Reader Friday: Songs and Memories

Posted on by

“Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.” — Steven Wright

What song brings back a vivid memory, every time you hear it? “It’s Too Late” from Carole King’s album Tapestry always takes me back to a high school summer, driving my Ford Maverick to Zuma Beach with my best friend, Randy Winter. Everything was so right then.

35 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Songs and Memories”

  2. “What I Got” by Sublime instantly takes me back to Freshman year in college when our friends would pack into our tiny dorm room to talk, laugh and sing while my roommate Tony played guitar.

    • Same! Love that album. I was also a freshman in college and me and my buddies would drink beer, listen to sublime, and wonder why we couldn’t meet girls. Maybe we should have left the basement? Wisdom comes with age.

      • This blog post has gotten so many songs stuck in my head today. ? Also, I saw James Taylor for the first time ever when he opened for the Eagles a few years ago and, like you, was blown away by his voice live.

    • I love the Storytellers episode where Springsteen jokingly laments that his first song to hit #1 actually wasn’t sung by him, but was this cover.

  4. I was a classical.gal who preferred Bach and Beethoven to anything modern. The most lasting part of an old college relationship was a birthday gift of the Beach Boys Endless Summer album. It’s still my favorite beach road trip music, especially Fun Fun Fun.

  6. Blue Christmas. My sister got a record player for Christmas and Elvis’ Christmas album. That album played continuously for a solid month. But it was a sweet time…to think back on. Not so much at the time.

  8. Though a die-hard classic country fan (i.e. 1990’s and prior), I always loved the Beach Boys. When I was a kid living in a tiny town of about 65 people, my baby brother, who was perhaps 6 at the time, used to walk with me up to the country store so we could buy some candy or soda. Along the way, we’d belt out Beach Boys songs like Surfin’ USA.

    Those memories would be precious to me in any case, but my baby brother died at 31 (still a baby, as far as I’m concerned) and so they mean even more.

  9. I have a two-part answer here. First, I grew up listening to Tapestry because my mom would play it constantly. As a teen during the grunge rock 90s, I had to hide that I also loved Carole King in addition to Nirvana. In 2010, I took my mom to see King and James Taylor in concert and they were phenomenal.

    I’m a music lover, and a big part of my love is every song brings back a memory. But I have to say lately I’ve been listening to “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival because Creedence greatest hits was one of two cassettes my dad owned and he’d always play it on loop in his truck when he took me fishing. I reminds me of those great summer days with my dad. My father is battling lung cancer now, so I’m holding on to those memories more than ever.

  10. “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Kid Leo on WMMS in Cleveland would close his show with that song every Friday evening near 6P during the early and mid-1970s. If you were stuck in traffic on I-76 west coming out of downtown Akron during rush hour so many people had it on their car radios that it seemed as if the music was coming right out of the air. I’d hear it and it made me feel like I was on top of the world and would live forever. Wrong on both counts, but it was something to reach for. It still is.

    • Springsteen is my all time favorite artist. One of our greatest short story writers. He just happens to set his to music.

  11. For me, it’s an era of music, not a specific song. Despite growing up with Elvis and the Beatles, I’ve always been drawn to Big Band music and pop classics like the works of Gershwin and Cole Porter. In those moments when I believe in reincarnation, I figure I was a classically trained musician who played in a Big Band. Probably died in WWII. If I absolutely had to pick a piece of music, it would be Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” It’s always made me cry, and I’ve never known why.

    And as a suggestion for one of the next “Reader Fridays,” I always pick a song that reflects my main character/s or the book. Figure out your own.

    • My mom’s dad was a classical cellist so Big Band was a Big No-no at Pop’s house. But when she married Daddy, their house was filled with Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey etc. I still have my folks’ albums from the 40s. Really good music. After my mom passed away, Daddy put the albums on tape and when he and I traveled, that’s the music we listened to. Nice memories.

  12. Anything from Motown reminds of the good times.

    I was raised in Kansas where we had 3.2 beer. I was friends (not the kind with benefits) with a band that played a lot of Detroit music at a beer hall that rocked every Friday and Saturday night. I really miss those days (and the ability to boogaloo).

