Real world music tastes of the 1960's. What did adults listen to?

My parents, who were in their 40’s during the 60’s, bought the soundtrack album from A Man and a Woman.

I turned 21 in December, 67.

In 1968 I was listening to:

Are You Experenced, Axis, and Electric Ladyland by Jimi Hendrix.

Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, and Wheels of Fire by the Cream.

The Doors, Strange Days, and Waiting for the Sun by the Doors.

Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles.

Their Satanic Majesty’s Request by the Stones.

In 1969 I listened to Led Zeppelin’s first album.

I guess a lot of adults were listening to tunes such as Stranglers in the Night by Sinatra, Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin, Girl From Ipanema by Getz & Gilberto, and other pop-jazz mainstream material.

I imagine Ballad of the Green Berets by Sgt. Barry Sadler got a lot of play by adult fans of the Vietnam war.

List of 1960s musical artists.

Like any era, the music was greatly varied and what we listened to was influenced by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, geography, etc. etc.

Johnny Cash, Jan and Dean, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Everly Brothers were some of the artists popular around our house.

I remember that my mother forbid my brother buying “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly, so her best friend bought it for him and gifted it. lol

Broadway show tunes were very popular. I can remember my parents listening to record albums from My Fair Lady, West Side Story, and Stop the World – I Want to Get Off.

“Adults” meaning of legal age?—the 18-to-25 crowd? or their parents?

An awful lot of grown-up adults then listened to the kind of artists who appeared on the Lawrence Welk show. They did not tune in to the music that the coming-of-age youngsters were listening to then; they deplored it. (Naturally that made it sound all the better to the kids, who were also dressing and talking and, er, socializing in ways that their parents didn’t like.)

I’m pretty sure the Sunday school folk were not listening to the Stones and the Doors. (I knew plenty of them. My father even taught adult Sunday school classes at our very, very, very conservative church.) Lawrence Welk, yup.

When you say “adults” it is necessary to stipulate ranges in age. You must remember that all of those folks churning out rock & roll were full blown adults. In addition there was a profound difference in the qualities of the music that opened the 60s compared to the stuff that closed the decade out.

There’s also the incredible fact that America being what it is, there was an incredible amount of terrific black pop music in this country that if you were white and isolated from a major city, you would never hear on your local top 40 white bread AM station.

My parents, who were in their late 30’s/early 40’s in the 1960’s, listened to a lot of “pop” singers:

Dean Martin
Frank Sinatra
Perry Como
Doris Day

but also some younger ones too:

Petula Clark
Dusty Springfield
Dionne Warwick

I found my Dad had several Herb Alpert albums along side all the movie sound track records with the picture books along side. Also Lawrence Welk and Perry Como. He was in this Sunday school class before he passed away. I don’t know how popular Herb was, but I do have the other albums transferred. I probably will throw in a few more modern artists for before and after their meal, but have tamer music for them to eat by. Thanks for the suggestions guys! Keep em coming! I think they will be surprised when they hear ‘their music’ for a good part of the evening before we switch back to ‘the kids music’. Nehru jackets and all!

P.S. Some people who were definitely not into the oncoming era of rock and psychedelic music also hated the soppy, sentimental, easy-listening stuff on the TV variety shows and would not have been caught dead in possession of an album by the Lennon Sisters. For them, you might look up something from the “light concert” repertoire such as the offerings of the extremely popular Boston Pops under the baton of the inimitable Arthur Fiedler. One name to seek out: Leroy Anderson.

Oh gosh I have so many Boston Pops records it’s almost terrifying.

@Seek When I was growing up, a really special date—for me as well as for my parents—was to attend a Boston Pops concert. I listened to a radio station that played them all the time, and not the one that was playing Elvis Presley. I was even on the Esplanade for the landmark Pops concert of July 4th, 1976, the big Bicentennial event.

If your folks were in their late 30s /early 40s, in 1965, it would mean that they came of age in the war years of the early 40s, the era of crooners big bands and swing. It was the pinnacle of the age of “the great American songbook”. It was my parents’ era as well, but my folks had wide ranging tastes from which I benefitted enormously. When we moved from Chicago to Omaha in the early 50s at my mom’s insistence, my father told her the new town was a “cultural desert”, and predicted that her death from boredom within a year. But my folks had paid a fortune for this fantastic (for its day) state of the art “high fidelity” radio/ record player, that my pack rat sister has in her house to this day. My mother had every red seal recording that Fritz Reiner made with the Chicago Symphony orchestra, in addition to all of Sinatra, Xavier Cugat, Perez Prado, Nat King Cole, Anita O’day, Ellington, Basie, Fritz Kreisler. Mom would get up in the morning and put on music before her coffee, and the music played all day til dinner time. My dad would bring home crates of records ( and packages of the different varieties of the special stylus for the record player) from Chicago, and they were shelved on their edges, the 78’s in sleeves and the lps in their covers, along with the books that lined every wall of the living room I remember crawling around on the floor looking at the dust covers of the books, and pulling the albums down to look at the covers and pictures, which was permitted for the ones I could reach, but I wasn’t allowed to return them to the shelves, for fear I would mix em up. My father would scour pawn shops in Chicago for records, and it was a glorious period in my young life.

My grandfather (who was born in the early 40s) had a deep, deep love for Patsy Cline.

One evening in 1966, I overheard my father listening to my “Highway 61 Revisited” (by Bob Dylan) album. ;-o

Also, my father in law (born in 1942) bought the first Black Sabbath album when it came out. It was released in 1970 though.

