|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Perhaps it is unsurprising that Gary Saxon, the owner of The Record Man, remembers the first recorded music he ever owned — even if it was nearly three-quarters of a century ago. The single was “Mule Train,” a little ditty recorded by Frankie Laine in 1949.
“I loved that record,” he recalled earlier this week. “Of course I broke it. It was a 78.” Back then, 78 rotations/revolutions per minute or rpm records were made of shellac and broke easily. The same can’t be said for Saxon’s love of music.
He remembers lying in bed listening to his mother play her cherished classical music, a genre he still loves today. He came of age during a cultural revolution that changed the American soundtrack forever.
“When I was growing up it was all Big Band music and jazz. And then, all of the sudden, around 1956 – ‘One, two, three-o’clock, four-o’clock rock!’ Elvis and Little Richard and Chuck Berry changed everything,” he said.
Saxon, who will soon be 81, witnessed most of those changes from Redwood City. He attended Sequoia High School and has vivid memories of life on the Peninsula in the middle of the 20th century.
“I saw James Brown play at the American Legion on El Camino in Redwood City,” he said. “I’m not Mr. Redwood City, but I could be.”
