The Correct Methods of Jazz Education

At least half our house likes Ike

I gave up trying to influence my daughters’ musical tastes several years ago. When they were tiny, they had no choice other than to dance to the vinyl tracks I played them every night after bath-time. I compiled for my older daughter, who was four at the time, a cassette of her favoured singalongs. It included The Pogues and Ian Dury, and one day, without my knowledge, she put it in her lunch box and took it to play to her little friends at kindergarten.

That same afternoon a thunder-faced teacher met me at the door to ‘Children In The Shoe’, demanding to know why I was allowing my child to listen to “filthy, obscene” music. “I had to literally run across the room and turn it off!” she scolded. I mumbled that I’d no idea how she had such an item in her possession. This craven lie foundered on the cassette’s label, in adult handwriting, which read ‘Xxxxx’s Favourites’. I suspect it was only my daughter’s generally carefree demeanour that prevented the kindergarten from making a call to social services.

In a few years, both daughters realised their contemporaries were all listening to Shite FM, and for a long time resented me for having shielded them from the common