The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This popped up on an auction site recently, and I found it amusing to search on the catalog numbers and see what the young congressman was listening to.

Col = Columbia
Cap = Capitol
V = Victor
Epic = Epic

Coincidentally, yesterday it was 61 years since that day in Dallas. It was also the first time in many years that I had no conversation on the events of that day on the anniversary, because I just don’t know many people anymore who remember it, either first hand (like me) or from school or anything else.

Last year on the 60th I happened to mention it to neighbors (who are in their 40’s) and it didn’t register in any way whatsoever. Not significant to them at all.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well from the 4-5 LPs I looked up, it seems that our 35th president had reasonably good taste in music. I saw some good popular vocals and traditional Dixieland jazz.

I was just a little guy but I remember that day so clearly. It even fell on the exact day of the week as the actual assassination this year. I mean remembering everything in really clear detail, down to the weather. My mom and I were talking about it when I was there for a visit last year and she was astounded at all i remembered. I guess all the adults had real fear and uncertainty, and us kids felt it loud and clear. One of the weird things I remember was the whispered undercurrent rumor that there was a nuclear attack coming. It was only after I read Manchester's book of the event some years later that I learned this fear wasn't just an NYC/ Northeast thing... Khrushchev (or maybe someone else very high up in the Kremlin) actually called Johnson to personally assure him that the Soviet Union had zero involvement in it.

The other two things I remember from the longest 3 ½ days in modern American history was that we were at my grandparents' for Sunday brunch two days later and my dad and I were watching TV when Ruby blew Oswald away right on live TV. The other thing was watching the procession to the grave with just total, dead silence except for the "clop-clop" of the horses' hooves. I don't remember ANYTHING else at all being on TV during those three days... life, everywhere, just STOPPED when the first news bulletins about "something" happening with the motorcade started coming over. It was a really subdued Thanksgiving, too, that year, six days after the murder.

So what was on the records?

Thanks, George. I was also a child at the time and remember that all television (and probably much of radio) programming was pre empted for the continual coverage of the assassination. I sorely missed the children's programming.

The LPs that the future president purchased included those by Frank Sinatra, the Lester Lanin Trio, Jonah Jones, Pee Wee Hunt, as well as some Broadway cast recordings. These certainly represent good taste by today's standards but were pretty much quite popular, middle-of-the-road, good selling LPs in 1959.

Whether these selections truly represent John F. Kennedy's musical tastes or perhaps are simply the choices of one in presidential campaign mode seeking to portray some common ground with the ordinary citizen, is not for me to say. I prefer to believe that our 35th president genuinely enjoyed the LPs listed on this sales receipt.

I was in class, in 1st grade, in Plainfield NJ. The principal’s face appeared in the window of the classroom door, and he beckoned our young female teacher out into the long hallway. We heard her scream (echoing in the hall made it scarier), and she came back in, crying - and sent us home.

6 year olds could walk by themselves on city streets at the time. I remember walking slowly home and wondering what the heck was wrong with the adults. People were just stopped in the middle of the street, listening to their car radios and crying.

I was a latchkey kid so I just sat at home and waited for an explanation, which I can’t remember probably because it was intentionally vague to protect me. I was allowed to watch the teevee until I too got to watch Jack Ruby do his thing by accident. Then it was a total blackout for a pretty long while.

Of course that made me even more curious about it all, so I set to secretly reading Life and Look under the covers with a flashlight. Kept doing that for a long time.

In a way, I can thank Oswald for kickstarting my early reading development. I remember puzzling out the meaning of the big/grownup words I was encountering, and I never lost that habit either.

I remember determining for myself that describing a dead person as “late” came from the irony of JFK being eternally late to whatever destination he was headed to that day.

(Similarly I could not understand why everyone on the teevee was always complaining about this Mr Castro, when all he wanted to do was sell us sofabeds. He had a beard, and dressed drably, but did that warrant such constant excoriation?)

Whos is the first to conquer space? It's incontrovertible!

Thanks for the memories from this fellow New Yorker.

Ah, Mr. Castro... yes. I should not have been able to make the connection, but I was worried that my dad and grandfather would not be able to get their cigars anymore because of that oaf. Little did I know that Dutch Masters cigars were basically cheap rotgut that Mr Castro likely wanted nothing to do with.

vintagetenor wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 4:55 pm Whos is the first to conquer space? It's incontrovertible!

Thanks for the memories from this fellow New Yorker.

Hahaha! Wow, talk about an obscure tidbit of history!

vintagetenor wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 3:57 pm Thanks, George. I was also a child at the time and remember that all television (and probably much of radio) programming was pre empted for the continual coverage of the assassination. I sorely missed the children's programming.

The LPs that the future president purchased included those by Frank Sinatra, the Lester Lanin Trio, Jonah Jones, Pee Wee Hunt, as well as some Broadway cast recordings. These certainly represent good taste by today's standards but were pretty much quite popular, middle-of-the-road, good selling LPs in 1959.

Whether these selections truly represent John F. Kennedy's musical tastes or perhaps are simply the choices of one in presidential campaign mode seeking to portray some common ground with the ordinary citizen, is not for me to say. I prefer to believe that our 35th president genuinely enjoyed the LPs listed on this sales receipt.

Well, the 60s were a saner time (in some ways), so I doubt Senator Kennedy was already campaigning in October of 1959, but who knows.