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I'm My Mother's Daughter: My Love of 60s Music



I grew up listening to the oldies. My mom would always have the oldies radio station on in the car, or she would blast it on Sunday mornings while making my brother and I breakfast. As I got older, I started to learn about the importance of The Beatles in my mother's life, as well as other bands who had a huge influence on her childhood.

When I was 20, she dragged me off to see The Guess Who. They were playing at a fest in our town. I didn't really know who they were, and when I asked my mom, she said, "You know, they sing 'No sugar tonight in my coffee, no sugar tonight in my tea!'". I rolled my eyes, and told her I would go with her.



Little did I know when I started listening to The Guess Who play at the fest, how many of their songs I actually knew. I started to sing along with my mom to all of their hits. Mom was so proud. She was happy she had a daughter who knew the lyrics to such songs as "Laughing" and "These Eyes."

Her love of music from the 60s made me even more enthusiastic about music from that time. She would always have a little story to tell from her past whenever a certain song came on. Her name was Cherie, and whenever "Sherry" by Frankie Valli came on the radio, she told me of a story from when she was about 10 or so, when the boys in her neighborhood would sing the song's lyric "Sherry, can you come out tonight" up to her bedroom window. She reminisced about The Beatles, and how her and her friends would make up stories about Paul and Ringo sightings around her neighborhood (like yeah, I'm sure Lemont, IL was one of their stops).


When I was in college, my Feature Writing professor gave us a weird take-home Internet research quiz, and one of the questions asked "Finish the lyric 'Surry down to ___________.'"

I complained to my mom about the quiz, and once I said, "Oh, and you won't believe this, one of my questions is about a stupid song lyric, 'Surry down to...'" and before I could even finish my disdain of the quiz, she finished the lyric "...a stoned soul picnic!" singing it, and the rest of the song, while dancing and snapping her fingers in the middle of our kitchen. "That's by The 5th Dimension!" she said. I just rolled my eyes, shook my head, and said, "Oh, of course you know this stupid song!"

Even after her death, my brother and I have little reminders of her love of 60s music. My brother had her old car, and it hadn't been driven for awhile. He told me when he first drove it, he noticed a cassette in her tape player. When he turned it on, he heard the lyrics "Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon," by The 5th Dimension,  and he burst into laughter. There was my mom, living on through her music.



A few years after her passing, I did what my mom would do and dragged my brother and my boyfriend to see Davy Jones in concert, her favorite member of The Monkees, and one of her teen idols. He was playing at a 4th of July fest in one of the towns nearby. At first, we sat in the back, my brother playing on his phone, having no interest, being a typical 20-year-old, and my boyfriend just observing and drinking beer. I wasn't content to stay with them, and before I knew it, I was up in front of the stage, with all of the 50-year-old women, singing along to all of Davy's hits. I was 26, and a fan of The Monkees, but I was there for a different reason. I was there for my mom, making sure her spirit lived on through my enthusiasm and love for the music of her life.

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