Your first "favorite song"

I played sax in my high school jazz band and the saxes were featured in a short section of our arrangement of TSOP. Still love it. That and Pick Up the Pieces by Average White Band (featuring an awesome sax solo) were among my favorites during my HS years.

 

In the spring/early summer of 1961, I was 2 1/2-almost 3, and my mom was at home mostly bed-bound with a difficult pregnancy (my sister was eventually born 2 months preemie in August).

I was house-trained well enough to run cups of water out of the bathroom sink and get some stuff out of the fridge, and not set anything on fire the rest of the time, so I was more or less the daytime errand boy. My mom had AM radio going most of the morning, and I remember hearing Del Shannon's "Runaway" with its weird, space-age sounding synth solo and singing along with it, "Imma wallking in the rain!! My run-run-run-run runaway!!" It was the first song that I kind of knew the words and understood what it was supposed to be about. I must have driven my mom nuts.

 

great tune. Rarely hear that on the radio. Never understood why most classic rock doesn't include anything from the 1950s to the Beatles era.

 

"Runaway" is a great song, used to work with a guy who grew up in Ipswich, England in the 60s and he saw all the great British Invasion bands - Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks etc. - when they came through town on the way up but I remember being most impressed that he saw and met Del Shannon.

 

Galveston

 

"Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder.

Followed by "Grease is the World" by Frankie Valli, when the movie came out.

I also liked to stay up an extra minute to watch the "Welcome Back Kotter" theme before going to bed.

 

I was 7 in 1978, my second year in soccer, and You Light Up My Life seemed to come on the radio whenever my mom drove me to games or practice.

I remember how much she enjoyed singing along so it's my first real memory of the power of song so by extension it became my favorite song then.

 

Gerry and the Pacemakers. Plays a role in one of the more memorable nights of my college life. When I hear this I'm instantly transported to the early morning hours of May 4, 1975.

 

Probably the best theme song ever performed.

A close second for first favorite song is Tie a Yellow Ribbon because Tony Orlando always played it on the Jerry Lewis Telethon, which I'd watch with my dad.

Kind of funny some of the first memories you remember with each of your parents.

 

You lost your virginity to "How Do You Do It?" That's a little on the nose.

 

Nope, nothing like that. Just one of the moving parts of a night when I was young and all things still seemed possible.

 

Mom and dad have told me on many occasions that I was singing "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets at age 3 (that would have been 1962) and putting on quite a show, so I guess that qualifies.

Of course, being a Chicago-area native, I had the WGN "Bozo's Circus" intro tune (no lyrics) memorized by an early age, same as most kids in the Chicago area during the '60s.