But don’t forget, these are Sunday school folks. They may very well have been under the influence of guidance that discouraged listening to “worldly” music, even if not condemning it outright. Rock’n’roll was most definitely worldly.

Besides church music and patriotic songs, what was ok was old, traditional tunes such as English and Scottish folk songs (as long as they didn’t glorify drinking) and the sort of thing that was popular in the years bracketing the turn of the 20th century—not music-hall popular but family-fare popular, singable by school choruses and impromptu parlor entertainments.

@majorrich My dad also had Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” with one of the raciest album covers ever produced. On that album were “The Lonely Bull” and “Tequila”.

It sounds like you are trying to appeal to an older crowd so my recommendations apply to them.

Herb Alpert is a great choice. My parents had the album Whipped Cream and Other Delights and I loved the cover with the lady in that amazing whipped cream dress. (pretty racy for the time!)
“Whipped Cream sold over 6 million copies in the United States. The album cover featured model Dolores Erickson wearing only what appeared to be whipped cream. In reality, Erickson was wearing a white blanket over which were scattered artfully-placed daubs of shaving cream—real whipped cream would have melted under the heat of the studio lights (although the cream on her finger was real).”
That album was triple platinum so everybody and their brother had it.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Alpert

I agree with @Jeruba about Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops too. My parents, good church going folks loved him too. My Mom loved Nat King Cole. Who wouldn’t love him with that voice!?

!01 Strings was another group that they really liked. They had several albums by them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Strings

Even though they loved swing music they never listened to it. They listened to the new stuff. My Mom liked the Beatles too, the more pop oriented songs, nothing too Helter Skelter! Beatles has universal appeal so I would make sure to include some great Beatle’s songs like Yesterday, Michelle, My Life and Nowhere Man.

Mantovani was popular too. “The book British Hit Singles & Albums states that he was “Britain’s most successful album act before the Beatles…the first act to sell over one million stereo albums and [have] six albums simultaneously in the US Top 30 in 1959”.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantovani

And don’t forget the Beatles!

Top 100 hits from 1960 to 1969

Motown cannot be beat!
Also- The soundtrack to Easy Rider.

Wagner rise of the Valkries

That would be Wagner, @talljasperman, and that’s not really where you want to go for background music during a church dinner. Besides, there’s nothing about German opera music from the mid-1800s that evokes the 1960s in the U.S.

I found a Stan Getz & Bill Evans and a Dave Brubeck album that look well worn. It appears Dad was fascinated by saxophone and piano combo’s. There are a couple of tracks that are pure Gold! Neither of these albums are worth salvaging but I found them at the Apple Store. I don’t know how mainstream these guys were either. They look (Especially Dave Brubeck) like my Dad! lol. These and what appears to be an unabridged audio recording of the Bible (about 20 records in a big binder) all ruined by a basement flood.

Country music and the Big Bands of the 30’s and 40’s.

I remember my parents listening to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass and Neil Diamond.

Stan Getz was considered progressive jazz for the time, which to jazz lovers meant innovative, but to traditionalists (even jazz-loving traditionalists) he was considered almost almost experimental.

Brubeck, on the other hand, was also innovative, but he was able to bring jazz to the top 40, or at least to the top 100. Take Five was (and still is) the best-selling jazz single ever.

Glenn Miller, The Dorsey Brothers, or The Platters are timeless.
Nat King Kole. Johnny Mathas…
If duplicates- sorry.

I only skimmed the answers above. My parents were born in the early 40’s. They played music from their generation my entire childhood. Music from the late 50’s and 60’s. They never played jazz.

My mom loved the Beach Boys and Elvis. My dad the Beatles. Others we listened to were Mamas and the Papas, Dionne Warwick (Walk on By), Chubby Checker (The Twist) and Simon and Garfunkle. I can’t remember the singer of Build me up Buttercup, Bus Stop, Downtown, Under the Boardwalk, so many more.

Sinatra, Dean Martin, Lawrence Welk, and Mitch Miller.

My parents hated the pop music of the 60’s. My Mom listened to Broadway musicals, my Dad old 40’s music.

Don’t forget about Astrud Gilberto

@Kardamom. I love her!

@filmfan, me too : )

My folks used to listen to her when I was a really little kid, then when I was in my mid 20’s one of my co-workers brought in a CD of hers and we all got hooked on her.

Wow, do you have your work cut out for you. But the hardest part is going to be narrowing it down to fit your time frame.

The 60’s were such a transitional period with such a wide variety of music over that 10 year span that it will be difficult to find songs that suit everyone BUT it will be pretty easy to find something that each person will like if you provide a wide variety of music.

Here is a list of the Top 500 Artists of the 60’s and we are talking everyone from Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis to John Coltrain to Johnny Cash to the Temptations to Etta James, Glen Campbell, Duke Ellington, BS&T, Solomon Burke, Bobbi Genty, Henri Mancini, Randy Newman, Brenda Lee, CCR, The Archies, Pete Seger, Buck Owens, Taj Mahal and Funkadelic/Parliament I think you should do an entire set of George Clinton. Man, with so many to choose from I cannot see how you can go wrong.

To help make it a little easier, here are the top 20 artists of the 60’s

or

the top 300 songs of th 60’x

but, do me a favor and be sure to include CSN&Y playing Suite:Judy Blue Eyes.

@rojo GA for George Clinton! Mothership Connection is in my all-time top ten favorite albums.

I forgot Johnny Mathis.