Under lockdown I’ve been listening to a lot more of my collection (mp3, CD, LP, streaming) than I have in years. This exercise has compelled me to look back at the earliest formations of my musical tastes, the snatches of song and note from my Fifties-Sixties childhood that would be the foundation of all those pursuits, up to the eventual realization of the veracity of Nietzsche’s dictum: “Without music, life would be a mistake”.
There were actually 4 songs (all of which I owned on 45’s) that I remember hearing for the first time and which had a permanent (you could almost say fatal) impact on my budding sensibilities:
- Hank Williams’ Your Cheatin’ Heart (as sung by his son, Hank Jr., for the 1964 biopic starring George Hamilton), which gave me lifelong respect for country-western, or, as I like to refer to the genre, blues music for poor white people;
- Hound Dog by Elvis Presley, whose 1956 version eclipsed the original artist Mama Mae Thornton’s version in terms of popularity and sales, but which is still shot full of soul and as authentic as they come;
- Teacher, Teacher by Johnny Mathis which gave me an inkling of the pleasures of listening to catchy popular songs done in big-band style by top studio musicians led by great conductors (like Nelson Riddle)
- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by the eternally evergreen Rolling Stones, whose preemptive delivery is why I titled this column as I did. Because it was almost (almost, but not quite) like a sexual awakening, and whose discovery would hijack my devotion (and funnel all my purchasing power) into classic rock for the next decade and a half, until I discovered the esoteric joys of mainstream jazz my senior year of college.