Jesus 4YG, one of the best stories I've ever heard, digging-r or not. Hoping you have some more free time in the coming weeks for another one of these Iliad-style epics.
Got a lead about a crazy old dude in a town 50 miles south of Dallas that had a garage filled with records. We get to his house on a Saturday morning and he answers the door shirtless and appearing totally drunk. His skin is a shade of yellow I have never seen and he has burn scars up and down his chest where cigarette ashes have apparently fell and burned him. He looks like he???s in his 80???s and resembles the old dude that used to be on Mountain Dew cans. The roof on half of the house has collapsed and there are 1,000???s of roaches running out the front door as if they were escaping this hellhole. His house is on a large piece of property with lots of trees. Every tree on the front yard has an empty gallon milk container hanging from them with rope? He tells us to meet him around the back of the house where the garage is. As we walk back there we see that the trees in the back of the house all have pages from gay porn magazines nailed to them???one on each side of every tree.
We enter the garage which is poorly lit and home to who knows what kind of vermin, and there are records everywhere. We start digging and find some amazing stuff but most of it has been ruined by water/mildew/rats eating the jackets. Luckily there were quite a few sealed records that had weathered the Hell Garage pretty well. We???re about halfway through and he tells us he has to lock us in the garage so he can go inside and take care of his Mother!!!! We decide to just take what we had so far, pay him and get the heck out of there.
About a year later I passed by his place and it was burned down to the ground.
Mid-90's and we're out in East Texas about 5 miles northwest of Tyler. Driving down a 4 lane highway through a town called Noonday we pass a house that has one of those portable marquee signs on the front yard with big letters "WE BUY RECORDS". We pull a quick u-turn and go knock on the door. No one is home but we can see inside the front window that at least one room is floor to ceiling LP's neatly filed on shelves. We start poking around and look in some of the other windows and see that every room seems to hold vinyl.....no furniture just records.
The neighboring house is an 1/8 of a mile down the road but we go down there and ask about the house of records. They tell us that a single guy owns the house but lives with his mother across town. They said he was usually there during the week but not weekends. So I write a note with my name and phone # and leave it on the front door asking him to call me collect. We go home and never hear a word from anyone at the Noonday record house. About a year later we're in the area and decide to go by and see if he's there.....once again he's not and I leave a second note asking him to call.
The next day this dude calls me. I tell him I'm interested in buying records and he tells me his are not for sale.....none of them. He does say however that he will trade if I have what he's looking for. He then says his #1 want is the Kenny & The Kasuals LP from Dallas. When I tell him it's so rare that I have only seen one copy in my life he says..."Well I have three copies of it but I'm looking to upgrade". He then rattles off a couple of other mega-raer titles that he's after and I realize we're not going to do business together. I ask him if the next time I'm out there if I can come by and see this awesome collection figuring that after I get my foot in the door I'll be able to talk him into selling me some stuff. He says no problem, stop by next time I'm in the area and we'll visit. I asked for his phone # so I could call him and he said he didn't have a phone and was calling from his neighbor's house.
It's at least another year until I'm out his way and plan on stopping by .......we drive out that way and can't seem to find the place.......we drive back and forth a couple of times where we were pretty sure the house was but it's not there. We recognize the neighbors house that we had stopped at 2 years ago and went there.
"I guess you didn't hear, that house burned down to the ground and they leveled it and cleared the land after record dude killed his Mom and then himself"!!!
Just so this doesn't sound like a strictly "Glory Days" thread here's one from 2010.
About one weekend a month my wife and I take a trip within a 200-300 mile radius to dig, look for antiques and find good food. One weekend last Spring we drove out east to Nacadoches, Texas where there are some cool Antique Shops. On the way home we passed through Lufkin and saw a place simply called "Junk". We went in and it was run by a very old gentleman and his sixty-something daughter. They pointed me to the records and I found about 1,000 LP's and maybe 5-600 45's piled in 5-6 stacks. I grab about 25 45's off the first stack and 10-15 of them are sick stuff.....Zakary Thaks, Moving Sidewalks on Tantara and a handful of 2-3 star Texas garage pieces. I tell my wife that I think we hit a goldmine and that I'll be a while. I rip through the rest of them and unbelievably, find maybe 3-4 more decent records. I start on the LP's and when I pick up the first one another killer garage 45 fell out of the jacket. The LP's were chud and I wound up leaving with about 15 great 45's.
As I was paying the old man said "You should check with the Auctioneer downtown....he is handling the estate of a guy who had millions of records". I immediately drove down to the Auction House and it was closed. Monday morning I called them and they told me they had handled this estate that had a barn full of records in a tiny nearby town and even brought in an "expert" from California to appraise them but they were all junk and they took them to the dump. I asked for the familiy info and he said he couldn't give it to me. I knew approximately when the guy had died and the town was so small that checking the obituaries revealed his name quickly.
The obituary stated that the deceased had a daughter that lived in a nearby city named Mary Hopkins. I found that there were 7 numbers listed for the name Hopkins in that town but none under "Mary" so I started making calls to all of them. The first number I called was a very nice older woman who after a few questions proclaimed "OH, you must be looking for "Black Mary".....she then shouted in to her husband and asked if he knew how I could get in touch with her.....he said "Call the local radio station, I'm sure they could help. After all, there is a statue of her Grandpa one town over, he was a famous fiddle player"
I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a fiddle player named Hopkins and I can't....then it hit me... "Are you talking about Lightnin' Hopkins?" "Yeah!! That's his name, he was a famous fiddle player". I thank them and tell them I'll call the radio station.
OK....reality check......I may have found the estate of Lightnin' Hopkin's son who had a barn full of records that have been taken to the dump.....My mind runs wild with what might have been and what still might be.....and it's gonna drive me crazy until I can call the radio station the next day. I can't control myself and proceed to start calling the rest of the Hopkins in the town.
