“Let the music be your master” ~Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page/Robert Plant)
When my daughter was a teenager in the 90’s, she and her friends would take the portable CD player outside and listen to Britney Spears or ‘N Sync loudly while they soaked up the summer sun by the pool. I often asked them to turn it down so the neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed. At the time, I never confessed that when I was growing up in the 70’s, I would put the stereo speakers in the open window of my bedroom, stack a few vinyl LP’s on the record player and play Led Zeppelin quite loudly out the window while my friends and I sat outside in the summer sun. I’m sure the whole neighborhood loved it, or maybe not, because my mother would often ask me to turn the volume down…way down. Led Zeppelin just doesn’t sound quite the same when played softly. My mom enjoyed her own music as a teenager, but the way it was delivered was different. Of course, the family had a radio, which my grandmother listened to while she ironed clothes for those who had enough money to pay someone to do their ironing. Small transistor radios hadn’t been invented yet, so portable music was only a dream. My grandmother was widowed, it was the Great Depression, and there wasn’t much money for frivolous things like a Victrola to play the latest hits of 1939. My mother turned 14 that summer. The family did own an Amberola, which was a record player invented by Thomas Edison that played cylinder type records made of wax or celluloid and plaster of Paris. The records would play only if someone cranked up the Amberola using the arm, which was located at the side of the player. No plug or batteries were needed, which was a good thing, since many homes had not yet been wired for electricity. Mr. Edison helped out with that, also, by perfecting the incandescent light bulb. When Mom was a teen, she and her friends lugged the Amberola to the lake and put it in the boat along with a picnic lunch, where they cranked it up and enjoyed (kind of) loud music while they sat in the summer sun. I have no idea if Glenn Miller or Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra had music available on Amberola cylinders or not. I do know that there would have been no money to buy them if they did, so Mom and her depression-era friends made do, just as they always did, and listened to the old music of her parents’ era. Since I have both the player and the cylinders, I know that the collection contains lively tunes sung in Swedish, hymns, and Sousa marches. All of them sound tinny and scratchy to my ears, but the thought of somebody figuring out how to get music to play from a wax cylinder is pure genius. I am privilaged to be the keeper of this family heirloom, which still works despite three generations of young hands that have cranked it up and laughed hysterically at the scratchy Swedish songs. I kept the Led Zeppelin album, too. I wonder if someday, my own grandchildren will laugh at the scratchy sound of the music.
The Minnesota Farm Woman 