And , of course, if we will just follow with open ears the list should go on and on.... I an older than most of you, I think, though certainly not better or wiser, and though I agree with numbers of the music listed, I can certainly add a few. I don't remember a time when music wasn't important to me and everyone in my family. A maybe apocryphal story is that after I was born, when I first came home from the hospital, my father held me up before his big monaural speaker to play his new love of a hot very young trumpet player- Miles Davis. Of course I have no memory of this. But Miles music was always one thread of the sounds in the homes of my family of origin.
When I got swept away by Miles though was when Miles Ahead came out and impactful albums included all of his later collaborations with Gil Evans. As an older child I wore out a copy of Sketches of Spain and I even loved his less respected Quiet Nights. I came to Kind of Blue later.Other early loves of mine included, Everybody Digs Bill Evans And the Bill Evans Trio albums especially Song For Debbie (I ended up marrying a woman named Debbie who I am still with and in love with after 52 years) and Polka Dots and Moonbeams. I also loved anything by Duke Ellington or Count Basie.
My first classical loves, well after some kid records (Sparky and the orchestra, Atlanta and the Golden Apples) were Rites Of Spring (I think it was Ansermet conducting), Lt. Kije Suite and Brahms' Symphony No.4.In my early teens I was influenced by older kid friends and was formed again by Hoyt Axton's Greenback Dollar, the first Joan Baez album, Pete Seeger and this scratchy voiced kid's first Columbia album, Bob Dylan of course. That album is still tied in my memory to a weeks vacation at Newport Beach in southern California.
Having said all of this, I was and remain a rock 'n' roller before anything else. I can still remember the first time I heard the Beatles (my sister 1 1/2 years younger got to them before me and it was her single of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" that was my hello from them, hearing the Animals version of "House of the Rising Sun" and early Kinks though it was Something Else that was the kicker for that band. The first live rock band I saw, I think, was Dick Dale and I stayed moved by those surf bands ever after.The first album I bought with my own money was Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds, which I still have. About that time my father was given his first set of stereo speakers by a drummer friend of his.Formative albums included Da Capo & Forever Changes- Love; People Are Strange - Doors; Tim Buckley and even more Happy Sad; Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix, Astral Weeks -Van Morrison, Young Brigham - Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Vincebus Eruptum - Blue Cheer, Soft Machine 1 - Soft Machine, My Favorite Things, A Love Supreme - John Coltrane, Town & Country - Humble Pie, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - Small Faces, the Sex Pistols album but even more the first Bucocks album and London Calling - Clash, Europe '72 -Grateful Dead. Ooops gotta stop now as it's dinner time maybe to return later.Take care and be safe y'all.
