Eddy Arnold
June Christy
Charlie Byrd
That woman with whipped cream all over body
Show tunes -- Annie Get Your Gun, Guys and Dolls, Camelot.

I began thinking about my parents' records when I learned that "the Bride" had won a guitar signed by Jo Dee Messina. [http://secretdead.blogspot.com/2005/10/another-crushing-defeat-in-war-against.html] I like country music and feel sorry for those who don't, although I'd have to put Messina in the guilty pleasure camp. But then I remembered how much I disliked my father's Eddy Arnold records when I was young. Would that change if I were to hear them now? Did I dislike them because they were my parents' records? The thing is, we've heard 106.5, the mainstream pop station, coming out of The Kid's room. In a household where it's very, very hard to develop a musical taste that someone doesn't share, he may have hit on it. "We took you to see the Wild Magnolias! You've been backstage at a Springsteen concert! Your uncle is in a cutting edge band! [http://www.deadmeadow.com/] ARE YOU TRYING TO SHAME US?"

Then again, I loved the show tunes, particularly Annie Get Your Gun. One of my earliest memories involves lying on the floor with a green plastic car that had come on the top of the peanut butter jar, running it across the molding and singing along with Ethel Merman on "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." Do with that what you will.

It's long been my observation that men are far more likely than women to remember the first album they ever purchased. But I remember the first "LP" whose cover obsessed me -- not that whipped cream woman, but Camelot, which opened up like a book, with at least a half-dozen color photographs inside. Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. There also was a picture of a sheep dog. Rumor has it that the sheep dog once defecated on stage. Could there be a better story in the world when one is 8 years old?

Stories, please, of records. Yes, records, LPs, albums. The first you bought, the first you coveted, the cover that obsessed you.