The next call I get this sweet woman who tells me she is the Mary Hopkins I'm looking for and she sounds very white. She then explains that her father had accumulated a barn full of records and after he died she tried to sell them but the auction house wasn't interested. I asked if she still had tham and she said "No, I gave them to this nice young man a few towns over" I asked for his name and she gave it to me. I called him the next day and he was a young dude in his 20's. Really nice guy who said he was a record collector and that he was into classic rock. He answered Ms. Hopkins(Who at this point we know is no relation to Lightnin') Craigslist ad for "100 Records" and when he went to look at them there were over 100,000. She just wanted them gone so he hauled them to his family's abandonned Gas Station/Watermelon Stand. He said he was eventually going to open a store with them but said I could come by and buy whatever I wanted......I invited two friends and we head out there early one Saturday...
Again my stories dont even come close to touching Thes and Rock's tales... but this whole thread got me thinking about some classic digging adventures one of my best mates used to have. Unfortunately he passed away 1 year ago, and apart from losing a great friend and digging buddy I will miss living vacariously thru his crazy stories- cus he always had the best tales to tell and the best diggers luck Ive ever seen.
RIP Alonso aka Al Fresko (these are some of his tales).
1.
Years ago I was living in the Inner West of Sydney, off a main road which was filled with semi abandoned factories and used furniture stores etc. Alonso used to come by on the reg to hang out and on his walk from the nearbu station would pass these dilapitated shops. One in particular got his attention and he always used to bug me about going to have alook if they had wax. I was on some "man that shit looks like it hasn't been open in a decade".
Eventually Al moved in with me to this same place and a week or so later he comes back home with a massive grin on his face and tells me "See your a dickhead man, I fucking told you to check out that place, how long you been here, 2-3 yrs? Your gonna be spewing when i tell you what happened to me"..
So Im all cocky and say some shit like, "What, you went in and they had records, let me guess a crate of old mouldy dollar bin turds?". "Yeah, something like that" he says as he pulls out around 15 James Brown 45s in good condition from his bag. He starts laughing, I almost start crying.... Then he tells me he copped them for 50 cents each, and I did start crying :-P
2.
Years later Im living back in El Barrio... so is Al. There arent that many spots out our way but theres a thrift store in Fairfield and one in Mt Pritchard, which me, Al and a few other diggers round this way always hit up. Once in a while you come across a good stack, usually you get some random $1 finds and decent common doubles etc. But 90% is crud.
Al calls me one day and says "Oi, you gonna be home later, I just copped a bunch of records from the Salvos in Fairfield and I got my decks at the pawn shop so I need to come use yours"
"yeah Im chilling out come round whenever, what did you get?"
"About 60 latin records, heaps of shit I never seen before"
He shows up with a box of latin titles, and we start going thru them all, apart from a handful of turds, most of it is top notch salsa, cumbia, boogaloo,samba titles. A stack of Fania, some nice Brazilian pieces, and some killer Giolito LPs. Dude paid a buck a piece so he's grinning from ear to ear. I start trying to get my trade on, and end up grabbing a few LPs off him. But he wont give up the one Giolito LP I really want.
A few days later I get a call from another local digger mate, V, and cus he hits the same spots I tell him about what Al found. Straight away he's calling it bullshit and tells me he was in the store the same day as Al and there was nothing there worth buying, "I dont know your mate but Im telling you hes full of shit".
I expain that Al isnt a ego tripping shit talker,and that I actually saw the stash etc. I ask V what time he was in there, he says round 330pm, and when I check with Al he was in there at 4pm just as a truck with new deliveries (incldung the latin stash of wax) arrived. When I tell V about that, he's feeling a bit like I did with those James Brown 45s.
Some diggers got all the luck! And Al did, cus 3 weeks later I get another call from him, same drill as before, he scored another 50 latin titles from the Mt Pritchard thrift, so the collection musta been split between the two stores and Al was lucky enough to be at both of them to jump on it when they arrive. Best thing is Mt Pritchard charges 50cents a record or 3x $1 at that time. Good thing for me another Giolito popped up in the second stash so i finally got my hands on the one I wanted off Al. I tend to put it on when reminicing about the brother these days.
3.
Another day I get a call from Al. He starts off with his usual "Dude you wont believe what happened to me" line. I know theres some crazy lucky tale behind that. Turns out Al is driving around on some random shit, on the way to the shops or something and he sees a Garage Sale (Yard sale?) near where he parked.
Decides to pop in and asks this youngish dude, "hey you got any records for sale?" Youn dude is kinda of supirsed and says "Shit I never thought about selling records, but yeah I got heaps out the back, my dads old collection". So Al walks with him into this big shed out the back of the house and on the way the young dude gets abit staunch and says "Now listen, not all the records I got are for sale, only my dads ones, mine are NOT for sale, okay".
Al says, no probs and when he walks into the shed sees one wall chock o block full of records, and about 3 crates near a stereo. He aint sure which is the dads and which is the sons... walks up to the crates and see a bunch of Aussie Rock Cheesy shit. Luckily the young dude comes running over saying "Nah, those are mine, I aint selling them!"... But you can have anything form over there-pointing to the massive collection.
Al starts pulling out mad shit (he actually called me while he was doing that asking me about a few artists etc). Basically old Dad was a collector, so if he liked a group he bought all their LPs bitd, so Al's able to pull out the whole catalouge for more mianstream soul/funk ppl like the Temptations, EWF, Brick, Issac Hayes, Donny Hathaway, Minnie Ripperton plus some more obscure souls/funk numbers, a good chunk of Aussie jazz titles, some dope Psych rock, a bit of punk... And the best thing was the son had no clue what they where worth so basically he tells Al he'll charge him $20 a bag (which fit around 30 records) and that Al can fill them up himself.
