The 1950s, 60s and 70s

[FedoraFan112390]

Many of us either had parents, grandparents or even great grandparents who saw WWI, WWII, and perhaps Korea and Vietnam. I'm talking specifically of the generation of people born between 1880 and 1927.

As you know, the 50s, 60s and 70s were CULTURALLY a time of great, rapid change and upheaval in the US. Cities grew and expanded; the culture of the car began; Beatniks and Greasers came along in the 50s and Hippies in the 60s and totally changed the fashion of the nation; Disco came along in the 1970s

I wanted to ask you:

If you had a parent or grandparent who lived during these times, how did they react to the radical change?

Most of the men of the WWII generation for example wore short hair, dress shirts and slacks; Long hair and piercings were for women when they were growing up. How did your parents or grandparents react to seeing men wearing long hair, t-shirts (once considered underwear) and jeans?

How did they react to the Greasers? To the Hippies? To Rock N' Roll?

Did they adapt to the changing times at all, or did they retain their original style?

 

[Shangas]

My parents were baby-boomers (1948, 1952 respectively). They grew up in an era of rock and roll, automobiles, the rise of the television and so-forth. Dad still remembers how wonderful it was the first time he and his friends could watch a television and what a milestone it was for my dad to finally buy his own set with his own money in the...early 1970s I believe.

My dad especially, was a child of the rock and roll era. He loves stuff like the Beatles, Beach Boys, The Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel...I could go on forever.

Perhaps it was his constant playing of rock-music that drove me insane and caused me to find solace in 1930s jazz...

 

[Big Man]

This thread should provide some interesting observations. I look forward to reading them.

My grandmother Brown was born in 1882 and died in 1983. I don't think she gave "fashion" or "changing times" a second thought. She wore one kind of dress that looked the same from pictures of her in the 1930's up until hear death. She did enjoy watching TV, but treated it like radio, that is she would turn it on to watch a specific program and then turn it off and go on about her business (the TV never just "played in the background" like it does in so many homes now).

My grandmother Dobson was born in 1899 and died in 1997. The main thing I noticed about her "adapting to the times" was embracing wearing pants. For someone who grew up and lived most of their life in a time when women just did not wear pants, she loved her "pant suits" during her old age. She even wore them to Church. :eeek:

 

[Shangas]

My grandmother wore women's pants as well, Big Man. Born May, 1914.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My grandparents, born in 1904 and 1911, pretty much froze in time when they bought the only house they'd ever own in 1945. They did get a television set when TV came to Maine in 1954, but that remained the most modern piece of furniture in their house. Culturally, they remained completely immune to the fifties, sixties, and seventies. This wasn't a willful thing on their part -- they just didn't care about any of it because it wasn't relevant to their lives.

Sartorially, my grandfather owned one suit -- "for marrying and burying." The rest of the time he wore a Texaco uniform. My grandmother wore cotton housedresses around the house, and would put on a wool suit to go to the bank or the grocery store. The only time I saw her wear pants was right before she died -- she owned one pair of pull-on elastic-waist pants which she'd put on under a bathrobe when she was too sick to otherwise get dressed.

My mother, born in 1939, utterly loathed (and still loathes) rock-and-roll. Her favorite musical performer as a teenager was Liberace.

 

[Shangas]

My grandmother is a funny old bird.

At the age of 85, she knew how to operate a PC (rudimently) and a printer and she knew how to type. She could operate a television, a microwave and most modern appliances.

Then I remember one day, my dad bought her a new sewing-machine. Big fancy white plastic thing.

She hated it. And in no uncertain terms, either. She found it too complicated and fiddly and refused to use it. Instead, she insisted on using her antique Singer which she'd probably owned for the better part of the past fifty-odd years at that point. I remember she was fond of classical music and the crooners of the 40s and 50s such as Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Dean Martin; "South of the Border" was one of her favourite songs. But to my knowledge, she cared for nothing else, musically at least, beyond about the 1950s. She seemed to enjoy reading about the British Royal family a lot and followed their lives intently, although I don't recall what her reaction was when Princess Diana and Prince Charles divorced.

Gran stuck mostly to the old ways. She used talcum face-powder (the ONLY lady I know who still uses it!), she wore bifocal glasses and dresses or a blouse and pants.

