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Transformative Music and the Power of Radio
The first time I paid for a piece of music was back in 1972 which means I was either 12 years old or would, at some point in that year, be 12 years old. The music I bought was a 45 RPM record, a single, by one Sammy Davis Jr. The song, which I’d heard many times on the radio, was “The Candy Man”, and I still remember going to the store and handing over my hard-earned 99 cents to pay for it. I can’t remember the store but I do remember the experience. It was exciting in ways that are hard to describe. A short time later, back at home, I would put my very first, very own record, down on the turntable, and I would listen to it.
Over and over and over again. I listened until I knew every word and thought, surely, that I could do a pretty good Sammy Davis Jr. rendition of the song if anyone ever asked me to do so.
As the years went by, I turned to another type of music. I don’t remember exactly why, but I started listening to classical music, mostly from records I took out from the public library. Most of my choices were largely instrumental recordings by famous orchestras of the greats; Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin. I tended to listen to a lot of music from the baroque period, so there was a lot of Bach in there, along with Vivaldi, Purcell, Pachelbel, and others I would pick up to…