When I went to visit Al, he musta had over 300-400 records. It took him almost 3 months to finally sort and file them all. In that time he went back and grabbed a few more bags, cus he dropped a few titles that i told him he shoulda got. Although he was a mate, he refused to tell me the adress of the house because the son also mentioned that his dad had a massive 45 collection in storage which Al wanted to sift thru first..... I wasnt mad, cus we did some good trades and i copped a few doubles off him etc.
Three of us head out to the Gas Station....one member of this board and a young dude who owns a local store. Always good to share leads with folks who reciprocate and know a wide variety of genres, my philosophy is that there are enough records for everyone. On the way there we inevitably speculate that 100K might actually be 1,000 or maybe 5,000....seldom is 100K an accurate description.
We get there about 9:00 and it's really 100K....maybe more. It's laid out in a variety of ways....all the Christmas, Soundtracks and Country were filed, alphabetically on shelves......the rest is piled up everywhere.....2-3 foot high piles and maybe 300 -500 of them. He tells us that most records will be $1.00....some $0.50......so we start digging. About an hour in I've seen enough white gospel to build a stairway to heaven but have found 20 or so solid records.....at hour #3 my young store owner buddy pulls a copy of Marvin Peterson & The Soul Masters. Our host takes us across the street for lunch at the only local restaurant and after lunch we dig for 4 more hours.
When it was all said and done we left with about 4-500 records...cherry picked like a motherfucker........some rare titles.....and the three of us only got through about 75% of the stuff.......I've since sent another friend there who pulled a few hundred LP's and plans on returning.
Rock. your stories make me wish i was born earlier haha....
2 quick stories of what COULD HAVE been but hey you live you learn...
1) in my early days (not too early) i was living in the Hudson Valley and looking through the phonebook. found a listing for a store that sold "Records and Tapes". went to the store and the old woman said "well the records are in the basement. and we don't let just anyone in there but you seem like a nice guy. here you can borrow my flashlight"
i head downstairs and the basement is FULL of records. wall to wall. shelves and boxes. i am looking through weird looking rock LPs and passing them up for mint copies of "black music" which honestly consisted of Earth Wind & Fire and Bill Withers LPs...there were also thousands of 45s that i didn't bother looking through because they didn't have covers :( it is way early in my life of digging so i think i hit the gold mine. about a year passes and the amount of knowledge and research i did made me think i should go back...
so i get there and the place is a beauty salon. the owner tells me to go to the deli next door and ask the owner for any info on the since closed shop. i get there and he tells me the husband had passed away, the wife became a recluse and closed the store. they wouldn't give me any info fearing i was going to kill the lady or something so i went to the town clerk and asked her for some info. she directed me to where the woman lived. i walked up and knocked on the door. she tells me ALL the records were taken to the dump because nobody wanted them but she had a shoebox full of 45s she took mistaking them for some women's high heels. in the box were 5 mint copies of The Champ on Cotillion and about 10 random private garage 45s. to this day i still wonder what i missed in search for "rare funk" ehhhhhhh
2) this one kind of gets me pissed off. but no one to blame but me. i have always believed there are enough records for every body. you hook a person up and they should get you in return. well i guess sometimes i am too nice for my own good and really wanted the acceptance of others too much...
i was at a garage sale that advertised records one day and the guy only had about 2 boxes. he told me i should walk across the street as there was a gentleman who had a whole lot of them. i knocked on the door and an old hippie Chong looking dude comes out. super nice guy. tells me to follow him out back to his barn where he has about 50,000 records. i follow him and he wasn't lying. i was pulling out a lot of weird rock for me at the time. and some mint copies of standard fileable stuff. Electric Prunes, Egg, yadda yadda.
one whole wall was disco and i wasnt that interested or versed on it at the time. he said he was a HUGE disco collector. i looked through like one shelf of it and pulled the only LP in it which happened to be ""Pam Todd & Love Exchange" LP on Shyrden. i didn't even know what it was until i got home and did a little asking around.
in an attempt to be cool with this guy who "said" he had tons of indie rap stuff for me...lets just say his name is Tom Habra and he owns a shop called 23rd Centipede Musack. i tell him i know of a guy who has about 5,000 disco 12"s. about a year goes by and i return to the barn. my guy tells me "Tom" came by and bought all the disco from him. i approach Tom about this on my next trip to the shop and he tells me "oh yea thanks for that contact" this was after 10 minutes of him telling me he swears I didn't give him the info. ummmm ok. he then proceeds to give me my finders fee. a whopping $10 off my overpriced purchase and 2 reissue copies of Dr. Dre-Deep Cover 12"...
i let it pass for a while and head back to the barn with my friend. we scour the barn together and my friend pulls about 400 LPs for his shop. pretty common stuff. 3-$10 pieces. it is about 100 degrees out and the barn is sweltering. i get to the near end and am looking through crappy soundtracks and tell him i have to leave. i show him where i got to and say bye....
i get a call later saying in the 2 or 3 shelves i missed he found an acetate of a group called Country Water. a rural psych monster that we still to this day cannot find any info on. my friend was quoted as saying "if Rockadelic doesnt know it then SHIT i have NO CLUE" well i guess i missed out once again....
Just want to add on to the thank you's for the stories in this thread.
Makes you want to go out and dig and also restores the faith after the many excursions that come up with nothing.
I wish I had something anywhere near worthy of adding to this..
