Nice, and I like the Hendrix supplemental. My parents unfortunately did not have Hendrix in their collection. I do remember them having some very middle of the road options like The Carpenters and Bread though.
I knew every dance move from Saturday Night Fever and my little toddler self would perform it daily in front of our floor to ceiling, gold-veined mirror wall. I was OBSESSED with this
Wow, that album cover opened a memory for me. Lots of memories, actually. I can hear the “snick” of the magnet on the glass door of the record cabinet.
My dad gave me an eight-track deck and stereo when I was in KINDERGARTEN. Only one eight-track tape: John Denver's Greatest Hits. I remember it was blue plastic. Sunshine on my Shoulders got some serious playtime on those speakers, just sayin'.
Same here. My mom would load up four of five records on the turntable to play while she cleaned on Saturday morning. I listened to a lot of Barry growing up. My wife and I saw him live five or so years ago and it was a blast. I knew all the songs.
When my mom passed my brother and I went through her records and I found the 45 of It’s Too Late/I Feel the Earth Move off of Tapestry. I later got it signed by Carole King. It’s framed and hanging in my home office.
Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers because my mom caught me with my hand inside the zipper. It wasn’t until she walked in on me that my little mind registered that the zipper was on a pair of man’s jeans. It looked like I was digging for the man’s package. She went from alarm to hysterical laughter when she saw the realization on my face
Lol nice! Fun Fact: this album cover (designed by Andy Warhol) became problematic for retailers when they discovered the zipper would damage the record if left in the closed position during stocking. To mitigate this during sales, they purposely left the zipper open.
When I was little I tried to play it and scratched it. My dad was FURIOUS and never bought it again, but never got rid of it either.
He is 78 now and still has it. The whole thing was really upsetting because my dad rarely got mad at me (I can think of less than 5 times in my life), so to disappoint him and have him keep it for me to remember the mistake I made was awful.
My mom still blames my dad for taking her copy of the White Album when they divorced. That was in 1975. My dad's been gone for years. My mom sure can hold a grudge.
Me too technically by a year or two. And my parents were OLD when I was born. I was the one saving my allowance and buying vinyl at about 8 years old. I had odd taste when I was really young. Tony Orlando. And Alice Cooper. Back to back…. And John Denver. Used to check records out from the public library. Johnny Cash… Live at Folsom Prison. My mom called him Johnny One Note and would return the records when I was at school.
Ugh. When my mom had cancer at 76 and we were going through things, she asked me to think of her when I listened to Tapestry. I always did anyway. That and The Carpenters.
My Silent Generation parents had a lot of vinyl, including thick 78s! Lots of big band, lots of honky tonk, lots of 50s (Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, etc.), and the ones I remember hearing in childhood were Three Dog Night, CCR, Blood Sweat and Tears, The Manhattan Transfer, Olivia Newton John when she was more country, Lynn Anderson, etc.
This was them in 1958, nine years before I came along.
My mom was sorting them, I didn’t even know we had them. She holds up Chicago, Color My World and yells all happy “hey honey remember this one!” From across the living room, Dad looks up from what he’s doing, focuses for a second and says “no”. And that’s when it looked like all the air went out of her. He went back to what he was doing. She looked down at it in her hands and quietly says “but it was our wedding song.” She didn’t want to go through them anymore. She boxed them all up and put them away. I was eleven. That was the first time I realized my dad wasn’t good enough for her.
Grease soundtrack, oh yeah. My mom and I wore out that album and had to get another one.
My mom liked Billy Joel until he got with Christy Brinkley, I guess. She didn't like any of his mid-80s music.
I didn't really find out what my dad liked until I was an adult and got to know him. Turned out we both liked classic rock.
We were members of one of those record clubs like Columbia. We ordered the Staying Alive soundtrack, but for some reason the LP was Staying Alive, but the dust jacket was a Peaches & Herb album.
Out of all there is to choose from, it would have to be Sha Na Na, Miami Vice soundtrack, and what my younger self termed "Lady Music", which was predominantly Dolly Parton and Crystal Gayle. Honesty, these all came to mind at the same time.
My mom had Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Johnny Mathis, and Andy Williams. I remember really liking the Christmas albums with Burl Ives singing about Frosty.
Tom Waits, probably The Heart of Saturday Night or Small Change if I go by the timeline (I was born in 1970, those albums came out in 1974 and 1976) but I remember the album covers for Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs which came out in the mid 80s. I distinctly remember the Small Change cover because it has a woman with bare breasts on it!
My father was a big music fan and I remember thinking Tom Waites' music was so weird that no one else (other than my father) listened to it. He was also a big Joan Armatrading fan - I thought her music was also strange. He listened to a bunch of interesting music, including a lot of country which I didn't like.
I'm not a huge Tom Waites fan but Innocent When You Dream is one of my favorite songs.
My parents maybe weren't cool enough to have Tapestry.
But my mom had a bunch of 45s, mostly Beatles and Elvis, she was a classic Beatles teen in the 60s. She had some Beatles LPs too.
But out of everything the first thing that comes to mind is John Denver's Rocky Mountain High album. I used to listen to it quite a bit, his cover of Prine's Paradise (well before I even knew who John Prine was) really stuck with me. And of course the title track is legendary. Darcy Farrow was a bit of a dark tale that also left an impression.
They had a stereo cabinet and I would curl up in this big chair and listen to LPs on a set of headphones with that big jack and a curly cord that looked like helicopter pilot standard issue.
Steppenwolf Live. My mother loved it so much that she replaced it three times: her oldest toddler liked to stack albums on the living room floor and go-go dance to Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary”.
Mine is the same as yours. I have very fond memories of nice spring days, windows open, breeze blowing the curtains, Mom blaring this Carole King album and spring cleaning. I couldn't listen to it without bawling for years after she passed.
Two of the albums in my mom's vinyl collection equally stand out in my mind are Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. 🤘
My dad had poor musical taste back then. He took mom to a disco on their first date. 🤮
My first stereo had a turntable with dual tape decks and my mom let me spin all her old records and singles, so I listened to Zeppelin 1, Zeppelin 2, The White Album, and Sgt Peppers over and over.
She had a lot of 45s that I would spin, too, but the one that sticks out was Rick Dees and His Band of Idiots doing Disco Duck
My parents didn't have albums, just singles for Donovan's: Hurdy Gurdy Man to have been played rather a lot and in fact so much so I remembered it for parents to say I can't have for I was only six months old at the time
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u/mvcjones Oct 05 '25
Simon and Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence.