Welcome back to Throwback Thursday Memory Blog Hop. Lauren and I rotate publishing this challenge every Thursday.
Participation is easy. Write your own post about the subject and share your own memories or experience about the topic and leave a pingback to this post in the comments. You can use the photo above in your post and tag it with #TBTMemory or #IRememberWhen to make it easier for others to find.
If you do not wish to write your own post, feel free to tell your story in the comments below!
Music Memories
Maybe it’s a song that brings back good memories. Maybe it was your first radio or record player – or iPod depending on your age. Maybe it is the song that always moves you to tears. What song was played at your wedding? Did you have band posters hanging on your bedroom walls? What are your music-connected memories?
My post follows below.
In our house someone was always singing. My grandmother sang hymns as she did her housework. The song I remember her singing was “Peace in the Valley”. I realized early on how comforting music could be.
My grandfather sang old songs like “Old Dan Tucker”. As a little girl I remember him telling me a story about a man killed in a crane accident when they worked building bridges for the railroad. I think my grandfather was operating the crane and it devastated him. I never knew the man’s name, but my grandfather said he always sang “My Blue Heaven”. I somehow felt a sort of responsibility to always remember him by remembering that song. He has lived through my memories all these sixty odd years and I never knew his name.
My grandparents had a Victrola in the bedroom upstairs. It was built into a dark wood cabinet with a felt covered turntable and a removable crank on the side. There was a circular metal tray to store spare needles. I loved to hear the crackling sound of the needle moving across the record. I can close my eyes and still picture it in great detail.
When I was about six or seven, my grandmother was upstairs listening to 78 rpm records on the Victrola. I came running into the room, bounced up on the bed and broke one of my grandmother’s records. That was the first time I had ever seen my grandmother cry. I was devastated. The record was “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen”. I could not tell you who recorded it, but I realized just how much a single piece of music could mean to someone.
I grew up listening to and loving the music of my parents’ era but they were also about newer music, too. They would put Chubby Checker records on and we would all do the twist in the living room. “The Peppermint Twist” and “Let’s Twist Again” were favorites. It was so much fun.
We listened to a lot of records. My siblings and I had 45’s strewn all over the house. We didn’t buy albums until much later. My sisters were the right age to go crazy over the Beatles and Elvis. I listened to all the music of my siblings and learned to love it all. As time progressed, I was a big fan of The Monkees, The Beach Boys, The Association, the Guess Who, Simon and Garfunkle, and Cat Stevens.
I didn’t have a lot of posters on my bedroom walls, but when I joined the Air Force, I had the huge Chicago at Carnegie Hall poster on my wall along with lots of black light posters. I had a huge collection of albums at that time.
Eventually cassettes and 8-tracks took over and now almost everything is digital. We’ve come a long way from the 78 records my grandmother loved so much. Regardless of how the music is presented, it is woven into every fiber of my being. Music has accompanied every important moment of my life and all it takes is just a few seconds of the right song to take me back to another place and another time. That’s a special kind of magic.
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