My four year old granddaughter said, "Alexa, play my Disney music!" and she began to sing along with her favorite character - on demand! It’s so amazing how far we have come since I was a kid her age.. Today they download music with a click...and then I thought of when I was a kid riding my bike over 3 miles to the Millville Music Center to hear Billboard's number one tune.
The Center was almost as popular a hangout as the Goodie Shop ice cream parlor for many of the kids in my circle of friends. The shop's window was filled with musical paraphernalia, an array from trombones to metronomes, sheet music and a list of the top ten records of the week. Lining the walls of the narrow store were bins filled with what seemed like (and probably were) hundred’s of the new 33 ⅓ rpm albums in alphabetical order. Next were drawers of 45’s with a big hole in the middle. My grandmother Ethel marveled how light they were compared to her collection of ancient and heavy “clay” RCA records. (I loved the logo of the dog with his ear to the horn of a gramophone) This store would have good ole Tom Edison beside himself with joy (probably not about the music but the numerous royalties that his inventions have delivered).
Stella, the owner and music advisor to every kid, kept a watchful eye on what records went into the rooms and insisted that we put them back as we found them or buy them. Most of the hit records cost $1.98 and she also had a sale of oldies (which were only months old in my day) @ 2 for a buck. Frankly, I preferred the new LP’s (long playing) records. Unless you had one of the new players that dropped a record from a stack of ten or so, you had to change or “flip” them constantly - thus the “flip side” as they say to hear both of the songs. My grandmother’s records only had the music etched on one side of the disc. Why? This puzzled me. I had a “portable” phonograph which only weighed about 26 pounds but I couldn’t wait for Christmas when I was going to put a new “stereo hi-fi” player with one removable speaker for full separation on the top of my list. (I got it that year and listened to it all day Christmas day and then each night in bed until I went to college, always going to sleep before the record ended).
What did I listen to in 5th grade (1955)? The Yellow Rose Of Texas - Mitch Miller; The Ballad of Davy Crockett - Bill Hayes; Love Is A Many Splendored Thing - The Four Aces - all ballads that one could whistle along with and for every age. And then came Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets - and the world rocked with a new kind of music; loud, hypnotic, and most important, with a beat. (Scientists have determined that radio waves from the beginning of broadcasting are still flying beyond our solar system and could travel on forever - Rock and Roll is literally here to stay! And perhaps on a planet millions of light years away someday somebody or something will hear “Hound Dog” by Elvis.
Violet’ told Alexa to stop and she started playing a game on her iPad. And I return from the soundtrack of my early life...and marvel at how much is now at her young fingertips...and I wonder what she will reminisce about in 50 or 60 years?
At the rear of the shop were 4 small “booths” a little bigger than a phone booth (phone booths are another story). They had doors with a thick glass window and were lined with “acoustical” tile (then they were made of asbestos and had a million tiny holes in them to capture the sound waves. I always felt a bit dizzy when I first closed the door as the room was “dead” until one spung some rock-n-roll on the turntable. Today, the sound booth has been replaced with elite noise cancelling, comfy designed bluetooth wireless earbuds which produce sound like the listener was at a “live” recording session.) These booths performed double duty, music lessons on the blatting instruments the store rented and for previewing Elvis taking care not to totally blow out an eardrum.
Stella, the owner and music advisor to every kid, kept a watchful eye on what records went into the rooms and insisted that we put them back as we found them or buy them. Most of the hit records cost $1.98 and she also had a sale of oldies (which were only months old in my day) @ 2 for a buck. Frankly, I preferred the new LP’s (long playing) records. Unless you had one of the new players that dropped a record from a stack of ten or so, you had to change or “flip” them constantly - thus the “flip side” as they say to hear both of the songs. My grandmother’s records only had the music etched on one side of the disc. Why? This puzzled me. I had a “portable” phonograph which only weighed about 26 pounds but I couldn’t wait for Christmas when I was going to put a new “stereo hi-fi” player with one removable speaker for full separation on the top of my list. (I got it that year and listened to it all day Christmas day and then each night in bed until I went to college, always going to sleep before the record ended).
What did I listen to in 5th grade (1955)? The Yellow Rose Of Texas - Mitch Miller; The Ballad of Davy Crockett - Bill Hayes; Love Is A Many Splendored Thing - The Four Aces - all ballads that one could whistle along with and for every age. And then came Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets - and the world rocked with a new kind of music; loud, hypnotic, and most important, with a beat. (Scientists have determined that radio waves from the beginning of broadcasting are still flying beyond our solar system and could travel on forever - Rock and Roll is literally here to stay! And perhaps on a planet millions of light years away someday somebody or something will hear “Hound Dog” by Elvis.
Violet’ told Alexa to stop and she started playing a game on her iPad. And I return from the soundtrack of my early life...and marvel at how much is now at her young fingertips...and I wonder what she will reminisce about in 50 or 60 years?