    • I forgot to mention that I was 18 at the time, so having 3.2 beer was a big deal. Beer, The Four Tops, and The Temptations made for a very good time.

  13. “Take the Long Way Home,” by Supertramp, always conjures up the spring of 1979, walking to an after school job at a little bottling plant that made windshield cleaner, where my girlfriend (now my wife of 38 plus years) also worked. That feeling of being young and alive and the future stretched out head of us, endless and filled with infinite, unknown possibilities.

  14. Craziest thing.

    Back in 1959, a producer made a record called Uh-Oh, by the Nutty Squirrels. It was definitely music, but not song. It consisted of three different words: “Uh-oh. Julia.” The record had no class, no category of note, and definitely was taking nobody into any kind of hall of fame. Couldn’t even find it in record shops, which I frequented, two or three times a week.

    It was one of those recordings in vogue at the time of speeded up groups singing silly songs. It was the era of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

    Uh-oh probably got the most plays in my hometown as disc jockey outro music, that music played as the DJ was going off the air.

    I searched YouTube for decades and finally, after decades, finally found it. As I would have in 1959, I played it for hours, listening through my headphones, fearing that if I played it on speakers, my wife might take the kids and go. Our kids are now in their 40s and 50s.

    For some reason, in 1959, the record hit home with me, reminding that my parents made a safe, secure, post-war (none of us realized what was coming) home. Life was simple: fried chicken, mercurochrome (a small bottle of merthiolate could kill an average army platoon), Lucky Pop (or Fizzies), Mexican food and to the movies on Friday nights, Mr. G’s hamburgers and fries on Saturday, church on Sunday, comic books, novels, and white bucks. Girls were someone you could take on a date: movies, McDonald’s, holding hands on saying silly stuff for three bucks, if you were playing it big, a half-buck if you were out for cokes at Mr. Gs.

    The song was what made 1959, 1959. The Colonels, Sanders and Parker, couldn’t have done a better.

    All because some guy with a recorder recorded a recording group singing nonsense. My kind of nonsense.

  15. Mozart’s great clarinet Concerto No. 1, K. 622, especially the adagio movement. My husband and son both play the clarinet and I can occasionally accompany (poorly) on the piano. Some of my fondest memories are of the three of us playing music together at home. The memory of the mellow and plaintive voice of the clarinet resonating throughout the house combined with the joy of being together as a family fills me with gratitude even today.

    Thanks for reminding me.

  16. Anything Creedence.

    Born on the Bayou and Proud Mary come to mind, both released in 1969 when I was 15. Creedence was pretty much banned in our house, but our bus driver (cool guy) would put the radio station on rock and we listened to our hearts’ content.

    I don’t, as a rule, listen to that type of music anymore-my tastes run to classical now-but if I hear Creedence echoing anywhere within earshot, I’m there, back on that yellow bus, rockin’ out with my friends all the way to school.

    Thanks for the memories, James! 🙂

  17. There are several for me. “Are you lonesome tonight” and “In the we small hours of the morning” used to be on the radio late at night when I was on my way home from work at 4:00AM. I spent a long time finding the Bobby Blane and the Blue Barrons version of Lonesome Tonight.

    But the one that hits my memory the most is the theme to “Hill Street Blues.” In 1980, when TVs were not everywhere yet, we would meet in the college snack bar to watch Hill Street Blues. The 10:00 o’clock news teaser was about a rising college star who had a heart attack on the court during a pick up game. More at ten. Then the radio call came over, the police cars rolled out, and Mike Post’s music started. I found a newpaper and found out Chris “Spider” Tyler, one of my team mates from high school football died on that basketball court. I still have his obit.

  18. So bye, bye, Miss American Pie
    Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
    And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye
    Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
    This’ll be the day that I die

    One day my wife and I went were at a local arts festival and a band starting signing AMERICAN PIE. Everyone sang along. How could you not?

  20. Gentle On My Mind. Most people associate it with Glen Campbell, but credit goes to writer John Hartford. Lyrics “It’s just knowin’ that the world will not be cursin’ or forgivin’ – are genius.

Comments are closed.