Music was a big part of my life as a child. My father was very musical; he sang in a choir when he was a boy, and he played in a drum and bugle corps. He was self-taught on the drums, and was good enough to play in a dance band in the Army during World War II.

I remember my Dad had a lot of 78 RPM records, which were as big (and almost as heavy) as dinner plates. We had mostly folk music when I was very little, with albums by Burl Ives and other early Fifties folk stars.

In the mid-Fifties doo wop was all the rage. We lived half a mile from a high school, and groups of teenagers would walk past our house on the way to school. Many times they’d be singing in harmony, imitating the latest doo wop tunes they’d heard on the radio. Then, of course, tv shows like “American Bandstand” helped to popularize rock ‘n roll. A lot of the songs were sanitized versions of songs by black artists, sung by clean-cut white boys like Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson, or Fabian, although they still had a good beat. But, my Lord, whenever somebody like Little Richard came on tv and ripped into a true rock ‘n roll song, I knew even at seven years old that this was the real deal. Where Fabian would be singing politely in a demure white v-necked sweater, his hair neatly piled on top of his head, Little Richard was jumping around like a wild man, his hair askew and his tie loose, with the sweat pouring off him in buckets.

My Dad would come home from work singing the latest hit songs, and he’d sometimes go out and buy the 45 RPM records, and we’d sing along to “Tutti Frutti” or something like that, while my mother looked at us with mild disapproval. She liked classical music, and didn’t really think much of rock ‘n roll.

Then came a period where every song was a goofy novelty number, like “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Purple Polka Dot Bikini”, “Splish Splash (I Was Taking A Bath)”, or “The Purple People Eater”. Those songs were so ridiculous and silly that I barely paid attention to them. It seemed like there was a void, a period of a few years when music didn’t matter anymore. “American Bandstand” was still on the air, but the songs they played and the dances the kids in the studio did seemed corny. I stopped watching.

For awhile there was a second folk music boom, and songs by Peter, Paul and Mary, and the New Christy Minstrels were popular. They all seemed so earnest and way too serious, and when you watched them on tv they rarely smiled. There was no question of dancing to such serious, “message” songs. I was still only in grade school, and all the lyrics about injustice and nuclear destruction and civil rights were over my head. Looking back, I know there was a lot of hope in those songs, because they came at a time when John F. Kennedy was first elected and there was a new spirit of optimism and youthful vigor in the United States, but I missed the simple lyrics and strong beats of the mid-Fifties.

It was a dead period for me, musically.

And then came the Beatles.