Who were your parents' favorite artists and what were some of their favorite songs?

[soulster]

My father was a huge Impressions and Marvin Gaye fan. I can't say which Impressions songs he liked the most, but i'll guess it was "Talkin' 'Bout My Baby", and when I was two, he loved "Baby Don't You Do It" by Marvin Gaye.

In later years, he would tell me how much he liked "Desiree" by Neil Diamond, and...Air Supply???? He mostly liked easy rock and smooth soul. he thought all rockers were on drugs or gay...or both.

My mother's favorite was Dinah Washington. She loved all those blues/jazz singers like Washington, Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls, and Sarah Vaughn. But, to my surprise, well, I shouldn't be surprised, that she liked rock, too. Imagine one day about eight years ago, I was driving her to the casino, mind you she was a Black woman in her late 70s, and I happened to have "Sweet Mary" by Wadsworth Mansion playing on the car stereo. Thinking that she probably wouldn't care for it, I skipped the song, and she told me that she was listening to it. I should have known, as she dug Steppenwolf and all that other stuff when I was a kid.

[skooldem1]

My father use to wear me out playing the Isley Brothers when I was younger. I didn't appreciate them until I was much older. My mother didn't really have a favorite.

[jobeterob]

Johnny Cash. Marty Robbins.

[robb_k]

5884
My parents liked Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Dinah Washington, Johnny Moore's 3 Blazers, Charles Brown, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woodie Herman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, T-Bone Walker, Joe Liggins, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra, Mahalia Jackson, etc. Music from the '30s and '40s.

[glencro]

I can remember my mother playing Mahalia Jackson all the time. Don't remember my dad having a favorite musically. He was always listening to baseball on the radio when he wasn't watching on tv or taking us to a game.

[marv2]

The Tempations, B.B. King, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Johnnie Taylor, Jackie Wilson, Supremes, Lou Rawls, Nancy Wilson, Joe Simon, Dramatics, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Bobby Blue Bland, Patti LaBelle, The Jacksons, Peggy Lee, Johnny Ace, The Drifters, Stevie Wonder, Four Tops, Curtis Mayfield/Impressions, Gene Chandler, Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Roy Hamilton, Fats Domino, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Stylistics, Dee Dee Sharp, Teddy Pendergrass, are the artists I remember off the top of my head they bought regularly either albums or 45's.

[Jerry Oz]

Most Motown, especially the Temps and Tops, as I recall. Also, the Impressions. Any '50s and '60s soul/R&B, honestly. The Coasters, Dominoes, Drifters, and Sam Cooke got played a lot, too. These days, my Pops still listens to Billy Eckstine and any jazz songs since 1950. He's amazed by the fact that if he asks for any genre of music, I can pull up Media Player or I-Tunes on his computer and automatically generate a playlist that lasts between three hours and two days.

My grandfather left me with and enduring love of "Ball of Confusion" by the Temptations and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye. He was so cool.

My mom surprised me too by buying Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" [[perhaps the best song ever, in my opinion; just sayin'...) back in the '70s. I also remember tons of Stax 45s around the house.

[sophisticated_soul]

My Mom was a major Johnny Mathis fan. I seem to remember "The Twelfth Of Never" and "Chances Are" as being among her favorites. I remember her very excited to go see him in person in what must have been the late 50's. I still have the program that she bought that evening. She also loved Sarah Vaughan, "Broken Hearted Melody" and "How Important Can It Be?" were among her favorites. Eartha Kitt was another favorite. She also liked Hank Williams and Marty Robbins. She also liked native Hawaiian music and also a more [[then) contemporary group of Hawaiian boys called The Surfers.

[arrr&bee]

Pop liked folks like[billy ekskine-ella-the mills bros.]mom was more up to date[eddie kendricks-james brown-al green-aretha-mary wells].

[Kamasu_Jr]

I talk about how I inherited my father's musical taste all of the time. He grew up on rock 'n' roll, so he liked a lot of the music from that era. Of course, being from Detroit, he loved Motown, but he also heard the Blues [[Jimmy Reed, BB King); Stax; Atlantic Soul; Bacharach, Warwick & David; The Beatles, Hendrix and on & on. He also liked pop music by Johnny Mathis, Nancy Wilson, Patti Page, Mel Carter etc. He also likes the Mamas & Papas, Phil Spector and was playing Sunshine Pop [[Petula Clark, The Critters, Mercy, Tommy James) the other day. We have a large music collection and even listen to country and some classical music.

Like Jerry, I also know what music my grandparents liked. My paternal grandfather was a gospel singer. He really liked The Dixie Hummingbirds and exposed my dad to it, who passed his love for them on to me. My 5 year old can sing Ezekiel Saw the Wheel and he has perfect pitch. When he's a little older, about 10, I'm making him join the choir. So it's getting passed on to another generation.

My grandfather also liked secular music by the Impressions, the Temptations, etc. He was big on harmony singing so he liked groups like The Fifth Dimension, The Pointer Sisters, The Jacksons, etc. He also really liked the Gap Band. Granddad was in his late 60s or early 70s when he got into the Gap Band. He was not a music snob. My grandmother liked Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Tyrone Davis, etc.

My mom's mother was into Jackie Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Smokey, Sam Cooke and guys like that. That got passed down to me as well.

