Well within my lifetime there has been a seismic change in the way music is appreciated by the different generations within families. That parents and their children have not always been so separated by the music to which they listen would probably be news to young people today.

During World War II, popular music was one of the cultural forces that unified a nation. We all listened to and were passionate about big band music. Some of the best romantic popular music this country has ever produced came out of the war years. Think of such tunes as “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Sentimental Journey,” “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” “I’ll Get by,” “A String of Pearls,” “Moonlight Becomes You,” “Slow Boat To China,” “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “That Old Black Magic.”

These are almost all love songs, romantic in the extreme, although they just seemed like music to us at the time. What other sort of popular music was there?

I recall sitting in our living room in Overlook during the ’40s and listening to this music on the radio and the phonograph. We had an old upright Magnavox. The whole family from grandparents to grandchildren listened. Our neighbors listened. So did our friends across town. More important, I think, is the fact that we listened together, as a family.

But there was another difference between those days and the present: our parents...

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