Even in the 1950s when I was a kid, music was far more important at home, church and school. I was a terrible singer and some of my first memories are hating to sing and just mouthing it. I've always greatly admired people who could sing or play instruments.
I fell squarely in this camp: "...they were just exercising the customary cultural habit, that nearly everyone except the deaf or the tone-deaf practiced."
"Tone-deaf" doesn't begin to describe my singing!
Remember when movies did sing alongs with follow the bouncing ball? Then there was sing along with Mitch on the TV.
I can remember when families would gather on the porch and every family member participated in music making. There are families today doing the same thing, some even become professional groups with a following like The Petersons, all over YouTube.
“Even in the 1950s when I was a kid, music was far more important at home, church and school.”
I vaguely remember my youngest uncle, my mother’s brother, playing piano as we all gathered around in our grandparent’s home when I was a wee one. Late 50’s/Early 60’s. I know he had taken piano lesson. His mother, my grandmother played an instrument, I believe flute, as a young girl. She definitely loved music. Maybe where I got my passion.
A side story. I remember this like it was yesterday. 1967 summer. I got to stay with my grandparents and my mother was living with them at the time, working in the local Kresge’s at the lunch counter.
It was the period where the Monkees were the big pop group. I was 11 at the time. While at the Kresge’s my mother said she would buy me something that week. I scoured the store and picked out “More of the Monkees” their second album.
When she got home from work that night she did NOT have it. She told grandma that she didn’t like the looks of the group on the cover. My grandmother told her they were fine. Based on that, she brought it home for me the next day.
We had very few pop records and I played the living crap out of that record. I still have it to this day and found an older console stereo - the decorative wooden piece of furniture style - similar to what I grew up with. When I load that on there and hit ‘reject’ and watch that record drop and start to play I’m instantly a pre-teen again and fondly remember both my late grandmother and mother.