I relate to it with a smile, because I was also of the era of hi-fi and vinyl. Believe it or not, my parents actually had a stereo system that was built in to our home. Yes, it really did come with the place when they bought it.
During the daytime it was working hard spinning some serious Helen Reddy. And, during the later hours, our family room floor was vibrating with the combined pounding and wailing of Dave Brubeck’s piano and Paul Desmond’s saxophone.
My sister and I were both in band, and my dad had mistaken this thing that was just something most kids did as a real interest in sounds and instruments and compositions. But we were just kids, and kids don’t even know how to properly appreciate ice-cream, let alone musical mastery.
So, he would drag us away from whatever important things pre-adolescent girls of the 1970s could possibly be doing and make us listen with him. We would sit for as short of a time as we could get away with (this was usually a three-song minimum) and then slink away, one at a time. The one who made the first move was the lucky one, because it doomed the abandoned one to at least one more song.
I suppose it saddens me that this was such torture to us, and that my dad was either oblivious or not. But, by the time I was in my twenties, just like all the other things that I didn’t know were good for me, I came to greatly appreciate Dave and Paul—and Time Out ended up being the very first jazz album I bought.
If you want to hear what was blowing my dad’s hair back, check out this pleasingly strange video I found from 1962. !!
The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Blue Rondo à la Turk
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