Sinatra was the first one I can remember that drew that much attention, then Elvis. Some of the "old timers" are still around, Mathis, Anka, Bennett and a few others.
I guess we can thank TV, and all the paraphernalia available now to listen to your favorite.
We are a people that need to be entertained, I guess. Movies, sports, musicians, including singers, are a major part of our economy. Technology can be blamed for a lot of that.
We had a portable radio, in the 40's, big and weighed a lot, the batteries were big. After our big floor model Philco, it was awesome that I could carry that one around, listening to the radio. It was as big as the "boom" boxes, but it was mostly batteries.
Why the obsession to listening to music. A whole busload of "millionaire" basketball players will emerge from a bus, all wearing headphones and listening to, I assume, music. Does no one talk anymore. Is it deathly quiet on that bus because they are all listening?
I thin one of the greatest "marketing" programs of all time, the Bose radio. Right now, for example, I am listening to music, Easy Instrumentals, on our TV, nice, clear, beautiful music, and that little thin, TV has no "speakers" as I know them. Why does the Bose sound better, because they told you it would. As I recall, the human ear can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. We went from radio speakers, to HI FI, split that signal and had Sterio, but nothing has changed our range of hearing, but, advertising has made those changes for us.
I go out on the porch, sit in the sun, turn on my little transistor radio and listen to ...... music, and thoroughly enjoy it. If I want stereo, I take two of them, for surround sound, I use four. Got them at Dollar General.
