This week brings my dad’s birthday — he’d have been 99 — and Father’s Day. Been thinking about how the music my dad loved influenced the music I love.
Dad had a modest record collection, maybe 50 LPs. He held onto them long after he no longer had a record player or a stereo. When Dad was in his early 80s, and after I’d started collecting records again, he let me go through his stack. I took what I wanted and we donated the rest to a senior citizen center.
Having come of age in the ’40s, Dad’s favorite genres were swing music and boogie woogie. He filled the jukebox at the enlisted men’s club he ran in postwar Germany in 1946. He never dug rock and roll in the ’50s, but he still loved watching all kinds of music on the TV variety shows of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
Dad’s record collection poops out about the mid-’60s. That’s probably when money became tight with three young boys to raise on a rather modest income.
Here are five records from Dad’s collection that I vividly remember.
“$64,000 Jazz,” a compilation from 1955. I was fascinated by this cover because it pictured a scene from a TV show, “The $64,000 Question” quiz show. Per Wikipedia: “One category on the Revlon Category Board was ‘Jazz,’ and within months of the premiere, Columbia Records issued (this record) under the tie-in title ‘$64,000 Jazz.'” I don’t remember any of the music from it, though.
“Time Out,” the Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1959. Quite possibly the coolest record in Dad’s collection. He must have seen and heard the Dave Brubeck Quartet on some TV variety show, most likely performing “Take Five,” the song I most vividly remember from this record.
“Remember How Great …?” a pop and jazz compilation from 1961. A promo for Lucky Strike cigarettes (which is odd because Dad smoked only cigars and a pipe). “A $3.98 value, yours for just $1 and 10 empty Lucky Strike packs.” Dad loved this record. We heard it often. l loved the colorful cover.
The A side opens with Count Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump,” one of Dad’s all-time favorites, and is followed by Les Brown’s “Sentimental Journey” with Doris Day on vocals. Two cuts later, Mary Martin sings Cole Porter’s “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.” The first song on the B side is Dinah Shore singing “Buttons and Bows.” All seared into my memory.
“Moving,” Peter, Paul and Mary, 1963. Dad was no hipster and no folkie. I’ve always wondered whether he bought this album — their debut record — for us kids. Back to back on the A side are “Puff” (aka “Puff, the Magic Dragon”) and “This Land is Your Land,” which we knew by heart as grade school kids. Dad must have seen and heard Peter, Paul and Mary on some TV variety show.
“Baja Marimba Band Rides Again,” the Baja Marimba Band, 1965. Julius Wechter, who played marimba and vibraphone for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, led this group through a bunch of sweet, swinging instrumentals that had a strong Mexican flavor tinged with California cool.
As a kid, I loved their cover of “The Woody Woodpecker Song.” I played the bejeezus out of this album when I was a kid. I have Dad’s original copy, complete with pops, scratches, even the occasional skip. I also have two, maybe three additional copies, if only for better sound.
I also have some other Baja Marimba Band records that Dad never had. I don’t like any of them. I like this one and only this one. Again, seared into my memory.
(Fun fact: Among Dad’s albums were “Billion Dollar Babies” by Alice Cooper and “Back in Black” by AC/DC. They’d apparently belonged to my youngest brother, who left them at home. When his wife found out, she busted him, saying she’d given one or both to him when they were in high school or college.)
AM, Then FM 