Danetta the Starlets: Real Digger Stories
luck
4,077 Posts
(We're Going Steady) You Belong To Me / Impression on OKeh.
A story:
I picked this thing up in the basement of Chicago's "Gaia Movement" (real bottom-of-the-barrel scrummage, now defunct) four years back. Things arrive at this, the most incestuous of all thrifts, from large and very literal dump boxes placed about the city. Once inside, the smell is the singular odor of closet neglect, cat dander and concealed mildew. But, hey: when your girlfriend is looking at the used books, if you push past the gilded, patterned caftans and oversized chain belts, you'll find a creaky back staircase (that is in no way a secret). Down to the basement.
It's one of those large city rooms that belies an ostensibly industrial past: a giant barred, now opened, metal door. Shelved work closets behind the hippie curtain dividers. A wide wooden stairway, leading upward and abruptly blocked off by newer flooring for the folks up top. Really: this is a tacit devolution you can stand in the midst of and feel poorer for in the process. Also: It's apparently not far from the underground El, because when a Blue Line train passes, going South from Damen to Division, the walls shake like a 3.5.
There are odd wet spots on the floor and walls. White paint alone holds up the failing spackle and crumbling concrete. Is this a cavern? Because there are honest-to-God dirt stalagmites.
I have NEVER pulled heat here. Nobody has.
I have no idea why I am here.
"At least there are some records here," you think to yourself, pitifully (out loud?), as the LP spines crack and paper bits fly upward at your slightest touch. Black mold hits your nostrils like your ex's Body Shop White Musk. You try, stupidly, to only exhale.
This is one of those spots that you succumb to thinking like a "hack rap producer" just to entertain yourself: "Wow! A TK label. I could flip that West-Coast style."
After some time has passed, and your fingers graze your second, third 101 Strings or fifth, eighth Donnie Elbert you begin to pray, desperately, for a Toddlin' Town or Twinight you don't have. Clinched: just pitiful.
Today, though, huh: just sitting there smiling up at you on top of the Matchbox cars and loose marbles: an OKeh Radio Station Copy by a group you've never heard of. Huh. Huh. You hope it's the secret Tangeers recording they had to destroy before Scepter realized they were still, secretly, with Carl Davis and Company.
There's a red paint splotch on both sides in the exact same location, which means that this is somehow purposeful. It's a bright red stop sign that you should take this in your hands, pick it up, and leave this hellcrotch and never come back. You don't remember how you got outside, or if you even paid for your find. You might have even thoughtlessly hurt your girlfriend's arm in the rush to get to fresh air.
But you have something with you that will, you're sure of it, validate your very existence when you plunk it upon your Technics. Faith among agnostics; funny how that works.
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So today, whilst flipping through my pitiful little collection (somewhere between the odd Chickory and Detroit 45s [how I did I get THOSE?]), I was suddenly met with this hot little piece. Catalogue number indicates that it's either early 1962 or late 1961. I glean from Google that this female soul vocal is on the "Rarest of the Rare, Vol. 9" compilation, which leads me to believe that standards are slipping amongst the swarthy, bespectacled "Northern Soul" legions.
It could use a cleaning.
I like it all right, I guess.
Comments
The story is legendary and a bit ambiguous. Supposedly this huge batch of promo 45's arrived in Finland sometime in the 70's, and after being owned by a couple of different folks it landed in the hands of this one guy who stuck it all into this barn on his back yard, it's basically in the middle of woods.
I remember diggin through these at this trift-shop the guy owned in Helsinki, where he brought a buch of these blue milk boxes once a week. Other record guys in different cities have witnessed the same 45's all around Finland popping up, so the batch has probably been divided a couple of times, everything connecting to the motherload that can be seen in these pictures above.
There is mostly country, soul and rock from the early to mid 70's, labels like Hi, Pawn, Mercury, ATCO, Savern. Records that have been found contain: Dennis Coffey: Theme from Black Belt Jones, Darkness of Evil: Laid Back Funk, Al Hudson & Soul Partners: I'm about loving you, Teques: Don't Push my love cup, Tommy Wills: K.C Drive etc...
When we got there it had been picked many times already, but it still had something, my man picked up the Al Hudson just then. There brobably is still something in that hut, but we lost the guy's number and havn't been there since. Should really make the effort one of these days...
Next week on the show Dr. Wu tells the story of finding Ron Buford in the basement of a house he wanted to buy as a flip. What were those gospel 78s in the closet? Tune in.
Great post BTW.
Well, I can probably think of better digger stories than this later on, but in an attempt to keep my man Luck's thread going (and I may have told this tale before):
I'm in a Second Hand Tunes in Lincoln Park (a nearly-defunct chain of used record stores in Chicago). Some guy walks up to the counter with a bunch of albums that must be either common or fucked up, because he gets turned down cold. He then heads straight for the door, almost bypassing me in the doorway, until I stopped him.
You see, I saw a copy of ? & the Mysterians'96 Tears album in his box, in the middle of a gang of Boz Scaggs and Leo Sayer elpees.
Trying my luck, I say: "So, how much would you sell me the 96 Tears album for?"
He pauses a beat, smiles, and then hands it to me: "You can have it!"
Almost as good as when I found a Warren Smith rockabilly single on Sun (for a DOLLAR!) in a Baltimore retro boutique.
P.S. He wasn't the greatest soul singer in the world, but there's nothing wrong with finding Donnie Elbert 45's in a thrift shop. Unless its' a title you already have...
what i want to know is now that there are no longer any functioning gaia movement stores, what does the bounty from the 500+ collection boxes they have in the city get used for??
I'm not quite sure. Ostensibly, Chicago's supply of wet Cosby sweaters is yours for the taking.
Gaia is based in Switzerland and are apparently still an international entity, at least. They might have another location in Chicago / somewhere in the US, but I'm not going to do that research. Bounty is in the eye of the bewearer, I suppose.
By the way, their official name is (are you ready for this?):
The Gaia Movement Living Earth Green World Action USA Inc.
It's like looking at Brian Eno's full name, what with all the superfluosity.
Ever, uh, "dig" there, Chris?
Oh, THAT[/b] place!!
I was wondering what this "Gaia Movement" place was - I only know that full name because that's what it said on the sign outside, IIRC.
No, I don't recall it being an insane record goldmine either, although I did find a fairly rare album on Mercury by (1950's jump-blues artist) Buddy Johnson with the original record store shrinkwrap still on it.