Each week, I answer a question from My Grandmother’s Life by Chartwell Books for my grandsons.
Question: What was the first music event or concert you attended? Who did you go with?
Music played a huge role in my childhood. My parents (your great-grandparents) loved country music from Johnny Cash and June Carter, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, and Tammy Wynette. Case in point–the first two albums they bought me after I got a record player for Christmas were Lynn Anderson and Charlie Rich. They listened to the radio all the time, so I’d pick up the words to different songs and sing them to myself when I was outside swinging.
When I went to school, there was a big push to introduce kids to the arts, particularly classical music. So once a year, they would pile us into school buses and take us to Atlanta to hear the symphony. For most kids, it was a bore but I LOVED learning about the woodwinds and horns and hearing the stories behind certain pieces. I looked forward to those trips every year.
My first pop or rock concert was during Christmas, 1974. I was thirteen and my parents gave me a ticket to see Elvis Presley. I liked Elvis, or at least, I liked his movies. One of my best memories growing up was getting dressed in pajamas and going to the movies with my parents to watch an Elvis movie. But seeing him in a movie and watching him in person were two totally different things! I hated the concert, not because of him. Elvis was great. It was the other concert-goers. They acted like idiots–correct that, the women acted like idiots, crying and screaming and tossing their underwear at him. We were in the nosebleed section and our neighbor who was behind us acted like this! You could barely hear Elvis sing for all the women acting like total idiots. It turned me off concerts for a while.
Until next time, I love you to the ends of the Milky Way and back!
Nana
