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I have been a fan of western Pop Music since I was a little boy of five. In 2003, after my father's death, I decided to spend the rest of my life in researching the music that he loved, namely American pop standards from World War II to the eruption of Rock and Roll.
I was born in
Israel (
Palestine at that time), in
1945, to a couple of veterans of the
British Army. My grandfather, who was a
socialist, fled from
Russia to the
USA in
1905, after the
Bloody Sunday. He lived in
Brooklyn until
1917, when he joined the
Jewish Legion. After the war, he stayed in this country. My grandmother, his wife, came here after
World War I. She settled in
Tel Hai in
1919, but left, to marry my grandfather, only a few weeks before the riots, and they settled in a neighborhood of
Tel-Aviv, now a part of
Giv'atayim.
My father was born a year later, and when he was twelve they moved to
Avihayil. When he was seventeen, he joined the
FOSH as a warrior, and in
1939 he volunteered to the British Army. It was there where he learnt to love the English and American pop music, and he inherited this love to me when I was still in the cradle.
As one can understand, I was one of the first
Baby Boomers generation. My musical memories start from
1950, with
Nat King Cole and
Patti Page. I must admit that as a boy I found their songs simply boring, and I learnt to love them only after my father's death. The eruption of
Rock and Roll was a fresh wind for me, and here is when I acquired my own musical taste. I absorbed everything I heard from the radio, from
pop music, through
Latin Music, like
Mambo,
Calypso music and
Bossa Nova, to
Country Music and Black Music, like
Rhythm and Blues,
Spirituals and
Doo Wop.
In 1957, the song
Mambo Italiano by
Rosemary Clooney was a great hit in Israel, and then came
Diana by
Paul Anka. Suddenly all my classmates became fans of pop music, and the argument was "Who the real king is", the American
Elvis Presley, or the British
Cliff Richard. As we grew up, Elvis took over, and different styles overruled, starting with the
Brill Building sound, through the
Twist, and ending with the
British Invasion.
Then I finished high school, joined the
Israel Defense Forces, and after my term was over, I participated in two wars, as a soldier of the reserve forces. Meanwhile, I was married, studied
economics at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and gave life to two wonderful children. It was hard to follow the music of the late sixties and the seventies, because there were so many "One hit wonders", so many bands that appeared and disappeared like mushrooms after the rain, but the overall sound was good enough:
Simon and Garfunkel,
the Mamas and the Papas,
the Carpenters,
ABBA, and more.
To cite
Don McLean, the end of the
Disco in
1983 is for me "the The day the music died". Not exactly: I do like contemporary music, and I see
VH-1 from time to time. I even consider myself as a fan of young
LeAnn Rimes. However, the Pop Music, as a whole, lost its taste.
I have spent most of my adult life as an
Information technology professional, starting as a
FORTRAN
programmer on a
Control Data Corporation
super computer, going through a
COBOL programmer and a
system designer on an
IBM
mainframe computer, and as the years went by, I moved to smaller and smaller computers, like being a
system manager of a
DEC
VAX
mini computer. The top was a CIO (
Chief Information Officer) of a firm holding a
network of
personal computers. To make things clear, the contemporary computers are smaller in size, but I can assure the reader that my
desktop computer has more
computation power than the first super computer.
After the burst of the
high-tech
bubble, I went back to designing and programming; I had to learn a lot:
VB and
VB.Net,
C# and
WEB programming. But then, when I mastered them all, I found myself over 60 and had to quit the profession.
My father died in 2003, and I wanted to do something for his memory. I started to listen to the music that he liked and to read articles about it. Since I quit working, I have spent most of my time in a history research of that music. The evolvement of
Wikipedia helped me a lot, and today it is my main source. Because Wikipedia is a free source, I feel that now is the time to contribute back.
Most of the music that I like is known as
Oldies, but I mean it in a wider range of years than the customary definition. My definition includes
Pop Standards, from
World War II, to the end of
Disco.
This section describes in detail the genres that I am fond of, and mentions the most important artists and songs that belong to this genre. I prefer to divide the music into genres like
Pop Standards,
Latin Music,
Jazz and more.
Dividing this genre into sub genres is a problem, because music of the 50's is a genre, Rock and Roll is a genre, and even Rockabilly is a genre. I prefer deviding into decades, but even this division is not straightforward: The development of music is evelotionary, which means small changes from time to time. However, every decade or so there is a great revolution, but (a) this revolution does not necessarily happen at the begging of a decade, (b) the revolution is not total, e.g. Old Cape Cod (1957) sounds older than Rock Around The Clock (1954).
There is no exact point marking the beginning of the forties. For example, when I first heard
The Ink Spots singing
If I Didn't Care, I was sure that it was from the late 40's, but in reality, it was from
1938
[1]. This example shows that there were no major style changes along the decade. For many years, I had the thought that the 40's music was either
Big Band
dance music, or
Tin Pan Alley
hits from
musicals, but this example convinced me that music that was written explicitly for the
radio was not rare.
To be continued...