I think my family’s main brush with easy listening records would have been when my mom and dad joined the Columbia Record Club around 1961, concurrent with buying their first stereo console. It was a large walnut floor standing one from Sears. I would eventually realize that the Sears ones left a lot to be desired in the quality department, but it got me through my formidable junior high and high school music listening years in good stead and I will never forget it.
However, I wasn’t so attracted then to the easy listening music they acquired. My thing was the cast albums and classical, and it would be years before I learned to appreciate some of the Percy Faith and other stuff. But by then I was coming to it from the opposite direction — looking back on it, not riding the initial wave. I also discovered the ping-pong stereo fun of “Space Age Bachelor Pad Music” (cf. BK’s reference to Dick Schory, Esquivel, etc.) through my then-bachelor uncle who really was into it during its time. I never had any of these albums myself back in the day, but in my record collecting years I acquired good representative examples of a number of them.