The one place that "got away" from me was in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. It was 1995 or so and I was going to college in Kansas City. My buddy back home calls me and asks me if I had ever heard of this place on the south end of the city called Robert's. I said I hadn't and he proceeds to describe some ark of the covenant shit that leaves me a little skeptical. Apparently this was a jukebox/remainders place that was closing up shop and all the 45s were a quarter. My friend knew records well enough to know if a place was legit, so I simply asked him how large the spot was. He replied "As big as a gym, with 45s on racks as far as the eye can see." I decide it's worth the trip back home (a 12 hour drive) and I take my dude Thomas (Joc Max to you hip-hop dudes) with me. We left at 10pm and got to central Ohio around 10 the next morning. My meet my brother and eat breakfast in about five minutes, hyped on what might be ahead of us. We arrive at the spot, which was located in a nondescript industrial area and had no signage to speak of. Entering, there's a little tiny door off the foyer, which leads to the 45 room. When I walked in, it was instantly obvious that it was pretty heavy, my boy had not exaggerated one bit. The place was massive, fairly organized and well lit. The owner's son tells us that yes, everything is a quarter and bulk purchases are subject to discount. Sounds good to a poor college student like myself. Everything was organized by artist, by title within the artist, with dividers for every record. We're talking close to a million 45s easy, almost all unplayed dead stock, all in extra long boxes to add insult to injury. I start thinking of specific titles I could immediately start looking for, as the place would take weeks of 8-hour-a-day digging to see it all. Let's see, Charles Mintz on Uplook (mind you, this was 1995), go to that box and pull 40 copies. Hmm, how about Pleasure Web? I check and pull three promos. Do I really need 75 copies Of Cold Grits? This goes on and on to the point where I am totally intoxicated by the mass of this place, and the fact that the price was definitely right. There was certainly some heartbreakers like finding empty dividers for shit like Frankie Seay, Third Guitar, Honeydrippers, Tony Alvon, and other ???95 grails, but the more unknown stuff was stacked up pretty strong. I walked over to the DAY box and there sat many crisp copies of the first two Dayton Sidewinders singles, which at that time was fairly off the map. The James Brown section alone was about 12-feet high and twenty feet across, all by number, all in factory sleeves. There were probably a thousand unplayed copies of every Meters 45, which in ???95 was kind of a crazy thing to see.
The entire time we are in the place there is only one other person in there, an older guy that looks like a deer in headlights. I ask how he???s doing and he looks up at me like Golem and says, "I collect rockers and garage and this is the craziest place I have ever been." He has about 1500 records in his stack and dude is on a mission. He tells me that on the other side of the building is an identical room filled with as many sealed LPs. They are a whopping dollar each, but at this rate I might need to sell my brother into slavery to afford everything. I think between myself and Thomas we had maybe a grand to cover all record costs and the drive back to Kansas City. A grand in this place gets you 4000 records, probably more. I make a call back to Ron Rooks, my boss at the Music Exchange, and tell him that I just walked into an unbelievable business opportunity. I ask him if he could wire us maybe $3-4000, and I would drop a major bomb on LPs and 45s, rent a truck and bring it back to KC. Rooks tells me that he has all his liquid cash tied up in buying a new building for his shop and it would be basically impossible. This was a major regret for both of us in the future. So I take home what basically amounts to my largest score of my life to that point. Both Thomas and I are visibly hyped from how awesome this experience was. I pledge to go back in about a month, borrow a grip of money from my relatives, and go as hard as I can for as long as possible.
When I actually return to Robert???s a month later, the place is completely empty, not even some raggedy empty sleeves on the floor. LPs and 45s are gone, shelves are gone, even the bootleg jewelry that was sold in the foyer is gone. I never learned where the stuff went, who bought it, when it was liquidated or anything. I never even got to flip through one LP, much less go to town in that other room. Whoever had the brilliant idea to buy the whole shit, lock-stock-and barrel, did so at the right time and at the right place. I???m thinking you could have had the whole kaboodle for less than $50K. In retrospective eBay terms, someone set themselves up for a long, long time.
Still plagues and haunts me to this day.
Postscript: I learn later that some older people in the used record business, like Fred Bohn in PGH, had had exclusive access to Robert???s in the 70s and 80s, all with a ???Word is mum??? promise. Fred told me that for 50s vocal groups and rockabilly the place was absolutely unparalleled. You apparently had to pay a (at the time) kind of ridiculous ???entrance??? fee to get into the warehouse, and promise to buy a decent amount of stuff, but once in, the records were still under $3.
It's funny how a lot of the best stories are the ones where it's a total FAIL......
More DC stories plaese...
I had heard about a bunch of records from a Juke Box company being out in Henderson, Texas.. All I had was the owner???s name and I didn???t know if the company was still in business or not. My brother and I drive out there and find his address and go to his house. While my brother waits in the car I go knock on the door and it???s the right guy. I tell him I???m looking for records and he invites me in. He brings me to a room with some old juke boxes in it and asks me what kind of records I???m looking for???.as I???m explaining he opens up a closet and pulls out a box of 45???s. He pulls out 2 and hands them to me asking ???You mean like these???????.I???m staring at copy of Memphis Minnie on Checker and a red wax copy of The Eagle-aires of Chicago on JOB. Trying my best to keep a good poker face I say ???yeah, exactly like these???. He snatches them back from me, puts them in the box and they go back in the closet. He tells me he is busy today but if I come back next week he???ll bring me to a warehouse of records that will be for sale. I leave and tell him we???ll see him next week.
The next week we take the 3 hour drive and meet him at his house. He tells us to follow him in his pick-up truck and he???ll take us to the records. We drive out to a farm and take a dirt road up to a big barn. We go inside and there are 50-60,000 45???s. We start digging and figure out real quick that ALL of this stuff is crap???..80???s and newer Country, re-issued 50???s hits and Madonna 45???s out the wazoo. I very politely tell him that we???re not interested in these and are looking for stuff like he showed me in his house. He tells us he has another warehouse across town and to follow him there. We go to a pretty run down neighborhood and pull up in front of a large cinderblock building with one very small, dirty window. We go inside and it???s wall to wall shelves of 45???s and about 25 1970???s style juke boxes. We start digging and this is much better stuff. Late 50???s through late 60???s R&B, Blues and Soul. Everything is $2.00 each. The lack of light made it hard to see what we were looking at but after an hour we had piled up about 300 nice titles.
