Aren't most of us influenced by the taste of those around us? Or is
that just me?
I grew up around a much older brother, hardly what you'd call an
unmixed blessing. But one benefit was his taste in music. It was on
his big reel-to-reel tape recorder from Lafayette Radio Electronics
that I first heard Tom Lehrer. And there were other, less ironic
works as well:
Sounds
of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel,
Lightning
Strikes by Lou Christie, Town Without Pity by Gene
Pitney and plenty more. Including Johnny Horton singing
Sink
The Bismarck, a WWII story in song I loved and had memorized
long before I had a clue what it was about. (I was a pretty oblivious
child. Which may explain all the torment at the hands of said
brother.)
Bismarck was only one of many "story" songs Horton recorded.
The
Battle of New Orleans is probably the best known, although I
discovered it only after encountering Homer & Jethro's
parody
version.
Horton deserves to be better remembered than he is. He's certainly a
more interesting way to get into history than some dusty old textbook.
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