I have frequently mentioned this, but it bears repeating.
The song line, "Your mamma don't dance and your daddy don't rock and roll," was in no way reflective of my home growing up.
Mom always had her rock and roll albums on doing stuff around the house, and her dancing to Tina Tuner's "Proud Mary" at family weddings is the stuff of legends...coiling like a spring at the opening "nice and easy" part and breaking out in the fast section with my sister and multiple cousins becoming the "Ike-ettes" behind her. While working at home she played Elvis, Motown, the original Grease, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and all manner of other stuff. Dad was more into the Platters, and groups like that, but liked the fast stuff too.
Dad was the one who pointed out the importance of rock and roll back when we only had an AM radio in the car and they'd pick the country station. It wasn't that he liked country, he explained, it's that regular rock and roll, had gotten too soft and moved away from what it really should be, and the country that was popular then took over and became more like rock and roll. Eventually we moved to a technically advanced FM radio in the car, and CBS FM. We listened to the New York 500 every year sitting in traffic on the George Washington Bridge and Cross Bronx Expressway for hours on Thanksgiving, waiting for them to tell us "Stand By Me" was number one again.
"My" first novelty records were from Mom's vast collection of 45's. They were rock and roll, but funny oldies like "Monster Mash," "Mr. Custer," "Alley Oop," "The Battle of New Orleans," and Chuck Berry's only number one, "My Ding a Ling."
Naturally, I had that kind of music in the TDK case fairly regularly, and much of it migrated to commonly used playlists, with some selections in the Essential Mighty Catchy Stuff. Dion and the Belmonts, Richie Valens and others were early editions. Mom gave me my first CD, Little Richard, before I owned a player and before I bought "The Elder" (since the new media was the only way that was available). I wore out an Elvis best of, and the "Aloha From Hawaii" tape that I thought was the concert Mom played in her car when we graduated to a tape deck. (It wasn't. It was the Madison Square Garden one, what the heck did I know, I was ten? Mom played that one because she was there with Dad , thanks to her sister waiting on line for hours when we were on our first Disney Trip in 1972. It always leads back to Disney.) I got it on CD eventually plus TWO best ofs to fill the gap. Chuck Berry, James Brown, Jan and Dean, the Time Life Blues collection, mixtures of Motown, these are all my family's legacy. Kim found a Beach Boys concert that we took Mom to for her birthday with the kids a while back. Everyone's dancing in the row showed the legacy continued to the next generation,
Fats Domino, however, is ALWAYS in the car.
There is one simple reason for this.
There is absolutely no way possible to ever be a bad mood when his songs are playing. They rock, they're peppy and they're happy. All bad vibes just leave the vehicle when he's banging on the keys.
The only artist that comes remotely close is Tom Jones, but he takes a dark turn once in a while, and loses the peppy.
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