Featured Essay: My Musical Pleasures

by Jac Roberson

We all had to be eleven at some time. My time was when the world was not necessarily in major turmoil or confusion. There were relatively peaceful times in the world. Except in Hungary where they were fighting Russian dominance. The Suez Canal just opened up for more convenient world trade and travel.  President Dwight Eisenhower was just elected for his second term as president. 

 In the year 1956 there was a new force in the music world. The energetic new Rock and roll music was quickly emerging as a dominating force. And I was at the right age to be swept up in it. It was peculiar to me that my older brother, by three years, didn’t seem to be much affected by it though.  He being a young teenager was listening to the likes of Johnny Mathis, the Platters, Mantovani, the Three Suns, Rusty Draper, and other such dorky music, mostly on 78 rpm records. I guess my parents didn’t have a record player yet that would play 45 rpm records. 45s were first introduced in 1949, so record companies were producing both speeds for a period of time. My brother never did seem to hook up with what became “todays” young music.

It was the fall of 1956 that I purchased my first record which was Extended Play Album (EPA) # 992 on RCA records of Elvis with the song “Love Me”. It was on the charts for nineteen weeks reaching number 6. I had seen Elvis on the television but after hearing this song I became a big fan for sure. After that I bought everything that Elvis put out for at least the next five years. I had quite a collection. The record had four songs. EPAs usually had four to six songs. The other songs were “Paralyzed”, “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again”, and “Rip It Up”. I still have this record.

From Elvis, I first seemed to have branched out towards more rockabilly artists such as Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Ronnie Hawkins, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and such.

Through these Elvis records, I became aware of some of the original artists of many of his songs.  There were country and western artists, pop, and rhythm and blues artists.  I became interested in finding some of these R&B artist’s records and hearing them, to see if I liked them more.   Mostly I did.

So, I bought “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton, “Rip It Up” by Little Richard, and “Ain’t That a Shame” by Fats Domino.

I found that I usually appreciated these originals more than Elvis’ or other white artist’s versions.  I also was becoming aware of the whole “cover record” business of white artists redoing black artists’ songs and often making more money and fame than the original black artists.  Somehow, I didn’t like this much.  I was especially appalled when Pat Boone tried and did this to Little Richard’s “Tutti Fruitti”.  Somehow, this just didn’t work.

More and more I became interested in listening to the R&B music that I have been missing.  This makes me think how interesting it is that Ray Charles was trying so hard to emulate Nat King Cole in his earlier years and then how much he finally broke into his own and created so much wonderful music.

I was fortunate in having a console radio that had several frequency bands on it which allowed me to tune in stations from all over the country. This opened up new and interesting artists as well as completely new types of music. Mainly rhythm and blues and blues music. I found stations like Stan’s Record Shop from Shreveport, Louisiana, Ernie’s Record Shop from Nashville, Tennessee, and one from south of the border that I can’t remember its name. I just know they were always selling pieces of the cross.

So up to about 1964, I was into most of popular rock and roll with a favor towards more black artists and somewhat of a repulsion towards the Beatles and Beach Boy type music.  Then the Rolling Stones hit.  I dug them and, as I did with Elvis, figured out that most of their earlier stuff were remakes of black artist’s songs.  I guess this was a reverse of the “cover records” and it only seemed fair.  The Stones appreciated this music and did all they could to play it and promote it.

This led to my finding out about artists such as…

Also, at the same time, Motown was coming about.  Mostly I would say I don’t care for most of their music.  I do love Smoky Robinson and the Miracles.  I appreciated many Motown artists such as Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder who are both geniuses.  My list of favorite songs includes one each of the Miracles, the Temptations, and the Four Tops.

An additional influence of two of my friends helped forge my musical preferences also.  These two were kind of like beats in that one painted and one wrote and the rest of the world didn’t seem too important to them.  This was in my senior year of high school.  Of course, they were into writers like Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsburg, …. Also, they were into jazz and blues with some folk music thrown in.  I really got hooked on the blues from listening to records by John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson…  and did enjoy Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane.  So, I did appreciate my new music awakenings and awareness. 

Being raised a WASP in a Midwestern city and just before the baby boomer age, I wasn’t exposed to other music for many years, like so many of my generation.  My family was not necessarily musical. The only music I remembered was my parents watching Your Hit Parade show on TV every Saturday night. My parents were typically listening to the big band era folks and other “pop” music being sent out to them.  They did have an assortment of 78 rpm records of which I can only remember “The Choo Buy Song” by Mindy Carson and “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” by Patti Page. I guess there was some Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald in the house but to the ordinary white listener, they were just fitting in to be a small portion of the music market.

Although music would always be part of my life these early years of rock and roll were probably the most exciting.  It was a time when the youth became in the spotlight and added so much to the economy. Music has meant a lot to me all my life.  I guess there is a certain passion involved that makes music so important.  Now I am no scholar, musician, or in the music business. In fact, I don’t even play an instrument or even know how to read music.  But I do know what I like and how it makes me feel.  

Jac Robertson is a retired professional civil engineer who worked for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the National Park Service.

He is a widower who enjoys writing both fiction and nonfiction.

Jac has been published in Childre, Churches, and Daddies Magazine in the September and October 2025 issues with two articles. 

He is represented online at the Preservation Foundation with two articles in June of 2025.

A short story of his was on the short list for a writing contest at The Letters Review.