Over the last ten days, I've been participating in a Facebook challenge from my first cousin Paul Streff. I was supposed to select "ten vinyl-era albums that greatly influenced my taste in music," and post "one album per day for 10 consecutive-ish days. In no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just cover."
Well, I did that, and it was LOTS of fun - but I also wanted to explain a little about my selections (which weren't all albums). Hence this blog post. In this case, they are more or less in chrological order, in terms of when I remember first listening to them.
1. Whipped Cream and Other Delights, by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (1965)
My sister Karen and I shared a bedroom for many years, and I think a record player too, so I can't remember if the first few albums we had were hers or mine or maybe even belonged to our parents. At any rate,
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass was one of the first groups I remember listening to, which inspired a love of the sound of brass that lasts to this day. (I was even convinced to give the cornet a try in band in fourth grade - as the band already had enough of the woodwinds I *wanted* to play - although THAT didn't last very long.) We also had the group's
S.R.O. album, but
Whipped Cream & Other Delights was notable both for the cover and the song titles. What's not to love about honey, whipped cream, love potions, lemon trees, lollipops, roses, peanuts, ladyfingers, green peppers, tangerines, and butterballs? Yum!
There's an
interesting backstory about the album cover, which was often parodied. And I never knew, until researching for this post, that Alpert was the "A" in A&M Records, which produced so many of the albums I loved.
2. Midnight Cowboy, by Ferrante & Teicher (1969) (image source Amazon.com)
This is another case of an album my sister and I might have shared, that may have belonged to our parents. There was at least one other album by the piano-playing duo of
Ferrante & Teicher in our house, but I can't remember which one it was. I think I liked
Midnight Cowboy because it had instrumental versions so many other songs on it that I liked, such as Simon and Garfunkel's
Scarborough Fair and
Sounds of Silence. This might have something to do with my continuing preference for instrumental versions of popular songs.
3. Hey Jude (single) by The Beatles (1968)
"Hey Jude" the single came out long before the album of the same name. Where I first remember hearing it was in sixth grade, shortly after it came out. My homeroom teacher, Sister Barbara Ann, had the class elect officers and choose a class name - sort of like we were a club, except that all the class were members. The selected name was YACs - for Young American Catholics - and someone had the bright idea to come up with a class song - "Hey YACs" - to the tune of "Hey Jude."
I don't remember much of the words to "Hey YACs" - it went something like, "Hey YACs, let's keep it up, we've got a good club, let's make it beh-eh-et-ter." I do remember sixth grade, as it was a pretty memorable year. I won a local poetry contest and was a regional winner in a national essay contest. The prize for the latter was a trip to Washington, D.C., for Nixon's first inauguration. My fellow YACs had a party for me before I left - read more about that and the trip
here.
So even though I never bought this record (nor any
Beatles album, for that matter, although I like their music), I still find myself singing "Hey YACs" whenever I hear this song. And of course singing the four-minutes-worth of "naaa-naaa-naaa-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, Hey Jude" at the end.
4. Classical Gas (the single) by Mason Williams (1968) / (album by Mason Williams and Mannheim Steamroller, 1987) (image source: Wikipedia)
"
Classical Gas" another song from that memorable sixth grade year. More specifically, I first heard it sometime in January 1969, when the CBS
60 Minutes television show did a retrospective in images of all the tragic and memorable events of 1968, using this approximately three-minute song as the soundtrack. Given what a tumultuous year that was, the song was burned on my memory - and I can still see many of the images in my mind whenever it's played.
I've searched but can't find a clip of that segment of
60 Minutes, but I did find a link to
Classical Gas - 3000 Years of Art, posted by
Mason Williams himself, which another example of the technique of
kinestatis (more examples
here) using "Classical Gas." This video was first shown in the summer of 1968 on
The Summer Smothers Brothers Show (Mason Williams was head comedy writer), and must have inspired the 60 Minutes piece.