[smark21]

My parents had no interest in popular music. Their record collection consisted of classical, opera, and a little bit of 19th and 20th century folk songs. They also had the soundtrack to Sound of Music, but I think they bought that for my sister and my mom actually liked the showsongs so it was occasionally played after dinner.

[robb_k]

!5886
You all are so young! Your GRANDPARENTS are from MY time! My parents would have been ANCIENT to you! They were listening to music in the 1920s and '30s!

[soulster]

!5886
You all are so young! Your GRANDPARENTS are from MY time! My parents would have been ANCIENT to you! They were listening to music in the 1920s and '30s!

Well, my parents, had they lived, would both be in their mid-80s right now.

[robb_k]

5889
Well, they were only about 7-8 years younger than my parents. But, my parents' musical tastes barely moved forward after the '40s. They did like Nat Cole's '50s singing and Johnny Mathis, and Sarah Vaughn's '50s singing and Dinah Washington's and Frank Sinatra's '50s singing. But they liked them all better in The '40s, and always liked The Big Bands and Swing Music better. Although, my mother did like The Cha Cha [[and Mambo, Samba and all Latin music). My father liked '30s and '40s Boogie Woogie music. Neither progressed much past the early/mid '50s, despite living until just a couple years ago [[my father until last year). He was devastated when the last "Swing" station closed up, and his radio diminished to a 3-hour show on Saturday mornings on a Jazz/Blues station. The Blues played on Sunday was too "modern" for him, playing NO '20s and '30s Blues, almost none from the '40s, and very little from the early '50s, while playing mostly '70s-present Blues. It's "too new" for me as well. I'm 20 years younger than my parents, and my taste is only about 10 years "newer" than theirs. So, I'm an old "Fogey", too.

I find it interesting that several of our poster's parents moved with the times, liking newer music. I couldn't get out of the '60s. Even the late '60s was starting to sound too modern for me.

I'm pretty much the same with films, artwork and books. I guess I'm a relic. I must have learned that from my grandparents, who raised me. They were born in the late 1880s and early 1890s. I inherited their values.

[splanky]

My parents listened to contemporary black radio with their kids during the day in addition
to the records they collected. Radio wise that meant WLIB, WWRL and WBLS. They both also
liked a variety of music but my mother especially loved Billie Holiday, a taste I inherited
very early. My father gave me John Coltrane but he didn't like too much Trane later development. I LOVED IT! The one act our whole household came together on was
Sly and The Family Stone. Except for my brother, who hated Motown for the most part,
everyone loved Marvin Gaye...

[Doug-Morgan]

Good question. Probably whatever J. P. McCarthy and Jimmy Lantz were playing on WJR, as befitting a white, suburban household in the 50's and 60's. There were not a lot of records played in the house when I was growing up. But when they did, it tended to be big band, with some Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, and the like, sprinkled with Shelly Berman, Freeberg, Anna Russell and other contemporary humorists of the day.

A visit to my Uncle Morgan's house was always a treat. He was a jazz sax player [[featured soloist with Glenn Grey and The Casa Loma Orchestra after WW II) and always had music playing, generally small group jazz. THAT was a big influence on my musical tastes.....

[soulster]

The one act our whole household came together on was
Sly and The Family Stone.
Interesting you mention that. We all listened to each other's music, but I can't think of anything that we all could gather around and enjoy equally. I would say something like The Staple Singers' "I'll Take You There", but one of my sisters may not have been too cool with that one. I don't know. We all enjoyed Earth, Wind & Fire's "That's The Way Of The World" until my brother went to prison for something he did. After that, my mother could never listen to the song again because it reminded her of his situation. I'm not sure he even liked the song, but when I play Curtis Mayfield's "Back To The World" album, I always think of when he introduced me to that album when he came to visit us for Thanksgiving. He had the 8-Track tape in his car and he let me sit in his car and record it with my portable cassette player. A week afterward, I did the one thing I hate: yard work, to earn enough money to buy the album. Wouldn't you know it? A few weeks later, I was riding my bike around town and came across a $50 bill! Well, It so happened I was right next to a department store! So, I want in and bought the Temptations anthology album. The next week, I bought some more records. Obviously, this was 1973, and I was 10 years old.

A few weeks ago, one of my sisters and I were driving back to Phoenix and were enjoying Tommy James & The Shondells. We both loved them growing up.

But, I digress...

[splanky]

It's funny you mentioned that Curtis Mayfield album. When I was young, in the army and
stationed in South Korea we listened to it a lot and co-incidently [[or not...) Back To The World was g.i. slang for returning to America after a duty tour...

[soulster]

It's funny you mentioned that Curtis Mayfield album. When I was young, in the army and
stationed in South Korea we listened to it a lot and co-incidently [[or not...) Back To The World was g.i. slang for returning to America after a duty tour...

Yeah, that's the one. My brother had just gotten back from 'Nam, and he was all over that album!

[JimBagley]

My dad's favorite was Glenn Miller and his favorite song was Blueberry Hill [[Glenn Miller's version, although he would dance to Fats Domino's version as well). My mom's favorite singer remains Dolly Parton, especially her early '70s Coat Of Many Colors/Jolene/I Will Always Love You/Mule Skinner Blues period. My parents grew up in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, on the border of Canada.