The Roots of Personal Taste
I interviewed a relatively new artist today - Lissie. She’s not bad - folksy Bonnie Raitt type. I asked her about her influences and she first said that she thinks of the songs her mother used to sing to her when she was a kid, “You Are My Sunshine” and lots of mid-west folk tunes I had no familiarity with. But it got me to thinking about the music that surrounds you before your old enough to have any awareness of what you’re absorbing.
Having grown up in Rhode Island, I normally cite Oldies B101 and Lite105 (and of course 92PROFM) as being in my ears at an early age whenever my mother permitted radio in the big grey Buick. But both my parents had a taste for musicals and every night at dinner, I was in charge of putting on the music when my dad came home. We had an Andrew Lloyd Webber compilation - the first CD I’d ever set eyes on - that was in constant rotation in my house. And this song in this rendition, was my favorite even in my single digit years. Maudlin even before pubescence set in.
Otherwise we listened to John Williams’ Best - so like, the theme to Indiana Jones and Jaws while we ate skirt steak. And lots of Johnny Mathis, the soundtrack to “The Flower Drum Song” or “Oklahoma” or “Cats.” How do these rubricks add up to the DNA of your musical taste, I don’t know.
