My daughter has always been interested in music, she was singing before she was talking. She fell head over heels for the Beatles when she was about 2 or 3. (Yes!)
Her Beatles fandom started when she saw the film "Yellow Submarine" for the first time, and it blew her mind when she saw the "real" Beatles at the very end of the film.
I remember one night we were driving somewhere and the "1" CD was playing. You could see a physical change come over her when she got the one-two sonic punch of "She Loves You" immediately followed by "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for the first time. She was practically bouncing off the ceiling! (It's kinda amazing how much impact this music has on new listeners all these years later.)
Little kids latch onto some interesting music. When she was around 4, she was infatuated with 1920s Duke Ellington and 1930s Raymond Scott. ("Play the Duke, Daddy!") Admittedly, that music IS rather cartoon-y.
This past summer, when she was 8, she started showing a lot of interest in RECORDS. She would watch me go through the ritual of cleaning them and placing the tonearm down, and would see the record spinning and making sound.
I have a little blue plastic Audio Technica portable rekkid player that I bought in Japan, which I take to record shows and flea markets. I decided it would be a good first record player for my little girl. I went through my collection and pulled out some doubles, mostly Beatles and other '60s pop (fun stuff like "Surfin' Bird") , and told her it was now hers. I explained to her about the different speeds, how to handle a record by the edges only, how to place a tonearm carefully, etc. She gave me her undivided attention.
She spent an entire Sunday afternoon at the dining table, engrossed in the music, playing her records over and over and over. She told me that records are cooler than CDs, because there's more things "to do." She loves blasting her 45s for her friends when they come over.
The first time I took her record shopping was a lot of fun. First we went to the Beatles section, and we found her a nice copy of the 2-LP "Rock'N'Roll Music," which was a good bang-for-the-buck at $10. Then I took her to the dollar bins and told her to see if anything looked good to her. It was interesting to see what she picked out. She would hold something up and say, "Is this a good one, Daddy?" We actually found some good stuff in the $1 bins, ie: a box set of '50s rock, some '70s McCartney, Moody Blues, etc.
Lately she had been looking lustfully at my stereo, especially my SL-1200. I decided it was TIME. I had some stereo gear that I wasn't using, so on her 9th birthday last month, she woke up to find in her room an Audio Technica AT-PL120, '89 Pioneer SX-1300 receiver, and a pair of Aiwa bookshelf speakers. On the turntable was a record that she had been asking for for weeks - a US pressing of the "Help!" soundtrack, which I found on eBay. She is SO PROUD of her "grown up" stereo!
(A few weeks later I scored a matching late '80s Pioneer CD player for free on CL, which I gave to her too.)
She has gotten interested in classical music, a genre I know little about, and she and I are learning about it together (courtesy of the local thrift stores).
It's so much fun sharing this with her. I like to point at my 1000s of records and tell her, "Someday this will all be yours." Now I know it will be in good hands when I'm gone.
