There's no accounting for taste, the saying goes. But is that really true? Surely there are influences at play that affect our preferences, especially when it comes to our choice in music. That's the musical question posed by a game going around Facebook: The 10-Day Record Albums that Influenced Your Taste in Music Challenge.
Music is shared and celebrated on social media all the time, but ever since the Stay at Home orders came down, we have been enjoying wonderful contributions by famous musicians, amateur players, gatherings on Zoom, health care workers, balcony serenaders in Italy, and even family units having silly fun. All of it has created a marvelous online community of support. These offerings not only underscore the pathos we are currently experiencing, but are also uplifting our spirits in many sublime and delightful ways.
But a challenge game? Really? Merely a time-filler to stave off boredom, surely. I was seeing posts from good friends who were participating and I was dreading that one of them would "tag" me to play along. Sure enough, it happened. I was "nominated" by my friend, Sarah with the challenge to chronicle my musical history, complete with illustrations from album covers, one per day, for 10 days. First reaction? "Ah geez, I'd really rather not!" I had no idea how my taste in music developed. Who would be interested in my two-cents worth, anyway? Weren't my experiences the same as every other Baby Boomer's? Beatles, Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, yada, yada?
Sarah tagged me on a day when she cited Burton Cummings as a favourite; apparently a cunning plan on her part to rope me in as she knew I would bite — Burton being a Winnipeg teen heartthrob from the olden days. I wrote a comment on Sarah's post about how Burton Cummings was a preteen idol of mine when he was lead singer with his first band, the Deverons, and how all the kids in Winnipeg gathered in the Paddlewheel Cafeteria at the Bay on Saturdays to hear local bands. I mentioned how I even locked eyes with Burton one day when he was riding down the escalator. When a certain song came out in 1965 (was it "Shakin' All Over?") a Winnipeg radio station — the one "we kids" liked — held a phone-in contest asking listeners to "guess who" the band was. Hundreds of kids called in. "Was it The Beatles?""The Dave Clark Five?" Nope! It was some local talent who ended up adopting "The Guess Who" as their official band name. Burton joined them a year later and they became big stars after that. Wow! Winnipeggers that hit the Big Time!
That got me thinking about the music I listened to growing up. What DOES shape our musical tastes? Our family? Early musical experiences? Songs we sing at school? Our first concert? What the other kids are listening to? Sightings of local rock stars on escalators?
In my case, I wouldn't have said it was my family — we were a profoundly unmusical tribe. I never had lessons on piano, or violin, or flute, or any instrument at all. I got nervous when my kindergarten teacher handed me a cymbal to ding out one note with the classroom rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Nobody in our house could carry a tune. Standing next to my Dad as he belted out hymns at church was cringe-worthy. And as far as I can remember, my folks owned only a handful of LPs. Dad liked Nat King Cole and Lena Horne. My Mum listened to big band music and songs from her youth on the radio, but they always made her cry while she was ironing, and so I wondered what made her so sad. We watched popular TV shows, such as Ed Sullivan, where musical guests ranged from opera soloists (Yuck), to somnambulant singers like Perry Como (Yawn), to Elvis (More like it), and the Everly Brothers (Whom I adored at, what? Age 6?) So naming anything from my background was a head scratcher as to how the heck I was going to list 10-days worth of albums.
School wasn't much help either. I mean, why on earth would they have taught 4th-graders, "What Will We Do With the Drunken Sailor?"
Then, a crazy memory popped into my head. And so, Day 1, I posted this: "Tubby the Tuba." My folks apparently bought this kid's record so I could learn the parts of a symphony orchestra as narrated by a voice representing the largest of the brass instruments. Why? I have no idea! They never went to the symphony as far as I know. An early childhood course in music appreciation? (Let me assure you, NOBODY else mentioned "Tubby the Tuba" on the Facebook challenge.) 
Day 2: another memory. "Peter and the Wolf, A Symphonic Fairy Tale for Children," again, narrated and starring the oboe (Duck), the flute (Bird), the clarinet (Cat), strings (Peter), and French horns (The Wolf) in a story-telling narrative. I found it mesmerizing. Imagine — listening to Sergei Prokofiev at the tender age of 5! I remember being fascinated that music could tell a story.
Day 3: Alan Sherman's hilarious album that included, "Hello Muddah. Hello Faddah. Here I am at Camp Granada." You're singing it already, aren't you? Why did my parents have this one? Doesn't matter! It was hilarious stuff and I can recite almost all the lyrics all these years later. "It is very entertaining. And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining." And those who know me, know I adore a good song parody. I mean, look at who I married — the master of musical satire!
Day 4: the theatrical recording of "My Fair Lady" with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. My Granny and Auntie Anne had taken me to see the movie version with Audrey Hepburn in 1964. Oh, I loved the music and the costumes and the story! It was luscious! And so was the album, which somehow was in my parents' meager collection. I think we might have had "Camelot" and "The Music Man" as well, and I wonder, was this the start of my affection for musical theatre?
