Phil Harris, band leader and radio personality, jumped onto the pop charts in 1950 with "The Thing." ("While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day, I came upon a wooden box floating in the bay . . . ") Also weird, but infectious.

At some point before my 13th birthday our family finally purchased a record player. The 33 rpm record album may have been available, as well as the 45 rpm single, but the Majors purchased the brittle 78 rpm singles that shattered like cheap drinking glasses if they slipped from your hands. And even those that remained unbroken had a tendency to wear away around the hole in the middle, the hole that allowed you to slip them onto the turntable. After several repeated playings, the hole became so wide that the record would slide back and forth, distorting the sound so it sounded like it a chorus of rowdy drunks.

Checking online about the composition of those records, I came upon a Wikipedia article that said the fomula was 25% shellac, a filler of a cotton compound similar to manila paper, powdered slate, and a small amount of a wax lubricant. Those records were relatively heavy and took up a lot of space. The flipsides usually weren't worth playing. So we didn't rush out and buy a bunch of records. They weren't an important item in our family budget.

MY FIRST RECORD was "Cocktails for Two" by the band I wanted in my home more than any other – Spike Jones and the City Slickers, a popular novelty act that must have annoyed the hell out of serious musicians. (Word of advice: if you click on "Cocktails for Two," give the song a minute or so; it is not what it first seems.)

It's clear to me now I can skip over Gene Autry and Frederic Chopin and designate Spike Jones as the first imporant influence in my musical taste, such as it is. If you categorize Spike Jones' music and don't want to dismiss it simply as comedy, then call it Dixieland. Certainly I must have felt that way because within a few years I became a huge Dixieland fan fortunate to live near the home base of a terrific group called The Salt City Five, later the The Salt City Six, who often performed at a Syracuse bar called Memory Lane. Playing piano for The Salt City Six was Syracuse University graduate Gap Mangione of Rochester, who later had a successful career fronting his own big band as well as working with his better-known brother Chuck, who mixed jazz, pop and pseudo-classical to sell millions of records. The Salt City Five/Six also featured outstanding musicians on clarinet, first Jack Maheu, then Nick Palumbo.

So that explains one route I took in my musical journey – from Spike Jones to The Salt City Five/Six to Chuck Mangione. And it was Chuck Mangione, who prepared me for The Dave Mathews Band, another favorite. And branching out from Spike Jones, I later collected albums from two groups spawned by Herb Alpert, the Tijuana Brass and the Baja Marimba Band, which owed a lot to Jones' City Slickers. An important element in the music of most of those favorites is humor, some of it misplaced. I don't take many things seriously. It's my favorite personality trait, but one that keeps coming back to bite me in the ass. Few people like – or trust – a guy who smirks a lot.

In 1953 the big band sound revived briefly, thanks to the James Stewart movie, "The Glenn Miller Story." Miller's band was, by far, the most popular big band of them all, and it has never really gone away. Several musicians have stepped in to lead bands using Miller's arrangements. Miller was in the Army during World War II and in 1944 while traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France, the plane in which he was a passenger disappeared in bad weather. His body was never found. His tragic death added to his band's mystique.

While Miller's band eventually went on without him, another band emerged in the 1950s with a similar sound. It was led by Ralph Flanagan, who became my favorite big band guy, mostly on the strength of a song called "Hot Toddy." However, for a sample of the Flanagan sound, you'll have to settle here for "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho." (After "Jericho" you can now listen to "Hot Toddy" on the same page, though it's not a particularly good version.)

OBVIOUSLY, at this time there were no rock groups. The music was around, but was played almost exclusively by African-American musicians. It wasn't until it burst into the mainstream that it would be called "rock 'n' roll."

What we mostly had were pop singing groups with simple, obvious names. The best-known group at the time was The Andrews Sisters. Two Major family favorites were The Mills Brothers and The Ames Brothers. (One of the latter, Ed Ames, later became an actor best known for his role as an Indian on the "Daniel Boone" TV series and for his accidental, but hilarious tomahawk demonstration on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" when he hit the target silhouette in the crotch.) The most clever musical name at the time belonged to an African-American quartet who called themselves The Ink Spots.

None of the above groups was a particular favorite of mine, though The Mills Brothers came close. However, the group that emerged as my first favorite was one unfamiliar to me until I purchased their recording of "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena," an Americanized version of a 1919 Hebrew composition. Unlike most of today's songs, this one, as was common in the 1940s and '50s, was recorded by several people. Two versions attracted the public's attention, one by The Weavers (backed by Gordon Jenkins' orchestra), the other by Vic Damone (with Mitch Miller's orchestra). The Weavers won the battle and made the top ten. They did even better with the flipside, "Goodnight, Irene," which became the number one song in the country.

