My years at Kent State University were extremely enjoyable and busy. I was a journalism major who worked for the student daily, The Kent Stater. For a couple of years I spent four evenings a week at the downtown print shop where the newspaper was published. (I believe the compositor we worked with was named Clarence, like the apprentice angel in "It's a Wonderful Life.") There was a movie theater nearby and often I'd catch a film during the two or three hours between my last class and the time page proofs were available to be read. I was only vaguely aware of pop music, which was changing, though not as quickly or as dramatically as you may have been told in some documentary by a person who wasn't around at the time.

What I remember most, musically, from my Kent State years were (1) seeing, for the first time, a live performance by the Four Freshmen and (2) going to dances that featured big bands with familiar names and one-way tickets to obscurity. Among them, my favorite, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. (I enjoyed watching those in attendance try in vain to dance to "Midnight Sleighride," "Doodletown Fifers" and "Yankee Doodletown.") Other bands I recall at Kent State were Ray Anthony and Buddy ("Night Train") Morrow, who played at a school dance called The Top Hop, inspiring some staff member to write my all-time favorite Kent Stater headline: "Top Hop to Morrow Tonight". (Strange are the things that find permanent homes in your memory, like a classic headline written for a photo of a traffic jam on a bridge: "The Car-Strangled Spanner.")

MEANWHILE, Elvis Presley had taken over as the king of pop music, though a revitalized Frank Sinatra ruled an even larger entertainment empire. The Platters were popular, so were Fat Domino, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, Bill Haley, Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson, one of my favorites because I had watched him grow up on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." Presley, Sinatra and Nelson were the only ones included in my motley record collection. Because she had scored a big hit with "Who's Sorry Now?", a song written in 1923, Connie Francis became the first post-rock 'n' roll singer to earn a place in my father's heart. There was a special place in mine for The Teddy Bears, a Phil Spector group whose lead singer was Annette Kleinbard (aka Carol Connors), but my love for their music was restricted to one song, "To Know Him is to Love Him." Another favorite group was The Del-Vikings of "Come Go With Me" fame.

My father also was smitten with The McGuire Sisters, who became regulars on Arthur Godfrey's daily radio show and later his weekly variety show after they won on his "Talent Scouts" program in 1952. (Of Arthur Godfrey in the 1950s, it truly could be said, "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!") The sisters had been around for a few years before my father paid them special attention. That's because, as mayor of Solvay, he had been seated with them at a luncheon when they performed in the late 1950s at the New York State Fair which is held just outside the village. (In the It's-a-small-world department, The McGuire Sisters grew up in Miamisburg, Ohio, hometown of my first wife, Karla Silberman.)

I can't document this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 1950s had more one-hit wonders than any decade. One such was a group called The Jamies who in 1958 recorded the immortal "It's Summertime" (as in "It's summertime summertime sum sum summertime." This song inspired an unexpected outburst from my mother, not known for her sense of humor. But one of the fondest memories my sister and I share is the night my mother called us to the table by singing, "It's suppertime suppertime sup sup suppertime!"

IT WAS DURING the 1960s that Barbra Streisand arrived, and like millions of others I jumped aboard the bandwagon and bought several of her albums. While I was in the features department of the Akron Beacon-Journal I had the opportunity to interview her. This was she before did "Funny Girl" and became a superstar. She had just started to attract attention and was booked to spend a week in Cleveland where she was guest host on "The Mike Douglas Show." It may have been her first time away from New York City. Maybe she was homesick. In any event, she was a pain in the butt during the interview. Her manager later apologized, saying other interviewers had complained. Thus I was not prepared to become a Streisand fan, but I did, though by the end of the decade my ears were tired of all the drama and I turned to singers with softer voices and simpler styles. Vikki Carr was one, Anne Murray another.

Anne Murray is the anti-Streisand. Some friends complained that Murray put them to sleep. But if I went through my boxes of vinyl I'd find more albums by Murray than any other female artist. Right behind her would be Karen Carpenter, possessor of a wonderful pop voice, and Carly Simon. Oh, yes, and Carole King. Without King's "Tapestry" album, no collection is complete.

In 1969, now working at the Providence Journal as TV critic, I also did some movie, concert and record reviews. I took home an lp called "Harry" because I had heard a song or two by the man responsbile, Harry Nilsson. From that record on I was a huge Nilsson fan. His early music even impressed my father, but Nilsson soon abandoned his personal, often touching ballads (with occasional comic detours, such as "Coconut"), and went a bit crazy, starting with "Jump Into The Fire."

Nilsson fans included John Lennon and Paul McCartney, though I tend to think it was Lennon who led Nilsson astray. Nilsson damaged his voice in mid-career, limiting his range in his later recordings in which the music got stranger and stranger – except for one lp in which he sang classic oldies ("As Time Goes By," for instance) and did such a wonderful job that I couldn't help but regard most of the second half of his career as a shameful waste of talent.

Much of his best music sounds like something that could have been written by or for The Beatles, which made Nilsson one of a few people who occasionally was called "the fifth Beatle." While my appreciation of The Beatles may have contributed to my love of Nilsson, I think I would have found him regardless. Besides, I can't say I ever noticed other Beatles fans lining up to buy Nilsson albums. Also, I still regularly listen to Nilsson; I hardly ever play The Beatles. One of Nilsson's best early albums had him singing songs written by a guy who could have been his soul mate – Randy Newman. Needless to say Newman became one of my favorite singer-composers.

