Recorded Music Devices Have Come A Long Way In A Short Time

Since recorded music began, we have been blessed with so many ways to listen to it. Isn't it great? The evolution has been no less than extraordinary. And much of it developed in my lifetime - vinyl records, reel to reel tapes, cassettes, compact discs and now digital platforms.

My first type of recorded music was from a 45 record. My parents had a few, mostly what you would now call classic country. Eventually, they bought albums of the same music format. I listened a lot to those 45s and albums featuring Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Buck Owens, Tex Ritter, George Jones, Hank Williams, Johnny Horton, Patsy Cline and so many others.

The first 45 record I purchased was The Monkee's 'Daydream Believer' and my first album was Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Cosmos Factory.'  It wasn't long after that the mini tape recorder became available to consumers. Mine was a small portable Radio Shack reel to reel tape recorder, complete with tiny reels and a wired microphone. I wish I still had that reel to reel tape recorder. Lots of great memories there.

Then came the 8 track, followed by the cassette, compact disc, and finally seguing into the digital world. When I began working part time as a mobile DJ, I would lug around several crates of albums to my gigs. That was not fun. I occasionally used cassettes, but it took too long to find the songs I needed to play in time.

Compact discs made my life a bit easier (at least for my my back), but I was still lugging around cases of them and they were not exactly light either. When digital music became available as MP3 , I was pleased to say the least. Now, I have thousands of songs on just one palm sized external hard drive. And to think that if I had those songs on vinyl, it would probably be dozens of crates of records.

Speaking of all these different types of ways to listen to recorded music, Wednesday (8/12) is the day we celebrate vinyl records. So dig out those seven, ten or twelve inch records and let them spin their music through those speakers, featuring all the sounds of scratches and pops, and relive the memories of the heyday of vinyl records.

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