 

[Doctor Strange]

My folks were born in 1919 and 1923 - the classic Depression/WWII generation. Both were the kids of Jewish immigrants, and both grew up in NYC (my mom spent her later childhood in then-rural Westchester.) Both served in the war - my mom was a sergeant in the Marines, and my dad a sergeant in the Army Air Corps - though neither was ever close to any action. They were always politically liberal, and my dad was something of a self-taught pseudo-intellectual.

While they ran their own photography business and had two kids, and (after being burned out of our apartment by an electrical fire on Xmas Day 1959) a house and two cars, they were far from the idealized TV family of the 50s. Mom always wore pants, and was a fast driver, hardware-store lover, and workshop tinkerer - she had always been "liberated". They were avid Broadway theatergoers, movie buffs, and readers. Many of their friends/customers in the photo biz were commerical artists... and near-beatnik bohemians. I grew up listening to Broadway musicals, classical music, and (pre-Dylan) folk music. My mom even played guitar for a while and we sang songs like The Fox and Sloop John B.

They were all for civil rights and against Vietnam from day one. (I was taught to hate Nixon long before he became president, for his part in the 50s McCarthy hearings.) We were participants in some 60s culture - seeing the now-classic films like Bonnie & Clyde and Butch Cassidy, watching Twilight Zone and The Prisoner, and heirs to 50s TV drama like The Defenders, plus classy BBC productions like The Forsyte Saga. (However, we didn't watch "dumb stuff" like The Beverly Hillbillies or Giligan's Island.) And it was a media saturation house: three daily newspapers, a half-dozen weekly magazines, radio and TV always on.

Despite generally being open to new ideas, rock music eluded them entirely... ("Right from Elvis.", my dad used to say.) They didn't understand the cultures of the greasers or the hippies. (Though they mostly agreed in theory with the liberal idealism of the hippies.) Being in a "trade" they were always casually dressed - apart from when going out - so the change in clothing and hair styles didn't much bother them. There was no fretting that it was the end of civilization: while the 60s/70s were indeed confusing, they didn't feel that it was an us-vs.-them generation war. They never became reactionaries, remaining liberals to the end. They were also remained interested in offbeat movies and TV shows until the dementia set in...

And my dad used digital cameras and computers in his eighties. Mom could program a VCR and use a cell phone. While there were many things that they didn't understand in their old age, they remained pretty in touch, and they had no illusions about the old days having been "better". Actually, they negotiated the changing times with remarkable grace, with their inability to appreciate the newer musical styles being their main blind spot.

 

[scotrace]

The 1960's get a lot of credit/blame for being a time of great social upheaval. But I think the 1920's held the greatest, boldest changes of the 20th century - especially for women.
At the start of the decade, styles, customs and manners that were unthinkable had settled into the norm by its close. By 1930, women (in general - not all embraced the changes) were showing a lot of leg, wearing short hair for the first time ever, smoking cigarettes, attending college and taking outside employment in greater numbers. In 1915, they couldn't even vote.
Socially, peers and peer pressure were exerting a much greater influence on young people as the first major "Youth Culture" appeared and took solid hold. College attendance soared in the 1920's (650 precent 1900-1930, most of it at the latter third). Horses were put out to pasture for good. Telephones became common and automobile ownership for the many shrank distances fast. Whole industries were born around the new mobility: filling stations, diners, "motor hotels." I'm sure many of the radios that tuned in Amos & Andy in the thirties were bought in the waning 20's.
The Volstead Act created a widespread criminal class as people from every walk of life from farmers to bootleggers found ways around prohibition. Organized crime was born.
Men, beginning with college boys, wore fewer hats, went shirtless to the beach, and entered college in record numbers. People devoured a new kind of fiction from Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They went to motion picture theaters to see Hollywood films that had matured into a remarkable art form. The spread of jazz represented at least an equal musical shock as the spread of Mick Jagger.
It makes the hippies seem pretty fringe. And they were.
I don't remember my grandparents expressing anything more than raised eyebrows in the 60's. They'd seen the real thing in their own youths. Grandma wore pants (after having done war work in the forties). And grandpa had been a Jazz Suit Dandy in his wild years.
My parents, however, the WWII generation, raised by those flappers, sheiks and bootleggers, were shocked!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

My grandmother -- born in 1910 -- along with my grandfather greatly enjoyed fishing, so my memories of her was of her wearing men's* jeans and flannel work shirts. Though I found pics of her in a family album from 1928 in flapper attire! Granddad was also quite a sharp dresser back then.

*I don't think women's jeans were around yet in the late '60s, early '70s.

 

[Gingerella72]

Great topic!