A few minutes later the old man comes in and says ???Time to square up, I???m going fishing???. We buy the 300 singles and ask if we can come back and finish some time. He says??????You can come back in 2 weeks but if you want I???ll take you to our business that my son runs, he has records there too???. So we follow him to his still operating Juke Box business and he introduces us to his son. He brings us to a room with shelves about 16 feet high and a ladder on wheels so we can get to them all. Tells us everything is a buck and we dig in. Mostly hits but some pretty cool stuff like the 13th Floor Elevators on Contact, Moving Sidewalks on Wand, lots of local East Texas stuff???.The Heard ???Exit 9??? being the highlight. We buy another 250 45???s and take the son to lunch. He tells us his father has been approached many times about selling records and that he always blows people off???..but now that he???s getting older he???s a little more mellow and has decided to start selling off some old stuff. I tell him his dad had invited us back in 2 weeks and he tells us to meet him at the Shop and he???ll take us back to the cinderblock building so we don???t have to bother his Dad.
We show up two weeks later right on time and he drives us to the building. As we pull up we see another guy with a big truck and the Dad having a friggin shouting match???and it looks heated. We get out of the son???s car and start walking when all of a sudden the old man turns to us and starts yelling at us too!! ???All you guys are trying to rip me off???.this is why I don???t sell stuff to a bunch of crooks??????..Huh? The son herds us back to the car and tells us to wait for him. He goes and calms his Dad down and then returns. He explains that the other dude had just offered his Dad $50.00 a piece for the juke boxes and dad blew a fuse. He apologized and said we wouldn???t be able to look at the records today. He drives us back to his place, apologizing all the way. He tells us to call him in a few weeks and he???ll try to convince his dad we???re OK and not trying to rip him off (After all, HE named the price and we didn???t even try to bargain with him). I notice that at the Juke Box shop he used a lot of the type of chemicals that the company I work for makes and promise to send him some.
I send him a box of goodies and call him a few weeks later. He thanks me but says Dad???s not budging but that I should stay in touch with him???which I do by sending him stuff every 6 months and following up with a phone call??????and I do this FOR 6 YEARS!!!!! Finally he just comes right out and tells me ???Look, these records aren???t going anywhere until my Dad dies???. I continue to call him once or twice a year for another few years and it???s the same story.
One day, long after I had given up on ever scoring in Henderson, I get a phone call from a friend in Longview which is fairly close to Henderson. ???You know that old dude out in Henderson, well he died this week. I read his obituary in the paper. Now maybe you can finally get in there". I send a sympathy card to the son with my name and number but I???m just not comfortable calling him about the records and coming off like some grave-robbing ghoul. I hope to hear from the son but a good 6 months go by and nothing. I finally work up the nerve to call and there???s no answer??????I call like 20 times in a week???.no answer. So I decide that next time I???m out there I???ll stop in and see what???s going on. Few months later I stop by and the shop is closed???looks like they might be out of business. I go home and try calling again to no avail???..I finally hunt down the son???s home # and call him???. ???Oh yeah, some guy came by with a big truck and bought everything!!??? I ask him who but he doesn???t know his name???just ???some foreign guy???. I ask about the records that his Dad had showed me in his house???.???Yep, he bought those too???. I couldn???t believe it???..almost 10 years of working on this and I lose out. In retrospect I probably wouldn???t have done anything differently but it proves that a big part of this game is simply being in the right place at the right time.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
A few weeks ago, we got a call from a man in Osu, a trendy area in Accra. He was in his mid-forties, balding, but still had a youthful cadence in his step. He even sagged his neatly cuffed blue jeans just below his waist in a manner reminiscent of some of my friends back home in California.
He was selling his late-father???s records. The father had been a prominent lecturer who traveled all over the world to give speeches on agricultural economics. Every once in a while he would pick up a record or two along the way.
He didn???t have much, except a near-mint copy of this Ethiopian record by Hailu Mergia featuring Mulatu Astatke on xylophone.
An Ethiopian record in this country is about rare as it gets. Yet here I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, holding onto one of the holy grails of African vinyl.
I ended up offering him a few bucks, which he gladly took.
As we headed to the bank up the road, he told me he had studied all over the world, including the United States. When I asked where, he said Massachusetts.
???I got an MBA from Harvard,??? he said, in a sincere monotone voice. ???Then I got into drugs.???
Once I did some research on the record I nearly fell off my chair. Definitely, one of the biggest records I???ve found so far. Instantly, my urge was to keep it locked away in some safe box far, far away. I began thinking about the days before I was to return back home (not for another seven months, mind you) just to insure its safe arrival to its final resting place: my crates.
[editor's note: instead, the author published the mp3s to his blog.]
A few weeks ago, we got a call from a man in Osu, a trendy area in Accra. He was in his mid-forties, balding, but still had a youthful cadence in his step. He even sagged his neatly cuffed blue jeans just below his waist in a manner reminiscent of some of my friends back home in California.
He was selling his late-father???s records. The father had been a prominent lecturer who traveled all over the world to give speeches on agricultural economics. Every once in a while he would pick up a record or two along the way.
He didn???t have much, except a near-mint copy of this Ethiopian record by Hailu Mergia featuring Mulatu Astatke on xylophone.
An Ethiopian record in this country is about rare as it gets. Yet here I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, holding onto one of the holy grails of African vinyl.
I ended up offering him a few bucks, which he gladly took.
As we headed to the bank up the road, he told me he had studied all over the world, including the United States. When I asked where, he said Massachusetts.