The Weavers and this record prepared me for the folk music explosion that followed. But while The Weavers may have started it, The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary benefitted most. Others who did well included The Limelighters and The Brothers Four, though in typical fashion I put my money on a group that never quite achieved stardom, The Chad Mitchell Trio.

My first exposure to this trio was when they were the opening act for a comedy concert by Bob Newhart, who had little on-stage experience before making his hit album, "The Button Down Mind of . . . " Newhart was funny that night, but awkward, and, frankly, seemed like he should have been the opening act. I went on to buy almost ever album The Chad Mitchell Trio made, at least, while Mitchell remained with the group. He eventually went solo, had some personal problems, and dropped out of sight. He was replaced in the group by John Denver. (I had a pleasant surprise when I Googled the group – Mitchell and his original partners, Mike Kobluk and Joe Frazier, have reunited and do occasional concerts.)

I tired of folk music, but retained an interest in singers who couldn't be fitted with ready-made labels. One such was Paul Simon, whom I have come to regard as the best singer-composer of my lifetime. Other personal favorites in this unlabeled category are (Harry) Nilsson, Randy Newman, Beck, and more recently Mika, Regina Spektor, Jason Mraz and a group called Old Crow Medicine Show. How I got to those last four acts is due to some interesting changes in the music business that I'll get into in Part Four. (My younger daughter, Meridith, in her analysis of my high regard for Beck, correctly concluded that in my mind he was carrying on for Nilsson, who died in 1994.)

JUMPING FROM the sublime to the ridiculous, it's time make a connection with that John Philip Sousa record in our attic by covering a period of my life that must have contributed to my musical taste. It started at Intermediate School, which was Solvay's version of middle school or junior high. I never knew how or why I was selected, but one day I was plucked from class and told by the principal and the school system's music director that I was the drum major of the junior high band. I was unaware this would be an audition of sorts.

This happened before my 12th birthday, but I already was a fraction of an inch taller than six-feet, which seems to have been my primary qualification. Had I been less intimidated by authority figures I might have suggested they tap Peter Corbett, who was a few inches taller. Corny as it sounds (and, trust me, it sounded awfully corny when I heard it a few weeks later on a public address system), I think I was picked just so someone could make this announcement at our appearances: "And the drum major is Jack Major!"

Our junior high band may have been small, but it had a powerful percussion section. Our drummers overwhelmed the rest of the band, but I loved the sound. And while I never enjoyed the drum solos that were mandatory in every big band set – a concession to the Gene Krupa in every drummer – I am a sucker for music with a strong beat. I think that was instilled in me by my experience with the Intermediate School Band which must have played at least one Sousa march.

If only it had ended there. Apparently I passed my audition – that is, I could march in step and keep time with a big stick – and soon after I began eighth grade I was once more plucked out of school, but this time driven to Solvay High School for my new assignment. To me it seemed like a bad dream. For awhile I stubbornly refused to buy the white shoes that would complete the drum major outfit. I became known as the drum major who wore brown shoes (the working title of the autobiography I never got around to writing). Finally, at the end of my freshman year in high school, I quit and was replaced by Dick Gosson, a fellow who had a much greater flair for the job.

IT WAS 1952 and by this time I had my first legitimate favorite singer – Guy Mitchell, whose real name was Albert George Cernik, but had it changed by Mitch Miller, then a bigwig at Columbia Records. Miller, whose given first name was Mitchell, supposedly said – according to a Wikipedia article – "My name is Mitchell, you seem like a nice guy, so we'll call you Guy Mitchell."

Sounds true enough. Guy Mitchell soon had his first and biggest hit, "My Heart Cries for You." Many of his songs were written by the hugely successful Bob Merrill, whose music was irresistible, no matter how strange the lyrics. (Example: "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?", a hit for Patti Page.) Merrill also wrote the lyrics for Barbra Streisand's Broadway smash, "Funny Girl," though my all-time favorite Merrill song is another Mitchell hit, "Sparrow in the Treetop," a drunken lament by a wayward husband, amusingly told. Merrill had a knack for using quirky references to draw you into songs. He did it with a pawnshop in another favorite: "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."

These are the kinds of songs they don't write anymore, or if they do, few people listen to them. But they were all the rage in the 1950s. In a way, several of Merrill's hit sound like things well-lubricated bar patrons might sing. Or The Clancy Brothers. Another big difference between music from before 1960 and much of the music that followed: the old songs are much easier to sing.