My parents were born in 1930 and '31, married in 1952 in their early twenties. They were raised and in love with the big band, crooner, and jazz music of the time but were NOT "jazz beatniks". They were very traditional I guess you'd say, and even though they were technically young enough to have gotten caught up in the changes, they didn't.....when pop culture exploded so radically in the 60's they shook their heads in wonder at it and lamented the loss of the "good old days." I remember my dad talking about seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and laughing at their clothes, hair, and the music itself too (dad is a very traditional jazz musician). He just didn't "get" the music and thought it immature and simplistic. I was born in 1972 and grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and The Four Freshmen. Imagine their shock and dismay when I turned into a total metal headbanger in the 80's, lol! However, as the audiences he used to play traditional standards for are now dying off, he realizes he needs to update his music repertoire so he's been incorporating more "current" stuff....like Neil Diamond....:eusa_doh:

As for other changes, my dad to this day blames the 60's for everything that is wrong with the world today. Both parents were disgusted by the whole "hippie" thing and everything that went along with it (or were influenced by it)....drugs, free love, women's lib, etc. They were all for civil rights though, just they honestly felt that women were needed more in the home (as long as income allowed it). Mom is very proud of the fact that she was able to be a stay at home wife and mom and didn't "have" to work outside the home.

My mom stopped keeping up with technology in the 70's and has stubbornly refused since then to learn anything else beyond operating the microwave and TV remote control. Dad, however, embraced computer technology in the 90's and taught himself how to use it. I'd go so far to say that he is more tech savvy then me; he owned a computer before I did, got a cell phone before I did, signed up for Facebook before I did....my dad is one cool 79 year old!

 

[scotrace]

For years, every time someone in the family went into a public restroom, my mom would warn: "Watch out for hippies in there! They grab you and stick you with a needle to get you hooked up on that dope!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

I never saw a live hippie until the mid-70s. There were a bunch of them lying on the ground in this summer town we were driving thru, and Ma said she'd heard that they like to stare at the sun until they go blind. "Not much sense to that," I thought.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

On Dad's side, Grandma and Grandpa were born in 1935 and 1930 and married in 1951 (she was 15, he was 21)
My grandpa's a big band fan and likes a little country western, such as Jim Reeves.
My grandma loves country music, especially Patsy Cline.
They both grew up during the Depression and raised 5 kids in a little Ranch house my grandpa built in 1952 in Milwaukee.

My grandparents hated hippies and rioters as there was a ton of it in 1968. There were tanks outside the house and bomb threats called to their house.
The house on 60th street stayed the same as when it was built, for the most part and still looks the same now, from the outside.
White flight chased them out in 1987.
Grandma can use a computer and e-mails me regularly and they've finally figured out CD's and DVD's.

Grandma and Grandpa on my Mom's side were both born in 1942 and married in 1962.
Grandpa's a very conservative thinking, old-fashioned, country music fan, especially Johnny Cash.
Grandma is as well, but Mom says she always listened to WOKY, which played the top 40 in the 60's and 70's.
Grandpa worked in a factory, and Grandma still works to this day, owning her own hair salon.

They both are not fans of hippies, though they always stayed up with the times. Grandpa still dresses like it's the 60's however.
He's a big fan of technology, and had CD's as soon as they came out and has always had the best of the best when it comes to gadgets.

My dad was born in 1959 and was a Greaser in High School, and became a big fan of Disco in the late 1970's.
Of course, raised by my grandparents, he's also not a big hippie supporter, and the Hippies and Greasers were rivals at John Marshall High.
He hasn't updated much and still listens to Disco and Country Western from the 1950s-1980s. Him and mom got married in 1988.

Mom was born in 1965 and spent the majority of her time with her grandparents, born in 1903, as her folks worked.
She's very old-school in her thought. Men have short hair, women have long hair. Hippies are a no-no, and have no morals.
Very religious and a devoted wife and mother.
Divorce is not supported (Catholic) and neither is living together, or any other activity, out of wedlock.
She only listens to vintage country western music and mocks my father for his sissy Disco music.
She works in the same factory as me as a Mechanic.