I didn't purchase this single in 1968, but I did buy the Mason Williams and
Mannheim Steamroller Classical Gas album when it came out in 1987, which features other songs by Williams and has the iconic cover pictured above. That's a plexiglass guitar on the cover that
Williams actually played, one time putting some water and goldfish into it.
5. Close to You (single) by The Carpenters (1970) (image source: Wikipedia)
"
Close to You" by
The Carpenters was the first 45 rpm single I ever bought. At the time it came out, I had a crush on a classmate named Dick Sanders, and the verse from the song about "on the day that you were born the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true, so they sprinkled moondust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue" seemed to describe him perfectly.
One of the reasons I loved The Carpenters' music was that I could actually sing along - I'm a contralto like Karen.
I later bought the single "
We've Only Just Begun," (and I really liked its B-side, "All of My Life"). The sleeve for that single had the same illustration as the
Close to You album it came from, pictured above.
6.
"Fire and Rain" from Sweet Baby James by James Taylor (1970)
"
Fire and Rain" by
James Taylor is a bittersweet song for me, and will always make me think of seventh and eighth grades. Some parts of those years were good - winning the spelling bee and
science fair in seventh grade, for example.
But around Thanksgiving of 1970, an entire family of five that I knew was killed in a small plane crash. Mrs. Jordan had been my Girl Scout leader in the past, and her three daughters went to my K-8 Catholic school - they lived just a few streets away from us. My eighth grade class was pretty exceptional when it came to singing, and we were asked to sing at the funeral. I'll never forget seeing the five caskets lined up near the altar, from the choir loft - it's a wonder we could sing anything. Anytime I hear "just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone" and "sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground" and "but I always thought I'd see you again," I think of them and that funeral.
I do like James' Taylor's music, and bought the
Sweet Baby James album (and the 1976
Greatest Hits album) much later on. (The "Fire and Rain" single sleeve uses the same image as the
Sweet Baby James album, just in black-and-white.)
7. "If You Could Read My Mind" (single) by Gordon Lightfoot (1970) (image from Amazon)
The song "
If You Could Read My Mind" (link is to a 1974 unorchestrated live performance) made me fall in love with
Gordon Lightfoot. I bought the
single sometime in 1971, but eventually I bought nearly all
his work. I've been to very few concerts in my life, but his was one I drove 100 miles to see on a Sunday night, from College Station (during my senior year at Texas A&M) to the
Houston Music Hall for a performance on February 26, 1978. The image above is from the album of the same name (renamed from "Sit Down Young Stranger" when this track reached number one on the charts).
8. Tapestry by Carole King (1971)
I first heard
Tapestry by
Carole King in the summer of 1971, between eighth grade and high school. My family went to Rochester, New York, for the
wedding of my oldest cousin Rosemary Streff to Steve Grandusky that June. We stayed for a few days after the wedding, and I shared a bedroom with my cousin Beth Streff. Every night when we went to bed, she'd put this album on for us to listen to while we fell asleep. I eventually bought the album - but it was not the first album I bought.
Days of Future Passed, by the
Moody Blues, was the first album I ever purchased. I loved "
Nights in White Satin" and "
Tuesday Afternoon," and had bought the 45 rpm singles for both, but I HAD to have this
progressive rock concept album about a day in the life of an everyday man.
I ended up buying most of the
Moody Blues' work, including some of the members' solo and duet works (including
Justin Hayward in
War of the Worlds), the
Moody Bluegrass tribute albums, and the
Legend of A Band video - because it included the videos of my later-favorites of their songs ("
Your Wildest Dreams" and "
I Know You're Out There Somewhere"), which remind me of the 20+ years my husband and I spent apart (before we were married).
10. Godspell (1971 off-Broadway cast recording)
Godspell (original off-Broadway cast performance, not the movie version) might very well have been the second album I ever purchased. The
musical was very popular in my early high school years, especially the song "
Day by Day," and I definitely liked it better than
Jesus Christ Superstar. I attended a performance on December 27, 1973, at the
Houston Music Hall, the first "concert" I ever attended (I was 16).
© Amanda Pape - 2020 -
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