Mitchell had good looks and a wonderful voice, which got him into a few movies, including an interesting 1954 oddity called "Red Garters," a musical spoof of Westerns. The film, which co-starred Rosemary Clooney and Jack Carson, tanked big time. What set it apart from other films was its use of stage-like sets, which made it look like an avant-garde Broadway musical. I thought it was a good idea, but the comedy was too broad, too corny and, within a few minutes of the opening credits, too obvious.

Mitchell, unfortunately, couldn't act, though he had an impish, appealing way about him. Because of his looks and his voice, some might have considered him an ideal choice to play Curly in the movie version of "Oklahoma," but that role went to a man who had the best pop singing voice I've ever heard – Gordon MacRae. I didn't really appreciate MacRae at the time, but as years passed, I watched "Oklahoma" and the musicals he made with Doris Day and marveled at the richness of his voice.

Other Major family favorites included the inevitable Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Nat "King" Cole. It was Cole who had one of the weirdest hits of the late 1940s, "Nature Boy," a song that my sister says used to scare her (though she doesn't know why). While not written for the movie, a version of it was used in "The Boy With The Green Hair," released in 1948, the same year Cole's record was a hit.

Another favorite of mine in the 1950s was Tony Bennett, popular, but not yet the respected singer he would become. He became a star with the ballad, "Because of You." One of my friends, John Scaia, sounded a lot like Bennett. John and I tried our hands at songwriting, with Bennett in mind. We actually finished something we called "Tell Me the Truth (About You,)" but it was all in our heads. We asked another friend, Joanne Maziuk (whose piano lessons had not been in vain), to put the song on paper, but something got lost in translation, so John and I put all our energy into sports instead.

Bob Ranalli, another friend, was an excellent singer who performed in a few high school shows. He was a fan of Billy Eckstine, a singer who always seemed to be on the verge of breaking through to stardom. I had one Eckstine single. On one side was "Lost in Loveliness," and on the other, I think, was "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," which was a hit for Nat King Cole. Bob went back and forth on which one to sing in an upcoming school show; I think he went with the latter, which certainly was a better fit for his style. "Lost in Loveliness," on the other hand, was a ballad that today would be considered sappy. An appreciation of soft love songs was one of the kinder, gentler aspects of the 1950s, but people today often forget there was no political correctness back then; in some ways the '50s were much crueler than they're often painted. Sensitivity wasn't in most vocabularies. And parents weren't all oopy-schmoopy in dealing with their children. Unlike today's counterparts, parents back then sided with police, teachers and neighbors who had complaints about children.

DORIS DAY was my first favorite female singer, though when I first heard her – on "Sentimental Journey" – I was about seven years old and oblivious to her identity, knowing only that she was the singer of the record that was making everyone cry. Years later I bought a couple of her singles, but by the time lps came along I regarded her more of an actor than a singer. Also, as Elvis Presley would discover, the more Doris Day got involved in movies, the worse her music became.

I didn't make much of an investment in her career, but Joni James is the female singer who first springs to mind when I recall my high school years (1951-55). I'm not alone. A few years ago there was a Solvay High School reunion that included several classes, most of them from the 1950s. The committee in charge of this three-day event wanted something special on the second night – so they booked a Joni James concert.

During my years at Solvay High, students could spend lunch period dancing in the gymnasium, music provided by a student deejay. One of the most-played songs was "Purple Shades," not Joni James' biggest hit, but certainly the one I remember most vividly. The logical successor to Joni James was Connie Francis, who enjoyed greater success, though I enjoyed James a lot more.

However, my favorite singer from the period was the vastly underrated Gogi Grant, whose big hit was "The Wayward Wind." What clinched it for me, though, was Grant's performance in the 1957 movie "The Helen Morgan Story," when she did the singing for Ann Blyth, who played the title role. (This is not to be confused with a TV production in the same year, with the same title, on "Playhouse 90," when Polly Bergen turned in an Emmy-winning performance and did her own singing.) Grant is in her 80s now and reportedly still performing.

A close second as my favorite female singer was Teresa Brewer, who was super cute and had a voice and style all her own. My mother's favorite seemed to be Patti Page. And we all liked Rosemary Clooney.

Mention should be made of Mary Ford ("How High the Moon"), who spent some time early in her career as a country music singer who worked with my old favorite, Gene Autry. She owed her eventual pop success to husband Les Paul, the guitar genius who helped revolutionize the recording industry. He's the one responsible for making Mary Ford a pioneer in dubbing; that is, her recordings featured several layers of her own voice, singing harmony. Unfortunately, when she appeared live on television, she sang alone and her performances were always a letdown.

