Stretching Your Memory: What is the oldest song you remember when it was new?

[oldies76]

What I know is that I associate those three Beatles songs with my childhood, and they are still my three favorite Beatles songs, and probably my faves (by anyone!) of all time.

I think what they are looking for are songs that were on the charts as currents when you were a kid.

So if you were 10 in 1977, then  "Hotel California" would qualify.....

[semoochie]

I don't think they had recurrents, as such, when I was a kid.  A song from the previous year was an Oldie but only played occasionally, not to otherwise extend the life of the hit.

[CTListener]

I don't think they had recurrents, as such, when I was a kid.  A song from the previous year was an Oldie but only played occasionally, not to otherwise extend the life of the hit.

My experience, too. When "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby" were on the chart, for example, you might still hear "Paperback Writer" or "Ticket to Ride" once in a great while, but never "Please Please Me" or "I Saw Her Standing There." When a "golden" or  a "flashback" was scheduled, it seemed to always be something like "Duke of Earl" or "Big Girls Don't Cry," from four or five years previous.

[firepoint525]

Yeah, my thought is that for some kid born in 1981, Ben E. King's version of "Stand By Me" might stick in their heads because of its use in the movie of the same name, but of course the song (at least his version) was 25 years old by then!

Aahhh Firepoint....."Stand By Me" was a hit in  1961...you only missed it by 5 years 

  1986 (when it was a hit the second time)
-1961
     25

The 1981 reference was to when the kid who remembered it might have been born.

[firepoint525]

What I know is that I associate those three Beatles songs with my childhood, and they are still my three favorite Beatles songs, and probably my faves (by anyone!) of all time.

I think what they are looking for are songs that were on the charts as currents when you were a kid.

Not necessarily.  Check this:

Yeah, I guess my thread title is a bit confusing, in a way...but most people get what I'm trying for, which is: The song had to be "new" or currently playing on the radio when you first heard it. So how old is that song? In other words, you might remember a certain older song better because you heard it more often (the song could even have been before you were born, so it's older) - but what I'm getting at is basically - what was a big hit song when you were maybe 4, 5 or 6 years old that you remember hearing on the (probably top 40) radio back then?

[semoochie]

"Please Please Me" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" were pretty close together and may even have been on the British charts at the same time.  I don't remember not hearing 1964 in 1965.   I just remember hearing more Oldies played less frequently than what I've heard in the intervening decades.  There is one thing though:  Stations used to "rest" songs after their run was over, even the big hits.

[CTListener]

"Please Please Me" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" were pretty close together and may even have been on the British charts at the same time.

True, but their styles were miles apart. For whatever reason, I don't recall Top 40 stations in 1966-68 playing much early British Invasion music at all as oldies but rather using either older songs or 1963-65 songs that were in the pre-BI style (like "Big Girls Don't Cry") in the oldies slots in the rotation. At least that's the way it was at WMEX and WRKO in Boston, where I lived as a kid.

[1954]

"Hearbreak Hotel" or "The Wayward Wind" on my dad's car radio

[RIN3GUY]

"Tracy" by the Cuff Links!  I was 5 years old in 1969, in my parents' pick-up truck in Pennsylvania, listening to their 8-track while they shot bows & arrows.  :-)

[FRR]

Does it really matter?  For cryin' out loud, I was a preschooler then.  I didn't take any notes at the time.  I didn't know that someone was going to ask me about it 40 years later.  Who really cares? 

Does it matter?  For some people, yes.   That is a "personality" issue.  Some people sit quietly now and then and rummage through the baggage in their brain and try to put everything in order that makes sense.

You may have come across a story this week about a shooting at a Cock Fight near Edcouch, TX.  At least three people died.  The police described the shooters as "amateur shooters".    (I hate to think that some day someone would want to kill me, but I wasn't worth having a professional shooter do the job!   But when I insist that I remember Eddy Arnold singing Cattle Call prior to 1955,  I have convinced my self that I heard an early Eddy Arnold version while sitting at a rodeo about 2 to 3 miles from where the current day shooting took place this week, which was maybe 5 miles from the house where I lived in 1949. 

Everybody participating in this thread ties certain songs with a time and place in their life that was meaningful to them.  If they are older than you, they will be interested in songs that don't have a cubby-hole anywhere in your brain.

Two weeks ago I explored another cubby-hole in what brain I have left.  We drove 700 miles to attend a home-town funeral.  We stayed in the mountain top lodge in a nearby state park.  I had a parking lot conversation that sent me to the front desk.  "Some where in this lodge there is a picture of four 'servers' who worked here in the old building that burned down.  Where is the picture?  I want to see if my wife is in the picture.'    She wasn't.  The picture was from the summer of 1958.  My wife worked there in 1954.  (What would they have been listening to on the radio then?)  When I walked back through the lobby the girls working behind the desk asked if my wife was in the picture?  "no,  the sister of her last boyfriend before me was in the picture."    And I am explaining this to people born sometime in the 1980's!!!!

But they humored me and pretended to be interested.

Great point Cowboy... ( See,,, we don't ALWAYS disagree.  Lol)