Both my parents are modern in the fact that they wear T-Shirts, or Wife Beaters, Jeans, etc.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

The 1960's get a lot of credit/blame for being a time of great social upheaval. But I think the 1920's held the greatest, boldest changes of the 20th century - especially for women.
At the start of the decade, styles, customs and manners that were unthinkable had settled into the norm by its close. By 1930, women (in general - not all embraced the changes) were showing a lot of leg, wearing short hair for the first time ever, smoking cigarettes, attending college and taking outside employment in greater numbers. In 1915, they couldn't even vote.
Socially, peers and peer pressure were exerting a much greater influence on young people as the first major "Youth Culture" appeared and took solid hold. College attendance soared in the 1920's (650 precent 1900-1930, most of it at the latter third). Horses were put out to pasture for good. Telephones became common and automobile ownership for the many shrank distances fast. Whole industries were born around the new mobility: filling stations, diners, "motor hotels." I'm sure many of the radios that tuned in Amos & Andy in the thirties were bought in the waning 20's.
The Volstead Act created a widespread criminal class as people from every walk of life from farmers to bootleggers found ways around prohibition. Organized crime was born.
Men, beginning with college boys, wore fewer hats, went shirtless to the beach, and entered college in record numbers. People devoured a new kind of fiction from Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They went to motion picture theaters to see Hollywood films that had matured into a remarkable art form. The spread of jazz represented at least an equal musical shock as the spread of Mick Jagger.
It makes the hippies seem pretty fringe. And they were.
I don't remember my grandparents expressing anything more than raised eyebrows in the 60's. They'd seen the real thing in their own youths. Grandma wore pants (after having done war work in the forties). And grandpa had been a Jazz Suit Dandy in his wild years.
My parents, however, the WWII generation, raised by those flappers, sheiks and bootleggers, were shocked!

THANK YOU!
I still believe the changes after WW1 were more radical than those of the 60s. Especially speaking as a woman -- Before WW1 we were in corsets and covered from neck to ankles. After WW1 we slowly began to wear what grandmothers of that time didn't even wear as underwear! It would be like a thong becoming exceptable outerwear today.

My grandmother was born in 1929 (still alive). Some things she adapted to, others she didn't. She never liked rock music or long hair on men. She always says "It was in the 60s when boys starting looking like girls!" (in reference to the long hair!) She has on her big band station in her car and always says "This is back when you could understand what they were saying!" lol

Fashion-wise, my grandmother moved forward. She was "in style" in all the pictures I've seen of her from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was sometime in the 80s she became an "old lady" and wore the pants, loafers, t-shirts, and fleece jackets. She still dresses like this today.

My dad was born in 1941 and was a greaser in the 50s. He was "in style" all throughout the 50s, 60s, and even 70s, with his thick 'stache and bell-bottom pants lol He changed with the times. My mom was born in 1952 and very much a 70s woman.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Great topic!

My parents were born in 1930 and '31, married in 1952 in their early twenties. They were raised and in love with the big band, crooner, and jazz music of the time but were NOT "jazz beatniks". They were very traditional I guess you'd say, and even though they were technically young enough to have gotten caught up in the changes, they didn't.....when pop culture exploded so radically in the 60's they shook their heads in wonder at it and lamented the loss of the "good old days." I remember my dad talking about seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and laughing at their clothes, hair, and the music itself too (dad is a very traditional jazz musician). He just didn't "get" the music and thought it immature and simplistic. I was born in 1972 and grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and The Four Freshmen. Imagine their shock and dismay when I turned into a total metal headbanger in the 80's, lol! However, as the audiences he used to play traditional standards for are now dying off, he realizes he needs to update his music repertoire so he's been incorporating more "current" stuff....like Neil Diamond....:eusa_doh:

As for other changes, my dad to this day blames the 60's for everything that is wrong with the world today. Both parents were disgusted by the whole "hippie" thing and everything that went along with it (or were influenced by it)....drugs, free love, women's lib, etc. They were all for civil rights though, just they honestly felt that women were needed more in the home (as long as income allowed it). Mom is very proud of the fact that she was able to be a stay at home wife and mom and didn't "have" to work outside the home.

My mom stopped keeping up with technology in the 70's and has stubbornly refused since then to learn anything else beyond operating the microwave and TV remote control. Dad, however, embraced computer technology in the 90's and taught himself how to use it. I'd go so far to say that he is more tech savvy then me; he owned a computer before I did, got a cell phone before I did, signed up for Facebook before I did....my dad is one cool 79 year old!

Sounds a lot like my dad who, sadly, passed away a few months ago. Musically, our parents' generation -- my dad was born in 1928 and my mom in 1929 -- were a generation that came of age at the tail end of the swing era and just missed rock n' roll. In many ways, I am, quite proudly, my father's son, as I've inheirited much of his tastes and views -- though I tend to be a lot more conservative in my tastes and outlook than even him.

