The Soundtrack of Our Living Room

When I was growing up, we had a stereo record player in our living room. I don't remember enough about it to have known the brand or model, but I remember what it looked like. It had dark brown wood, green fabric on the speakers, and a turntable inside.

The two speakers were detachable. Sometimes Mom would take them off the stereo and place them in different corners of the room. Other times, they stayed attached to the stereo's sides. When they were attached, we had to swing the speakers open like doors to get to the record player inside.

While writing this post, I searched online and found pictures of a Zenith Stereophonic MPS90. As soon as I saw it, I recognized it. This is the stereo we had. 

A Zenith Stereophonic MPS90, identical to the stereo we had when I was growing up.
The speakers could be detached or left attached as shown here.
(Photo Credit: Zenith Solid State Stereophonic MPS90-1)

What I remember best about that stereo was the automatic record changer. Instead of putting one record on the turntable at a time, we could stack four or five 12-inch records on the spindle. The bottom record would drop onto the turntable and play. When that side finished, the next record would drop down and start playing. It would continue until it had played one side of every record in the stack.

The automatic record changer allowed us to stack several records
on the spindle to play one after another. 
(Photo Credit: Zenith Solid State Stereophonic MPS90-1)

Before we remodeled the upstairs of the house, we also had a piece of furniture in the living room that we called the buffet. It was about three feet tall and six feet wide, with two drawers in the middle and a cabinet door on each side. The drawers were filled with the miscellaneous things that accumulate in a family. I remember papers and other stuff in them, and the old Polaroid camera and any new film we had were kept in the top drawer.

Behind one of the cabinet doors, the left one in my memory, was our collection of 12-inch vinyl records.

Some of the records went back to Mom and Dad's high school years. I don't remember most of those older albums, although I remember records by Dean Martin and Nat King Cole.

But some of the records I remember best weren't regular music albums at all. They were children's stories.

We had The Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, and Winnie the Pooh. Some were Disney records, and others were from different companies. The Three Little Pigs, Winnie the Pooh, Sleeping Beauty, and Dumbo were Disney records that came with large illustrated picture books. Pinocchio, as I remember it, was from a different company and didn't have a picture book.

Mom played those records for us over and over again. Cade and I would sit or lie on the floor with the picture book open in front of us, following the story as the record played.

This isn't our original copy,
but it is the same Disney Sleeping Beauty record
and picture book we had

The large illustrated picture book let us follow the story while the record played.

We learned the songs along with the stories. We would sing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" with The Three Little Pigs and "I'm Just a Little Black Rain Cloud" with Winnie the Pooh. I can still hear those songs in my head.

Sometime between 1978 and 1981, Dad decided we needed a new stereo. This time it was a Sylvania. It had a turntable, AM/FM radio, and an 8-track player, all built into a large wooden console.

According to the story Dad has told over the years, he bought it without telling Mom.

Mom had a wooden chest that sat behind the couch in the living room. Dad had the chest moved downstairs and the new stereo delivered and set up in its place. Our living room was fairly open, so the stereo wasn't exactly hidden. Mom could walk behind the couch and right past it.

Apparently, it still took her a day or so to notice that we had a new stereo.

The actual Sylvania stereo Dad bought sometime between 1978 and 1981
is still at Dad's house. Photo taken August 2, 2026.

By the time we got the Sylvania, Cade and I were getting old enough that records were becoming something different for us. We weren't just listening to the stories and music Mom chose to play anymore. We were beginning to choose what we wanted to listen to ourselves.

There was quite a range of music in the record collection. I remember Johnny Cash, John Denver, Glen Campbell, Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn, Anne Murray, Charley Pride, Tammy Wynette, Neil Diamond, the Carpenters, Barry Manilow, and Kenny Rogers. Of those, I especially remember Cade and me listening to Crystal Gayle, the Carpenters, Barry Manilow, and Kenny Rogers over and over, trying to learn the songs.

I don't remember Mom and Dad buying many new records when we were growing up. Two purchases that do stand out in my memory are Fiddler on the Roof and Saturday's Warrior.

A traveling production of Fiddler on the Roof came to town and performed in the high school auditorium. After the performance, they were selling the album in the lobby. Mom and Dad bought a copy on our way out. I don't remember many of the circumstances surrounding how the other records ended up in the buffet, but I remember exactly how that one got there.

The other album I particularly remember was the soundtrack to Saturday's Warrior.

Saturday's Warrior album cover

Albums that included the lyrics were especially good because Cade and I could sing along. The Saturday's Warrior album had all of the lyrics printed inside the album cover. We would put the record on, lie on the living room floor with the album spread open in front of us, and sing along while following the words. We listened often enough that we eventually knew many of the songs.

The inside of the Saturday's Warrior album included the lyrics,
making it easy for us to sing along.

I believe my youngest sister, Kerianna, has the family record collection now. Nearly fifty years later, Dad still has that Sylvania stereo at his house.

When I took a picture of the Sylvania recently, it brought back memories that weren't really about the stereo itself. I remembered Mom playing those children's records over and over. I remembered Cade and me following along in the picture books and singing the songs. Then, as we got older, we were still lying on the living room floor, only now we had album covers spread out in front of us and were trying to learn the lyrics to the music we had started choosing for ourselves.

I don't know how many hundreds of hours those records played in our living room. But when I think about growing up in that house, they were part of the soundtrack.