There also was one-hit wonder Karen Chandler whose "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" was number one with me for several months.

A SIGNIFICANT EVENT in my experience with music occurred during my sophomore year in high school, 1952-53. It involved two men who had worked as big band arrangers, but wanted to strike out on their own. Their names: Ed Sauter and Bill Finegan. Thus the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. After recording an unlikely hit ("Doodletown Fifers"), they went on the road. Trouble was, they often got booked for dances .. . . but you couldn't dance to Sauter-Finegan music. For two-left-footed me, on the other hand, that may have been part of its appeal. That plus a truly unusual sound achieved by instruments you wouldn't find in other pop bands (kazoos, triangles, tambourines, bassoons, etc.). If the two guys didn't look so serious all the time, I might have mistaken their band for the second coming of Spike Jones, who undoubtedly prepped me for Sauter and Finegan.

When the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra was booked for an appearance in Syracuse in 1953 – in a concert setting, not a dance hall – I hurried downtown to buy tickets for what was to be a very important date. Turns out I needn't have hurried downtown . . . because when my date and I got to the concert a few weeks later we were seated in the front row. And there weren't many people behind us. My date confessed she was there for my sake. I had sensed my taste in music might be . . . different, but the Sauter-Finegan concert punctuated the thought with an exclamation point. (I'm still a fan. To hear one of the band's best numbers, try Midnight Sleighride.)

I credit my Sauter-Finegan experience with pushing me toward my few jazz-influenced purchases, albums by Stan Kenton, Georgie Auld and Maynard Ferguson, though you'll note these all represent Big Band jazz; I never got into Miles Davis, John Coltrane or Gerry Mulligan, though – wow, it just came back to me – I did buy a few albums by Herbie Mann.

Another favorite big band of mine was headed by Billy May. I'm not sure Billy May ever toured; his might have been a recording studio band using May's unique arrangements. The first album I ever bought was by Billy May; the title was "A Band Is Born." Again with the humor – there was something decidedly tongue-in-cheek about May's music. I first noticed May on a song called "Lean Baby." He recorded an instrumental version, Frank Sinatra later recorded a vocal with May's band. I credit May with rescuing Sinatra's career; also Nelson Riddle, whose arrangements remained a part of Sinatra's music until the end. Riddle's studio orchestra also produced a few instrumental hits, my favorite being "The 'Route 66' theme." As for May's band, there are a few songs available for listening online, all of them entertaining, but represent a time his sound changed a bit from his "Lean Baby" days that, as I recall, were heavy on the saxophones. Those I sampled online were more into trumpets, with some readers noting a similarity to the sound of Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass. (Correction: an earlier version of this story credited May for the music in the "Batman" TV series. I had confused May with Neal Hefti. Sorry.)

No story about pop music in the 1950s or early '60s would be complete without mentioning Percy Faith, whose orchestra had several instrumental hits, including "Theme from 'A Summer Place'." Just as successful was a guy named Hugo Winterhalter, a composer-arranger who conducted an orchestra that had several hits. Of more interest to me was Walter Schumann, best known for writing the dum-duh-dum-dum theme to "Dragnet." He also was the arranger behind The Voices of Walter Schumann, a choral group with the lushest, sweetest sound you ever heard. They earned little respect and are regarded today as little more than contributors to Muzak, but their recording of a song called "Last Night" would put goose bumps on Frankenstein's monster.

Also, it was in the 1950s that Henry Mancini emerged as a musical force. I bought several Mancini albums, two of them devoted to the "Peter Gunn" television series. The "Gunn" theme remains my all-time favorite (nudging out "Hawaii Five-O"). It was interesting how Mancini wrote so much music for "Peter Gunn," songs that were tailored to each episode. Since then I've been a fan of certain musicians and composers who've enhanced TV shows with their music – Dave Grusin ("St. Elsewhere," for example), Mike Post ("The Rockford Files" and several others) and Jeff Beal (HBO's "Rome" and CBS's "Jesse Stone" movies, starring Tom Selleck). The one Beal theme that I didn't like was for "Monk," though it won him an Emmy. Ironically, the show's producers must have disliked it as much as I did because they replaced it in the second season with Randy Newman's much more appropriate "It's a Jungle Out There."

