was bemused by my old-timey folks and their predilection for the old music- that was just Mom and Dad. Still is, thank goodness-- I wouldn't trade it!
This year's fancies are passing fancies, but the old-fashioned way is here to stay in my heart and always will be. I'm thankful for the early exposure to off-the-trending path in music so I'd have a greater appreciation for life. Nice to know some things are unchangingly wonderful.
2 comments:
Lots of folks are 're-finding' the Ink Spots! ;-)
Hellz yeah. between the current music that we play here, there's plenty of Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters, and the like. I will unapologetically listen to Deadmau5 back to back with Ink Spots. I have a few stacks of 78s around here that I still need to go through and figure out what I want to do with. When I was ~20, a brother and sister wandered into the record store that I habitually haunted, wanting to unload a late family member's records. The shop wasn't interested, so I made an offer on the lot and loaded them into the back of my station wagon. Ideally, I'd like to pick out the good stuff, rip them to .wav on the media server and put them away for safe keeping. There's a lot of stuff in the pile that will likely go to the highest bidder on ebay, but somebody loved all of that music enough to pay a handsome sum for it in the first place. That in itself deserves some attention on my end.
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