Hey, Ron:

Man!!! Your tastes are so catholic that you make me feel downright Protestant!!!!!!! I suppose a major part of the difference is that I am not a trained musician and didn't grow up hearing classical music or chorales. There are individual pieces and composers I explored and discovered that I appreciated, but my tastes in classical music are eclectic.

Bob Wills? Echhhhh!!!!!!!!

Let me tell you why. Music carries baggage. Some of it is good, and the music becomes an oldie for you. Bob Will's and Western Swing (and you can toss Lon McAlister in there too) will always be associated (for me) with the morning hog reports. The house I grew up in (and was born in) was very small. I didn't have a bedroom until my older sisters both moved out, as we only had two bedrooms. My bedroom as a teenager was directly off the kitchen and because the kitchen was very small, we had the refrigerator in my bedroom. And because my bedroom was very small, there was no way to have a door to close, because the refrigerator was in the way. Every morning around five o'clock my parents would get up to get my Dad off to work and they'd turn on the radio in the kitchen. It might as well have been in my bedroom. They played a lot of western swing and 1940's to early 50's country music on the radio, and when the morning hog report came on, they'd start with someone going Soooooooooooweeeeee!!! If you were awakened in the morning segueing from Bob Wills to the morning hog report, you'd understand why I can't really deal with Western Swing.

Or Lon McAlister.

Or shirts with simulated pearl buttons and little arrows sewed along the top of the pockets.

Eccchhh!

Brings me back to Back When I Was Young

"We were all much smaller then, and everything was bigger
There was a kid lived down the block, had a dog the size of Trigger
Our prairies all were empty lots, our mountain just a hill
And for a dime at the corner store, a kid could eat his fill

CHOREUS:

   And the three mile Crick was four miles long, back when I was young
   And I knew the words to every song, known to the human tongue

We'd listen to the radio, and drink our Ovaltine
Decoding secret messages with our Captain Midnight rings
And for a box top and a dime, we'd wait a month or more
For a hand-tooled belt that glowed in the dark, just like Lone Ranger wore

Cowboys all were honest then, their horses all were trusty
And when they slept out in the rain, their guns never got rusty
And when they fought they never lost, but they never won the girl
And the buttons on the shirts they wore were simulated pearl

Jerry Rasmussen