You know you are getting old when:

[LizzieMaine]

Nah, you just have good taste in music.

 

[HadleyH1]

Nah, you just have good taste in music.

You talking to me, girl?

 

[LizzieMaine]

When you can't stop singing "The Hut Sut Song," *then* you're getting old.

 

[vitanola]

When you can't stop singing "The Hut Sut Song," *then* you're getting old.

"In a town in Sweden, by a stream so clear and cool, a boy would sit, and fish, and dream when he should have been in school..."

Great Gravy!!!!

Thanks SO much.

Oh well, I guess it's better to gave "Hut-Sut" running around in the old noodle than, say, "Yaaka-hula-hickey-doola".

 

[Zombie_61]

...Oh well, I guess it's better to gave "Hut-Sut" running around in the old noodle than, say, "Yaaka-hula-hickey-doola".

Or Kay Kyser's version of "Who's Yehudi?".

 

[Haversack]

The ear worm maggot from the '30s that afflicts me is Charles Trenet singing Boum. 'Course I can trace it directly to having watched in the early '70s The World
At War series narrated by Laurence Olivier. The episode concerning the Fall of France used this recording to close. With appropriate video.

 

[3fingers]

A friend of mine's son, when he was little, thought the world was in black and white when his parents were growing up because all the TV shows he'd seen from that time were in black and white.

I remember asking my mother why our TV didn't work right since the shows were supposed to be in color. We had a B&W console until I was well up in school.

 

[BobHufford]

I remember asking my mother why our TV didn't work right since the shows were supposed to be in color. We had a B&W console until I was well up in school.

Ha, ha. Similar situation in our house. We didn't have a color TV until my Mom won one at a horse show when I was 14 (1974).

I do remember going to the neighbor's house in 1969 to watch the moon landing in color. Not sure what the point of that was -- I guess the flag and gold foil on the LM were pretty.

 

[vitanola]

Or Kay Kyser's version of "Who's Yehudi?".

Oh. Wonderful.

Now THIS is running through my brain:

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's one of my favorite records, especially the kitty-cat violin effect. Twee, but very enjoyably so.

I'll take any thirties ear-worm you can name over the most sinister of forties ear-worms: "Cement mixer, putti-putti." Or "Bongo Bongo Bongo I don't wanna leave the Congo." Or "The Frim Fram Sauce with the ussinfay and shifafa on the side." Compared to those, "Shoot The Sherbert To Me Herbert" is Jerome Kern.

 

[sheeplady]

We had a black and white tv until about '85. My husband parents had one until about '90, theirs broke in a cross country move.

 

[Fading Fast]

My did-not-part-with-a-dollar-lightly dad, completely out of character, bought a large color TV in 1964 (the same year I was born), but I was not allowed to watch it unless he was in the room (and he basically discouraged me from watching any shows I wanted to watch anyway).

Then, when, my grandmother passed away, we put her '50s era B&W TV in a small room and that became my TV watching experience growing up. Maybe that's why I love B&W - I don't know, though, as some people who grew up with B&W want no part of now that they have color (and some won't watch "regular" TV now that they have hi-def).

So maybe you "get" or don't "get" B&W based more on who you are / how you experience things more than what you grew up with. It's similar with subtitles - some people, like me, don't care at all (I don't even notice that I'm reading if I'm into the movie) and others can't stand them.

 

[3fingers]

It's similar with subtitles - some people, like me, don't care at all (I don't even notice that I'm reading if I'm into the movie) and others can't stand them.

My wife would be one of those. I watch subtitled movies or television when she is not home.

 

[ChrisB]

One of my favorite movies is The Third Man. I can’t even imagine it in color. I hope that they never colorize it or decide to do a remake.

 

[GHT]

We had a black and white tv until about '85. My husband parents had one until about '90, theirs broke in a cross country move.

We never had a TV at all for the first 30 years of our marriage. Some see that as some sort of inverted snobbery so we just kept quiet about it. The reason was, in our early years together, we aspired to becoming professional ballroom dancers and to that end we were always out, whether it was training, choreographing, practising or even teaching. It was obvious to both of us that we just didn't have the talent to make it to the top grade so our dancing became a pleasurable past time, but still all consuming.
Our first TV was purchased for the benefit of my wife's mother, who, in her old age, enjoyed visiting us, but missed her regular soaps. That was back in 1998, and we have always had a television since, but it gets little use, we still prefer the ballroom. I have to say that I tried to get into daytime TV whilst recovering from my hip operation. The dross put out in the guise of entertainment is without parallel.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have to say, though, that as someone who has been immersed in the popular culture of the Era, both personally and professionally, for a very long time, that the percentage of gold to dross even then was quite out of balance.