???I got an MBA from Harvard,??? he said, in a sincere monotone voice. ???Then I got into drugs.???
Once I did some research on the record I nearly fell off my chair. Definitely, one of the biggest records I???ve found so far. Instantly, my urge was to keep it locked away in some safe box far, far away. I began thinking about the days before I was to return back home (not for another seven months, mind you) just to insure its safe arrival to its final resting place: my crates.
[editor's note: instead, the author published the mp3s to his blog.]
LOL, Jonny. I hear that very copy made its way to a small town in Central California....
A few weeks ago, we got a call from a man in Osu, a trendy area in Accra. He was in his mid-forties, balding, but still had a youthful cadence in his step. He even sagged his neatly cuffed blue jeans just below his waist in a manner reminiscent of some of my friends back home in California.
He was selling his late-father???s records. The father had been a prominent lecturer who traveled all over the world to give speeches on agricultural economics. Every once in a while he would pick up a record or two along the way.
He didn???t have much, except a near-mint copy of this Ethiopian record by Hailu Mergia featuring Mulatu Astatke on xylophone.
An Ethiopian record in this country is about rare as it gets. Yet here I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, holding onto one of the holy grails of African vinyl.
I ended up offering him a few bucks, which he gladly took.
As we headed to the bank up the road, he told me he had studied all over the world, including the United States. When I asked where, he said Massachusetts.
???I got an MBA from Harvard,??? he said, in a sincere monotone voice. ???Then I got into drugs.???
Once I did some research on the record I nearly fell off my chair. Definitely, one of the biggest records I???ve found so far. Instantly, my urge was to keep it locked away in some safe box far, far away. I began thinking about the days before I was to return back home (not for another seven months, mind you) just to insure its safe arrival to its final resting place: my crates.
[editor's note: instead, the author published the mp3s to his blog.]
LOL, Jonny. I hear that very copy made its way to a small town in Central California....
:balla:
that's rad, especially considering how little he paid the drug addled African guy for it!
A few weeks ago, we got a call from a man in Osu, a trendy area in Accra. He was in his mid-forties, balding, but still had a youthful cadence in his step. He even sagged his neatly cuffed blue jeans just below his waist in a manner reminiscent of some of my friends back home in California.
He was selling his late-father???s records. The father had been a prominent lecturer who traveled all over the world to give speeches on agricultural economics. Every once in a while he would pick up a record or two along the way.
He didn???t have much, except a near-mint copy of this Ethiopian record by Hailu Mergia featuring Mulatu Astatke on xylophone.
An Ethiopian record in this country is about rare as it gets. Yet here I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, holding onto one of the holy grails of African vinyl.
I ended up offering him a few bucks, which he gladly took.
As we headed to the bank up the road, he told me he had studied all over the world, including the United States. When I asked where, he said Massachusetts.
???I got an MBA from Harvard,??? he said, in a sincere monotone voice. ???Then I got into drugs.???
Once I did some research on the record I nearly fell off my chair. Definitely, one of the biggest records I???ve found so far. Instantly, my urge was to keep it locked away in some safe box far, far away. I began thinking about the days before I was to return back home (not for another seven months, mind you) just to insure its safe arrival to its final resting place: my crates.
[editor's note: instead, the author published the mp3s to his blog.]
LOL, Jonny. I hear that very copy made its way to a small town in Central California....
:balla:
that's rad, especially considering how little he paid the drug addled African guy for it!
So I was officially broke for a while. I had been for a couple of months. Delays in the sale of the records halted any further movements for L*** and I. Not that it mattered since calls from the newspaper advert dried up a while ago. At first, L*** and I were unsure as to this sudden end in calls, but then we saw an ad out by another collector.
It wasn???t the first time we came across someone else looking for records. After a while, word of other collectors in the country took on the feel of high school rumors. A few months ago, we occasionally heard about another ???obruni??? buy up records. Although, unsure of his identity, L*** and I didn???t think it was any of the usual suspects. Still, this mysterious collector seemed to be right on our heels. He would come just after or, sometimes, right before us. We thought, ??? No worries, he???ll soon leave. There???s enough to go around.???
When this last advert appeared though, we got completely shut out for a minute. It stopped any future calls and even intercepted people we were already in contact with, but had yet to meet.
???Oh well,??? I thought. I decided to take advantage of the downtime and update the blog.
Then, things got interesting.
Another collector, whom L*** had dealt with in the past, began to call him and inquire about his (and, subsequently, my) recent movements. The call came as somewhat of a surprise to L***. As he puts it, he and this collector had a falling out sometime back. Nowadays, he???s been pretty adamant about no longer working with any his former employers. So L*** was wondering why this guy was calling now?
Funny enough, he didn???t realize I had been posting updates about our finds up on this blog. He usually paid no mind when I tried to showed him what I was doing online. As for me, I didn???t realize people of such caliber would be paying much attention.
Guess we both had a lot to realize.
Hence, why I have stopped posting for a while. All this is great for the story, but bad for business.
He (Latino Trustafarian) just hipped me to his newest project, his blog about his vinyl discoveries while he's adrift in Ghana and general South Africa. He's finding hot shit. We yucked it up a while ago, over a donut at a greasy spoon breakfast spot I like, about his future trip. We talked about all the previous record hounds that have scoured the land. How they never pay 'jack-shit' for records, sadly keeping those peoples VERY poor while making hundreds themselves. How few record hunters there have been 'other than white' in that biz, and how he might be able to connect further being a person of color himself. Finalizing our conversation we both mentioned we thought the most important things were.. the stories, the connections with these people along the way, the music, the art, the experience, the sharing, and NOT just gripping and flipping. I'm proud to say he's not just trying make a fat loot, but doing something deeper.