BIG MUSICAL CHANGES were noted in the mid-1950s, though their impact wasn't immediately apparent. Bill Haley and The Comets hit first with "Rock Around the Clock," well placed in the soundtrack of the 1955 movie, "The Blackboard Jungle." It would take awhile before concerned adults panicked and started screaming, "The end is in sight!!"

Likewise, there was little fuss when Elvis Presley made his national TV debut on January 28, 1956 on a program hosted by Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, relics of the big band era. A week or two later I was home from college for the weekend, headed out the door on Saturday night when my mother advised that I stick around for awhile. She had seen Presley on the Dorsey show and knew he was scheduled to perform again that evening. Her classic understatement: "I think you'll get a kick out of him."

It would be my younger sister Mary who became the family's biggest Presley fan. (How she eventually went from Elvis to Barry Manilow I'll never understand.)

When I consulted Mary about this piece, she told me Dad couldn't stand Presley. I don't recall that being his first reaction; my sister and I decided that initially he and my mother, perhaps grownups in general, figured Presley was a passing fad. As he and rock 'n' roll dug in for the long haul, they no longer were a laughing matter, but the latest national menace. (Witness the difference in adult reaction between Presley's appearances with the Dorsey Brothers, when no fuss was made about the singer's gyrations, and his first guest shot on the more popular Ed Sullivan Show a few weeks later, when all hell broke loose, partly because Sullivan and Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wanted it to.)

MEANWHILE, back in the 1953, I heard my first Four Freshmen song, "Poinciana," I think, and became a fan immediately. The Four Freshmen had what I regarded as a dense, jazz-influenced harmony. They performed for awhile with Stan Kenton. Their sound was unlike anything I'd heard previously. In the years to come, several groups went to school on The Freshmen, most notably The Beach Boys, who kicked the sound up a notch an tailored it to rock 'n' roll. (The Four Freshmen released one album – 1963's Got That Feelin' – with Top 40 intentions, but there was something condescending about it.) The Four Freshmen worked with various arrangers and made an interesting series of albums, "Four Freshmen and 5 Trombones," "Four Freshmen an 5 Trumpets," "Four Freshmen and 5 Guitars," and "Four Freshmen and 5 Saxes." They also made an album with Billy May and did their own version of "Lean Baby."

Most popular group for a few years – but not to my taste – were the Four Aces, who had a string of hits. I did like The Four Lads, whose hits included "Moments to Remember," "Standing on the Corner" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople." A lesser hit bore one of my all-time favorite titles – "Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea." Really. The Four Lads, with one original member (Frank Busseri) are still around and have performed on at least one of the programs designed to raise money for PBS. This version of The Four Lads sounds as good as the originals did in the 1950s.

But by far my favorite group was The Four Freshmen who led me to The Hi-Los, Manhattan Transfer, The Pointer Sisters, Brasil '66 (and subsequent groups organized by Sergio Mendes), Carnival (a short-lived Brasil '66-soundalike), and even The King's Singers from King's College in Cambridge, England. And while their musical reputation was tainted a bit by their 1960s Lawrence Welk-like television show, The King Sisters shouldn't be overlooked. At their best, the four sisters could hold their own with the Four Freshmen, though they could also turn around and do perfectly ordinary songs in a perfectly ordinary way. I think they may have been victims of bad management. However, their versions of "Imagination" and "Take the A-Train" are classic. (Strange but true: As an experiment I played their 45 rpm single of "Imagination" at 33 rpm, which deepened their voices and made them sound just like The Four Freshmen. Also, the group that sings "Day In, Day Out" on the video link I provided at the start of this paragraph – assuming it still works – may be the current version of The Four Freshmen. However, the sound remains pretty much the same as the original, perhaps even slightly better.)

And while The Everly Brother's roots were more country than pop, with songs such as "Wake Up Little Suzie" they became one of my favorite pop groups and have remained so ever since.

The Four Freshmen was a sore subject between father and son. My dad did not appreciate their harmonies, claiming they sang out of tune. (It was a feeling I'd have many years later about most Motown groups.) Radio had changed; my father's Sunday programs no longer were available. Besides, the Majors were finally buying 33 rpm albums. My sister played Elvis Presley and Johnny Mathis, I played the Four Freshmen and someone my father really despised – Frank Sinatra. (Dad's feelings had less to do with Sinatra's singing than with his lifestyle and mob connections.)

At last my sister and I achieved payback for all those hours of "Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye" (an actual slogan). My father threatened to disown us, but accepted our peace offering – a Lawrence Welk album. While my mother might have wanted us around forever, my father was probably happy when my sister and I moved out on our own – and took our music with us.