And what a year 1964 turned out to be! The British Invasion hit North America when I was 11, and Ed Sullivan suddenly became relevant! The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and all the amazing bands, oh, my, I loved them so! My friends and I listened to song after song on the transistor radios that we carried, held up to our ears, everywhere we went. Then came the US bands in rebuttal to the Brits; The Mamas and Papas, the Lovin' Spoonful, the hippie era, folk-rock, the flower children, all tumbling together with Rock and R&B. What a time that was! My era! Wow — it was a revolution!
But on Day 5, did I write about all things Paul McCartney? No, I did not. Instead, I wrote about my big break-up with my parents' music. There's a line in the movie, "Annie Hall," that goes, "There was a lot of abuse in my family. Most of it musical." That really applies to the sudden interest my folks took to the mellow, easy-listening, sappy piano stylings of Ferrante and Teicher. If there was influence here, it was to make me run from the room screaming.
Day 6: Seems that early on I was a sucker for a handsome man with a guitar who sang sensitive ballads. Gordon Lightfoot. Sigh. His first album ignited the flame in my Canadian heart in 1966. I was 13 and got to go to my first concert at the Winnipeg Auditorium with some girlfriends to see him. I knew from that very day that I wanted to marry a man who would play guitar and sing to me. I did. Not only that, but the man I married presented Mr. Lightfoot in concert in Dayton, Ohio in 2017. Ken met our idol backstage and was the one who introduced him to the audience. I did not meet Mr. Lightfoot — I go all incoherent and sloppy around celebrities.
Day 7: continuing on with LPs beyond my family's limited, profoundly unmusical sphere. 1967. First boyfriend. Second ever concert: The Byrds. In junior high I hadn't any clue what "Eight Miles High" might have meant -- nor did I ever, if you get my drift. It was a memorable evening. Boyfriend and I were too young to drive and so we took the bus downtown to the Auditorium. We got caught in a thunderstorm on the way home and waited it out in a shop doorway. Very romantic. Ken plays "Mr Tambourine Man" even today, and I'm sorry, honey, but it gives me flashbacks — even though first boyfriend just wasn't anymore shortly after that concert date.
The 60s were filled with the popular music of our era — on the radio and on TV. The Beatles broke up in April 1970 two months before I graduated high school. Their final album was a coda to my teen years. On to university and more serious pursuits, like falling in love.
I met Ken in 1971. He introduced me to music that I hadn't paid a lot of attention to prior: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Ian and Sylvia, folk songs, Bluegrass, old-time country, jug band. Ken and his brother, Gordon, played guitar and we went to coffee houses and to the Winnipeg Folk Festival. He also had season tickets to the symphony, the ballet, and to the theatre, and so my musical horizons broadened considerably.
Day 8: I went with a duet of LPs that I borrowed from Ken when we were first dating -- way back in 1972. My musical tastes were melding with his and I played the plaintiff, haunting, Joni Mitchell album, "Blue," alone in my room, loud, moody with forlorn young adult yearnings, until my Dad would yell at me, "For godssake, my nerves! Turn that thing down!" Ken serenaded me with songs from the Carole King songbook, and of course, many years later, we enjoyed the Broadway musical, "Beautiful" based on her life. These two albums are stand outs amid all the music we have listened to over the years. I still melt when Ken plays, "You've Got a Friend." 
Day 9: On the home stretch of the 10-day album cover challenge. On Day 9, I listed another of Ken's records. Now it's 1977. First year married. I had a day job, he worked day AND night at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. I listened to "Hasten Down the Wind" on my own, whiling away the evening hours until he got home to our one bedroom apartment. The album is still on our playlist, and every time I hear Linda Ronstadt's beautiful voice, it takes me back to when Ken and I were first starting out; young and full of dreams.
Finally, Day 10: As we embarked on married life, the music we listened to came from eclectic sources. We went to the symphony, to folk festivals, and to see popular artists. But the traditional songs, like the ones on this album Ken owned, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," satisfied me the most. This old time music felt the most genuine to me. And it's roughly the genre he's playing on guitar today with our friend, Greg Tuck on banjo, with a smattering of Beatles and Bob Dylan sprinkled in — via Zoom right now, but hoping to get back to the summer market circuit one day.
And of course, Ken and I have had this amazingly rich history of plays and musicals that we have attended, and that he has produced or presented. We have seen so many outstanding performances that have brought us to tears and to our feet in standing ovations. The first was in New York in 1979 when we saw "Sweeney Todd" with the original cast, starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. Our seats were in the last row of the top balcony, but the power and dark magic of that show and those amazing performances blew our minds. I've been hooked on musical theatre ever since.
So, I suppose it's fair to say that my early influences come from orchestral music, story telling, folkies with guitars, soulful female singers, traditional country, and Broadway musicals. These all form the foundations of what I like to listen to today. I am really glad that Sarah prodded me to think about all of this with her invitation to the 10-Day Challenge. It's helped me understand what music really means so much to me. And how intertwined it is with the man I love, my biggest and best musical influence.
And now, I tag you! What's your music history?