Then there's a video of said trustafarian running around a city in Mali, chatting up locals in English... but I guess being a "man of color" enables to connect on a level much deeper than language...
Comments
Here's your chance to buy 'em all:
http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2011/jan/17/record-collection-spin/
We enter the garage which is poorly lit and home to who knows what kind of vermin, and there are records everywhere. We start digging and find some amazing stuff but most of it has been ruined by water/mildew/rats eating the jackets. Luckily there were quite a few sealed records that had weathered the Hell Garage pretty well. We???re about halfway through and he tells us he has to lock us in the garage so he can go inside and take care of his Mother!!!! We decide to just take what we had so far, pay him and get the heck out of there.
About a year later I passed by his place and it was burned down to the ground.
simply amazing.
The neighboring house is an 1/8 of a mile down the road but we go down there and ask about the house of records. They tell us that a single guy owns the house but lives with his mother across town. They said he was usually there during the week but not weekends. So I write a note with my name and phone # and leave it on the front door asking him to call me collect. We go home and never hear a word from anyone at the Noonday record house. About a year later we're in the area and decide to go by and see if he's there.....once again he's not and I leave a second note asking him to call.
The next day this dude calls me. I tell him I'm interested in buying records and he tells me his are not for sale.....none of them. He does say however that he will trade if I have what he's looking for. He then says his #1 want is the Kenny & The Kasuals LP from Dallas. When I tell him it's so rare that I have only seen one copy in my life he says..."Well I have three copies of it but I'm looking to upgrade". He then rattles off a couple of other mega-raer titles that he's after and I realize we're not going to do business together. I ask him if the next time I'm out there if I can come by and see this awesome collection figuring that after I get my foot in the door I'll be able to talk him into selling me some stuff. He says no problem, stop by next time I'm in the area and we'll visit. I asked for his phone # so I could call him and he said he didn't have a phone and was calling from his neighbor's house.
It's at least another year until I'm out his way and plan on stopping by .......we drive out that way and can't seem to find the place.......we drive back and forth a couple of times where we were pretty sure the house was but it's not there. We recognize the neighbors house that we had stopped at 2 years ago and went there.
"I guess you didn't hear, that house burned down to the ground and they leveled it and cleared the land after record dude killed his Mom and then himself"!!!
About one weekend a month my wife and I take a trip within a 200-300 mile radius to dig, look for antiques and find good food. One weekend last Spring we drove out east to Nacadoches, Texas where there are some cool Antique Shops. On the way home we passed through Lufkin and saw a place simply called "Junk". We went in and it was run by a very old gentleman and his sixty-something daughter. They pointed me to the records and I found about 1,000 LP's and maybe 5-600 45's piled in 5-6 stacks. I grab about 25 45's off the first stack and 10-15 of them are sick stuff.....Zakary Thaks, Moving Sidewalks on Tantara and a handful of 2-3 star Texas garage pieces. I tell my wife that I think we hit a goldmine and that I'll be a while. I rip through the rest of them and unbelievably, find maybe 3-4 more decent records. I start on the LP's and when I pick up the first one another killer garage 45 fell out of the jacket. The LP's were chud and I wound up leaving with about 15 great 45's.
As I was paying the old man said "You should check with the Auctioneer downtown....he is handling the estate of a guy who had millions of records". I immediately drove down to the Auction House and it was closed. Monday morning I called them and they told me they had handled this estate that had a barn full of records in a tiny nearby town and even brought in an "expert" from California to appraise them but they were all junk and they took them to the dump. I asked for the familiy info and he said he couldn't give it to me. I knew approximately when the guy had died and the town was so small that checking the obituaries revealed his name quickly.
Part II to come later................
I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a fiddle player named Hopkins and I can't....then it hit me... "Are you talking about Lightnin' Hopkins?" "Yeah!! That's his name, he was a famous fiddle player". I thank them and tell them I'll call the radio station.
OK....reality check......I may have found the estate of Lightnin' Hopkin's son who had a barn full of records that have been taken to the dump.....My mind runs wild with what might have been and what still might be.....and it's gonna drive me crazy until I can call the radio station the next day. I can't control myself and proceed to start calling the rest of the Hopkins in the town.
The next call I get this sweet woman who tells me she is the Mary Hopkins I'm looking for and she sounds very white. She then explains that her father had accumulated a barn full of records and after he died she tried to sell them but the auction house wasn't interested. I asked if she still had tham and she said "No, I gave them to this nice young man a few towns over" I asked for his name and she gave it to me. I called him the next day and he was a young dude in his 20's. Really nice guy who said he was a record collector and that he was into classic rock. He answered Ms. Hopkins(Who at this point we know is no relation to Lightnin') Craigslist ad for "100 Records" and when he went to look at them there were over 100,000. She just wanted them gone so he hauled them to his family's abandonned Gas Station/Watermelon Stand. He said he was eventually going to open a store with them but said I could come by and buy whatever I wanted......I invited two friends and we head out there early one Saturday...
Part III to come.......
RIP Alonso aka Al Fresko (these are some of his tales).
1.
Years ago I was living in the Inner West of Sydney, off a main road which was filled with semi abandoned factories and used furniture stores etc. Alonso used to come by on the reg to hang out and on his walk from the nearbu station would pass these dilapitated shops. One in particular got his attention and he always used to bug me about going to have alook if they had wax. I was on some "man that shit looks like it hasn't been open in a decade".
Eventually Al moved in with me to this same place and a week or so later he comes back home with a massive grin on his face and tells me "See your a dickhead man, I fucking told you to check out that place, how long you been here, 2-3 yrs? Your gonna be spewing when i tell you what happened to me"..
So Im all cocky and say some shit like, "What, you went in and they had records, let me guess a crate of old mouldy dollar bin turds?". "Yeah, something like that" he says as he pulls out around 15 James Brown 45s in good condition from his bag. He starts laughing, I almost start crying.... Then he tells me he copped them for 50 cents each, and I did start crying :-P
2.
