I grew up in the upper Midwest during the fifties and sixties, and had to endure polka music on tv during the weekends in the winter when it was too cold to go outside. Talk about torture. I doubt a lot of white Americans of my parents generation who grew up during the Great Depression knew diddley squat about blues and funkier r and b or even folk music. I’m quite sure my father never heard of Woody Guthrie or B.B King. He and my mother certainly never evinced any interest in anything but the mostly watery pop music of the fifties and early sixties. We didn’t even have a cheap hifi console until I was in my mid-teens, and I bought Tijuana Brass records for my parents. That they liked.
There was a polka station on our dial too, but only on Sundays I believe. I would love the first one, get a little bored with the second one, and then during the third one I’d have to switch.