 

[Atticus Finch]

How did they react to...the Hippies?

To Rock N' Roll?

Did they adapt to the changing times at all, or did they retain their original style?

Mom and Dad were both born in the middle twenties and both grew up in working class families during the Great Depression. During WWII, Dad served in the USAAF and Mom worked in the USO. They were a little different than many couples of that era in that they both graduated from college, but otherwise, they were members of America’s Greatest Generation in every sense of the term.

When they were younger, they were both fairly conservative. I guess politically, they could have been accurately described as "Boil Weevil" Democrats. For example, I recall Dad actively supporting the movement to impeach Earl Warren for his stance on school integration. And Dad never had much use for the Kennedys. And he supported Nixon until the bitter end. Good Lord, I guess that last part kinda says it all.

But as Mom and Dad aged, they became much more socially liberal, even though they remained fiscally very conservative. The last presidential candidate that Dad supported was our current president...and he didn't support President Obama just a little bit, he supported President Obama a lot. It is difficult for me to express how much of a mind set change this had to have been for my father. I guess to understand what I am saying, you just had to know Dad in the middle ‘sixties, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

But growing up in my house in the ‘sixties....before Dad's mind set change....was, ummm, challenging at times. So, how did they react to...the Hippies? Well, Mom and Dad never were able to embrace the hippies, even though their only son was one. Dad was fond of telling me that he dreamed that I would one day learn a vocation more productive than guitar playing and hair growing. Thanks, Dad.

To Rock N' Roll? Nope. Mom and Dad disliked rock and roll. They liked Percy Faith. They especially disliked rock and roll when my friends and I played it. Once, I saw Dad listening while my friend Jule and I practiced Tell Me Why....not a particularly "in your face" rock song. When we finished, I turned and asked Dad what he thought. He told me he thought that the best part was that Jule and I both quit playing at the same time. Thanks, again, Dad.

Did they adapt to the changing times at all, or did they retain their original style? Yes, they changed. In their older years, they both started wearing jeans and listening to music that was written after 1943. They became progressively more liberal and much more accepting of people who were unlike themselves. Dad even grew his hair longer. In fact, the last ten years he was alive, he wore his hair longer than mine. I took great pleasure in kidding him about that. I used to tell him that, since he had retired, the most productive thing he had managed to do.…was to grow his hair.

Made him chuckle every time.

AF

 

[FedoraFan112390]

My mom's parents, her father born in 1920, and her mother born in 1927, respectively, were interesting. I don't much about their VIEWS on a lot of things---given that my grandfather is long dead and my grandmother is very difficult to talk to about stuff--but I do know some things.

Both of my grandparents dressed VERY hip for whatever era they lived in. In the 1940s, my grandmother wore summer hats, gloves and long dresses, as well as pants. My grandfather, who had served 7 years in the military and served throughout WWII, dressed very casual for the era, wearing a dress down shirt or polo shirt and slacks. He never wore a hat of any kind. By the 70s, both had radically altered their styles: My grandmother had started wearing very 70s womens clothes--not Hippie clothes (I get the feeling she greatly disliked Hippies) but like, celebrity kinda clothes. She liked music like Kitty Lester and the like. She's not the most technologically adept, having little knowledge of how to work a computer, but she does have a cell phone and knows how to use it. My grandmother voted JFK in 1960 but at some point became very conservative; She loves Rush Limbaugh now and has since the 90s and hated Clinton and hates Obama.

My grandfather (mom's dad), on the other hand, grew long sideburns as early as 1966 and also grew a small mustache for the first time during the 1960s. Notably, he had worked as a Security Guard during the 1964-1966 World's Fair and may have seen a lot of what was to come both culturally and technologically, as the very year after the fair ended he grew his hair a bit longer (not long, just longer) and grew the sideburns and mustache. By the early '70s, he would wear at times flared slacks, pink button down shirts, and wide collared Disco shirts. He would also wear at times just a white T shirt or white V neck T shirt as casual wear. I don't know about his politics other than he registered to vote in 1963.

He never gave into wearing jeans. He used to love watching cartoons and westerns in the '50s according to my grandmother, and he loved the Honeymooners. I don't know what level of technology he was comfortable with given that he died in 1975, but working in all the various jobs he did, especially at the World's Fair, must've given him inklings of the future that was to come technologically.

