I think there is a similar thing in modern music - lots of people listen on tiny little phone or laptop speakers, and the sound often has a lot more 'information' in the treble range. The sound is designed such that it's listenable with the bass portions basically inaudible.
Those mixes and masters were optimized in a world where everyone listened to vinyl, radio, home hifi, and crappy car stereos. This biases the whole production in certain ways, which together with fashions of those time colour the sound and dates it. Remasters (I think) remove some these biases. The new targets are headphones and streaming.
New recordings can and should sound very differently unless they are pastiches.
Some people like the old sound because it's already etched in their brains, and they want to hear it again. They've associated it with "genuine" and "honest" and whatever.