[Note: I'm a contrarian who reflexively resists many things that quickly gain mass acceptance. I was prepared to dislike The Beatles when they began their much-ballyhooed American invasion in 1964. I was working in Akron at the time and it was during a drive to Syracuse to visit my parents that I heard The Beatles for the first time. It was possible to make that six-hour drive tuned in to one very strong Buffalo, NY, radio station, which that day played "I Want To Hold Your Hand" at least once every 30 minutes. When I entered my parents home that evening, I wasted little time telling them and my sister that I had been subjected to one of the worst songs I'd ever heard. My prediction: The Beatles would never make it in the United States.]

OKAY, SO I WAS dead wrong about The Beatles. I quickly realized the error of my prediction. I liked The Beach Boys almost as much and The Mamas and The Papas even more when they came along in 1966. The Mamas and The Papas had a sweet sound that wouldn't be surpassed until ABBA arrived a few years later. Popular, but not yet fully appreciated, ABBA would become huge in my family in the late 1970s, especially with my second wife Olinda and my older daughter, Laura. ABBA was one of the few recording artists that found Olinda and I in musical agreement. Fleetwood Mac was another.

Olinda certainly didn't agree with me on two other groups that were among my favorites: Jan and Dean and The Turtles.

[Note: Several years after Jan Berry was nearly killed in a 1966 automobile accident, he and Dean Torrence began to perform again. My son, Jeff, and I saw them in the early 1980s at Warwick Musical Theater in Rhode Island. Berry didn't contribute much, but he did participate. However, their excellent band must have worked with The Beach Boys, which was appropriate because Jan and Dean's music often overlapped The Beach Boys. Having heard the Beach Boys perform in the '80s, albeit on television where the sound is often sour, I became convinced that if you enjoyed their music, the best way to experience it live was at a Jan and Dean concert. Alas, that opportunity has passed. Berry died in 2004 and Torrence isn't likely to hit the road again.]

Conspicuously absent from my list of favorites are such wildly popular artists as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, Cream and countless other rock groups of the period, including the entire line-up at Woodstock. Eventually I'd come to appreciate The Eagles and The Doobie Brothers, but their music was much closer to ABBA than it was to Sly and the Family Stone. Blame it on my contrarianism, plus a healthy dose of cynicism where hype in concerned. Oddly, one of my favorite albums in the 1970s was by Delaney, Bonnie & Friends. One of those "friends" might have been Eric Clapton. Also, one of my current favorite singers is Brandi Carlile, whose voice and style contains a hint of Joplin. (Check out "The Story.")

Worse, as far as my wife is concerned, is how I have come to like singers – Tift Merritt ("Broken"), Adrienne Young ("My Love Will Keep") and Sarah Harmer ("Almost"), for example – who remind her of Joni Mitchell, object of my scorn when Olinda and I were married in 1977 and her belongings included five Mitchell albums. (They also included two albums by another icon who has always left me cold – Bruce Springsteen.) We are in agreement on one singer-composer who came to our attention in the 1990s – Beth Nielsen Chapman, who somehow manages to fly under the radar, but as a singer is as good as others who have recorded her songs. (One such is Martina McBride who had a hit with a Chapman composition, "Happy Girl." I confess I love McBride, who ought to be declared a national treasure. One of her recent songs, "Wrong Baby Wrong," may be the best thing she has ever done. And this seems as good a place as any to mention my reluctant appreciation for a powerful force of nature who emerged a couple of years ago – Taylor Swift, who was still a teenager when I wrote this. Man, I tried to resist her, but she just keeps cranking out songs and videos and in the process has become one of the few country singers to cross over to pop, though her heart remains in Nashville. I love her attitude, especially when she says, "Don't cross me . . . or I'll write a song about you." And she will.)

WHERE FEMALE SINGERS were concerned back in the '70s, my heart belonged to Olivia Newton John, Linda Ronstadt and Tina Tuner, kind of a strange threesome. I began to wonder whether I was more groupie than music lover. (That would be answered a few years later when I managed to avoid buying any albums by sexy, but flaky Sheena Easton.)

I first became aware of Ronstadt via a reviewer's album sent to the Providence Journal. I was an instant fan. Turner I had seen on television; she was electric. Later I was fortunate enough to see her perform in Newport, though some questioned whether Ike and Tina Turner belonged in a jazz festival. And I confess it was my contrary nature that drew me to Newton John, who was shunned by many pop fans because she had won a Grammy in 1973 for best country female. Wearing a "country" label in those days could be a kiss of death, career-wise, though it was a label often applied to Ronstadt, as well.

In going through my old vinyl albums, one cover still leaps out. It's the 1972 self-titled debut album of a singer named Lyn Christopher, whose looks were more stunning than her voice. The album contained only one song that I liked ("Is Everybody Happy?") so I didn't even read the liner notes before I put it away. Not until I researched this piece did I know Christopher's backup singers on three songs were Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

Who'd have thought I'd wind up with what is now considered a collectable by KISS fans?