The only thing I know about his views on major issues is that when my aunt talked about perhaps joining the military as a medic or reserver (this would be around 1969) he told her flat NO. He said, "no daughter of mine will join the army...They don't respect women there."

My other grandfather (dad's dad) on the other hand, born in 1929, made his views very well known. He had a deep disdain for long hair and often told my father to cut it; He wore his hair own hair longish on top and slicked back (think Nixon). He was very rabidly pro-Vietnam, and once tore down all of my father's Anti-War posters that he had on his wall. He watched the news nightly and thought the protestors were being anti-American. He, throughout his life, mostly would a T-shirt and Jeans, though sometimes he would opt for a button down shirt and slacks. I have never seen him in a polo shirt. He also never wore a hat.

He never changed his style for the 60s or 70s; He never grew sideburns, facial hair, or embraced any of the fashion trends of the era. He is incredibly technologically adept--He had, and enjoyed playing, a Pong system as early as the mid 1970s, a Nintendo system as early as the late 80s, and by the late 90s he had bought his own computer and knows how to operate it, and LOVES the internet; He even has his own facebook, which he needs no help in using.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

My grandpa on Dad's side used to have big sideburns, in the 1970's, he looked just like Roy Clark. He's a very conservative guy, but always voted Democrat for two reasons, He's a Union Lather, and for his benefits as a senior citizen. He however did not care for Obama and it was the first time he's voted Republican since he voted against JFK, who he didn't care for.

 

[John in Covina]

If you had a parent or grandparent who lived during these times, how did they react to the radical change?

My dad was born in Norway in 1922 and came to the US with his parents in 1929 went through the Depression and was in the US Army in Europe for WWII. He saw the changes as somewhat troubling although he thought that going into Viet Nam as a mistake he was disheartened by the revolutionary actions of the youth. Recognizing what a failure the supposed revolutions as to Russia and the Soviets, Cuba and Red China was for the people they claimed to be doing it for he saw the anti Amercan pro marxists as useful idiots for those behind the scene. Mom was born in Denmark lived under Nazi rule and came to the US around 1949. She saw the radicals as delusional. They greeted most technology with a big welcome until we had hme computers and videos games then it got kinda lost on them.

How did your parents or grandparents react to seeing men wearing long hair, t-shirts (once considered underwear) and jeans? My dad never wore jeans, ever. He had no problem with them as work clothes but did not see them as something you worn to a party, on Sunday or Holidays. Mom wore jeans in the 80's and continued but did not see them as dress clothes. T-shirts were like jeans for dad. Mom wasn't very big on them as outerwear or with logos. Dad thought long hair was weird until in the 70's some time, as a personal choice but it had to be neat. Mom thought it was silly until the late 19+60's and then was like dad.

How did they react to the Greasers? To the Hippies? To Rock N' Roll? My mom & dad equated Greasers with hoodlums. Hippies were chasing an impossible dream and very untidy. The drug use made them both very unhappy and the free love out of wedlock sex was looked down on always. To them some rock n roll was acceptable as a move from swing and dance they thought it was ok into the 1960s. When it became drugs and roll and roll they were upset. Neither would tolerate Jimmy Hendrix or most heavy stuff like Cream and Led Zep was not good in their tastes, later stuff as it moved to more stratified genres was lost on them. Folk rock and such was ok for them.

Did they adapt to the changing times at all, or did they retain their original style?
Only a little and very slowly.

See above

 

[sheeplady]

My grandmother would apparently go from being extremely rejectful of trends to being obsessively involved in their development.

For instance, when my mother got her ears pierced in the early 1970s, my grandmother said that is what (insert derogatory term for a woman of the night) did. When my grandmother got her own first piercings, she said that was "stylish." When she died in the 1990s, she had three holes in her left ear, and four in her right, because that was "in."

When Elvis was on TV, he was a horrific influence of the devil. Same with the Rolling Stones and Beatles. I can remember her cleaning and singing rock and roll tunes in the 1980s.

When my mother first wore jeans in public, my grandmother said that is what (insert derogatory term for a woman of loose morals) did. When my grandmother died, she owned a pair of Calvin Klein jeans (which is the only thing I saw her wear out of the house for anything other than yardwork).

She probably would've called any woman with a tattoo a bad name 15 years ago, but if she were alive today she'd have one. She might have a nose ring too. If she thought these things were in.

My grandmother liked to be modern. She did wear the same hairstyle from the late forties or fifties onwards- a longer pixie cut.

I never met my other set of grandparents.