The Good: Sarah Vaughan
The Bad: Liza Minnelli
The Ugly: Jack Jones

The soundtrack to many a Fondue Party

Wonder where my fear of Germans with goatee beards came from

but when I was very little my dad would drive the rest of us crazy by playing his records.

We were so young my brothers and I had no records of our own so when the portable turntable was brought out we were at dad's mercy and his artist of choice was the Australian Country singer Chad Morgan.

The odd thing now is I actually quite like him. I've got over twenty songs of his on my ipod. Some of them, like The Bobba Wobba Wedding, The Juvenile Delinquent and The Fatal Wedding (he had a thing about marriage) are very good.

Australian Country music slots into two broad categories, stillborn pap like Keith Urban which has been copied wholesale from the USA. It's all stetson hats and glittery suits. The world would be no different if it never existed, and then there's people like Chad who could never have come from anywhere else. For good or bad he is Australia.

I'm willing to bet this is the first mention of him on the Word site.

This song seems to be about a very unattractive woman. Politically Correct he's not. It's called "The Psychiatrist's Joy From Kingaroy"

Back in the 70's, the parent's tape collection included Manhattan Transfer, The Spinners and Tomita (Star Wars! on rinky dinky synth!) on the bad, the good would be Planxty and Horslips and a great compilation of 50's stuff labelled "That'll be the Day". There was also "Hair" the musical, but strangely, the Sodomy Song(have I got that right??) was missing.

Special mention - my dad had made himself quite possibly the worst Beatles compilation, so my first exposure to the Fabs was Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Act Naturally (which, to be fair, I quite liked at the time) and Yellow Submarine, amongst other gems...It started with Strawberry Fields Forever, though but unfortunately, Dad had only seen fit to include the "I buried Paul/Cranberry Sauce" epilogue.

My Mum had a thing for Charles Aznavour. Better than I remember:

My Dad was big into Out Of The Blue by ELO (good) and London Town by Wings (poor).

He now admits to being wrong about the Smiths but still not liking Joy Division.

... with Shakatak.

So imagine my shock at finding out the Jimi Hendrix single was not my fathers...

Has played the church organ since he was 12. Apart from my being a lifelong atheist, this was enough to put me off any church and organ related music well into my 20s, when I started to discover Bach, then Tallis and Taverner taught me that choral music isn't neccessarily hideous and can even be rather wonderful.
He also favours brass bands and Hollywood musicals. It's a wonder I eascaped with any taste at all.
To be fair to him he never discouraged my interest in any area of music. I suspect he appreciated that music was his escape from the definitively disfunctional household in which we both found ourselves and realised that it could do the same for me.

The White Heather Club of which Jimmy was a mainstay was regularly on our TV's. But we had Jimmy Shand records as well. They also liked the George Mitchell Minstrels, better known as The Black and White Minstrel Show, but never bought any of their records.
On the plus side my Mum was a fan of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and musicals like Oklahoma, South Pacific.

A sea of MOR easy listening:

James Last - no redeeming features
Ray Conniff - American version of James Last - enough said
Val Doonican - when I was 5 I quite enjoyed some of the narrative storytelling in his songs but really it was grim
Muscals - Sound of Music, Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I - you name it they had it. A hated them all but was subjected to so much of it I can probably sing along to almost any soundtrack of that era you care to name.

But there was the odd nuggett:

Frank Sinatra - not really my taste but the man could sing
The Carptenters - I think they liked some of the schmaltzy arrangements but I think Karen Carpenter is one of the best singers ever.
Glen Miller - again not really my taste but the swing band could get up and SWING!

So no cool jazz or even early rock and roll. Which is odd as they would have been in their mid to late 20's when Elvis emerged - hardly geriatric.

On the plus side: Beatles, Stones, Blondie, Kinks
On the negative side: Queen, Hot Chocolate, Stylistics, Jimmy Nail, Coldplay, Keane, Michael Buble

Mine aren't so bad; Dad's into Big Band Jazz; Stan Kenton, Count Basie and the like - Mum's more into classic Hollywood musicals, Rogers and hammerstein, you know the drill. Gave me an appreciation of the importance of;

a) A good tune

and

b) A good arrangement

But my in-laws are a different story; Father in law owns 2 albums; one is a "101 Fifties Rock and Roll greats" which would be OK if it weren't for the fact that I've heard it 100's of times over the 20 years I've known him. But the crown jewel of his collection is an album he bought in Greece on holiday because "they played it in the Taverna and I really liked it so asked them where I could buy it". It has to be heard to be believed; sub-Vangelis (do you see what I did there?) synths, with a background sound bed of waves crashing on the shore. For a whole album. I suspect that large quantities of Ouzo would indeed aid my enjoyment of this aural abomination, but I haven't taken the risk.

Mother-in-law loves "classic" Nashville mainstream country - Jim Reeves, Billie Jo Spears (?) and so on, which despite a liking for alt-country, I really can't tolerate.

so from them I got Miles Davis, Incredible String Band, John Lee Hooker, Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Pentangle etc. Not so sure about the huge section of Francoise Hardy albums, mind.