Radio, my field of specialty, was populated by programming of limitless stupidity for pretty much its entire run as a mass medium -- for every work of gleaming excellence there were a dozen gobs of idiotic, marketing-driven drivel, for every Orson Welles, Arch Oboler, or Jack Webb there were a dozen Frank and Anne Hummerts. The daytime serials of the Era, with the exceptions of "Vic and Sade, ""The Goldbergs," and the various works of Peg Lynch, were among the most mentally-stunted, asinine products ever ground out by the quasi-literate for the illiterate. The quiz shows of the Era, with the exception of "Information Please," were geared to a mindset somewhat south of the village idiot. And for every Jack Benny or Fred Allen, there were barrels full of hacky, fourth-rate Hollywood "comedians" dredging their material from the kind of pulp-paper joke-books sold by Johnson-Smith. And all for the greater glory of soap, tobacco, patent medicines, processed foods, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

And you can say the same thing about movies, television, music, the theatre, and popular literature.

It's the quality stuff that makes the rest of it endurable, and I think you can say the same for today's entertainment. As Theodore Sturgeon once said, "90 percent of anything is sh*t."

 

[GHT]

Am I getting old because I love so much a particular song from the 1930s? lke this one
when I love some of these tunes with so much intensity? is that normal

am I getting old because I can not stop hearing these songs?

I want to know

Of course you are, sadly, there's no known antidote, best just succumb to it.
There are some songs that invoke a visit to the dance floor, for example Puttin' On The Ritz, by Harry Richman with Earl Burtnett, makes for a great quickstep. My missus and I are forever making each other laugh. She likes me to call out the dance timing, as in: slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. On one occasion during a dance competition, she kept telling me to smile, it is important to look like you are enjoying the dance even if you are concentrating on keeping time with the music.

So there we were, going full pelt to Harry Richman:

If you're blue and you don't know
where to go to why don't you go
where fashion sits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Different types who wear a day
coat pants with stripes and cutaway
coat perfect fits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)
Come let's mix where Rockefellers
walk with sticks or um-ber-ellas
in their mitts
Puttin' on the Ritz.

As the puttin on the ritz chorus came up, to crack my face into a smile my cheeky lady whispered in my ear: gettin' on my titz.
That was it, I all but lost it. When we came off the floor others were saying: "What's the joke?" "Ask her," I said, pointing to my wife.
It must have gone down well though, we came second.

 

[tonyb]

I have to say, though, that as someone who has been immersed in the popular culture of the Era, both personally and professionally, for a very long time, that the percentage of gold to dross even then was quite out of balance.

Radio, my field of specialty, was populated by programming of limitless stupidity for pretty much its entire run as a mass medium -- for every work of gleaming excellence there were a dozen gobs of idiotic, marketing-driven drivel, for every Orson Welles, Arch Oboler, or Jack Webb there were a dozen Frank and Anne Hummerts. The daytime serials of the Era, with the exceptions of "Vic and Sade, ""The Goldbergs," and the various works of Peg Lynch, were among the most mentally-stunted, asinine products ever ground out by the quasi-literate for the illiterate. The quiz shows of the Era, with the exception of "Information Please," were geared to a mindset somewhat south of the village idiot. And for every Jack Benny or Fred Allen, there were barrels full of hacky, fourth-rate Hollywood "comedians" dredging their material from the kind of pulp-paper joke-books sold by Johnson-Smith. And all for the greater glory of soap, tobacco, patent medicines, processed foods, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

And you can say the same thing about movies, television, music, the theatre, and popular literature.

It's the quality stuff that makes the rest of it endurable, and I think you can say the same for today's entertainment. As Theodore Sturgeon once said, "90 percent of anything is sh*t."

Theodore took the words right out of my mouth. Or vice-versa.

That's why I pay little mind to popular entertainments. If it's worth my while, I'll hear of it sooner or later. And I'm spared all the rest of it.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

All day today I've had Utah Phillips' "The Goodnight-Loving Trail" going through my mind. I've found myself whistling it and even singing it out loud. Good thing I live out in the desert where I won't be suspected of being on drugs.

 

[3fingers]

It's the quality stuff that makes the rest of it endurable, and I think you can say the same for today's entertainment. As Theodore Sturgeon once said, "90 percent of anything is sh*t."

I've known the truth of this for a long time, but in recent years with YouTube, the Archive and all of the various streaming services out there, the selection of vintage sh*t that is readily available for listening or viewing just drives the point home.