Years later Im living back in El Barrio... so is Al. There arent that many spots out our way but theres a thrift store in Fairfield and one in Mt Pritchard, which me, Al and a few other diggers round this way always hit up. Once in a while you come across a good stack, usually you get some random $1 finds and decent common doubles etc. But 90% is crud.
Al calls me one day and says "Oi, you gonna be home later, I just copped a bunch of records from the Salvos in Fairfield and I got my decks at the pawn shop so I need to come use yours"
"yeah Im chilling out come round whenever, what did you get?"
"About 60 latin records, heaps of shit I never seen before"
He shows up with a box of latin titles, and we start going thru them all, apart from a handful of turds, most of it is top notch salsa, cumbia, boogaloo,samba titles. A stack of Fania, some nice Brazilian pieces, and some killer Giolito LPs. Dude paid a buck a piece so he's grinning from ear to ear. I start trying to get my trade on, and end up grabbing a few LPs off him. But he wont give up the one Giolito LP I really want.
A few days later I get a call from another local digger mate, V, and cus he hits the same spots I tell him about what Al found. Straight away he's calling it bullshit and tells me he was in the store the same day as Al and there was nothing there worth buying, "I dont know your mate but Im telling you hes full of shit".
I expain that Al isnt a ego tripping shit talker,and that I actually saw the stash etc. I ask V what time he was in there, he says round 330pm, and when I check with Al he was in there at 4pm just as a truck with new deliveries (incldung the latin stash of wax) arrived. When I tell V about that, he's feeling a bit like I did with those James Brown 45s.
Some diggers got all the luck! And Al did, cus 3 weeks later I get another call from him, same drill as before, he scored another 50 latin titles from the Mt Pritchard thrift, so the collection musta been split between the two stores and Al was lucky enough to be at both of them to jump on it when they arrive. Best thing is Mt Pritchard charges 50cents a record or 3x $1 at that time. Good thing for me another Giolito popped up in the second stash so i finally got my hands on the one I wanted off Al. I tend to put it on when reminicing about the brother these days.
3.
Another day I get a call from Al. He starts off with his usual "Dude you wont believe what happened to me" line. I know theres some crazy lucky tale behind that. Turns out Al is driving around on some random shit, on the way to the shops or something and he sees a Garage Sale (Yard sale?) near where he parked.
Decides to pop in and asks this youngish dude, "hey you got any records for sale?" Youn dude is kinda of supirsed and says "Shit I never thought about selling records, but yeah I got heaps out the back, my dads old collection". So Al walks with him into this big shed out the back of the house and on the way the young dude gets abit staunch and says "Now listen, not all the records I got are for sale, only my dads ones, mine are NOT for sale, okay".
Al says, no probs and when he walks into the shed sees one wall chock o block full of records, and about 3 crates near a stereo. He aint sure which is the dads and which is the sons... walks up to the crates and see a bunch of Aussie Rock Cheesy shit. Luckily the young dude comes running over saying "Nah, those are mine, I aint selling them!"... But you can have anything form over there-pointing to the massive collection.
Al starts pulling out mad shit (he actually called me while he was doing that asking me about a few artists etc). Basically old Dad was a collector, so if he liked a group he bought all their LPs bitd, so Al's able to pull out the whole catalouge for more mianstream soul/funk ppl like the Temptations, EWF, Brick, Issac Hayes, Donny Hathaway, Minnie Ripperton plus some more obscure souls/funk numbers, a good chunk of Aussie jazz titles, some dope Psych rock, a bit of punk... And the best thing was the son had no clue what they where worth so basically he tells Al he'll charge him $20 a bag (which fit around 30 records) and that Al can fill them up himself.
When I went to visit Al, he musta had over 300-400 records. It took him almost 3 months to finally sort and file them all. In that time he went back and grabbed a few more bags, cus he dropped a few titles that i told him he shoulda got. Although he was a mate, he refused to tell me the adress of the house because the son also mentioned that his dad had a massive 45 collection in storage which Al wanted to sift thru first..... I wasnt mad, cus we did some good trades and i copped a few doubles off him etc.
Three of us head out to the Gas Station....one member of this board and a young dude who owns a local store. Always good to share leads with folks who reciprocate and know a wide variety of genres, my philosophy is that there are enough records for everyone. On the way there we inevitably speculate that 100K might actually be 1,000 or maybe 5,000....seldom is 100K an accurate description.
We get there about 9:00 and it's really 100K....maybe more. It's laid out in a variety of ways....all the Christmas, Soundtracks and Country were filed, alphabetically on shelves......the rest is piled up everywhere.....2-3 foot high piles and maybe 300 -500 of them. He tells us that most records will be $1.00....some $0.50......so we start digging. About an hour in I've seen enough white gospel to build a stairway to heaven but have found 20 or so solid records.....at hour #3 my young store owner buddy pulls a copy of Marvin Peterson & The Soul Masters. Our host takes us across the street for lunch at the only local restaurant and after lunch we dig for 4 more hours.
When it was all said and done we left with about 4-500 records...cherry picked like a motherfucker........some rare titles.....and the three of us only got through about 75% of the stuff.......I've since sent another friend there who pulled a few hundred LP's and plans on returning.
2 quick stories of what COULD HAVE been but hey you live you learn...
1) in my early days (not too early) i was living in the Hudson Valley and looking through the phonebook. found a listing for a store that sold "Records and Tapes". went to the store and the old woman said "well the records are in the basement. and we don't let just anyone in there but you seem like a nice guy. here you can borrow my flashlight"
i head downstairs and the basement is FULL of records. wall to wall. shelves and boxes. i am looking through weird looking rock LPs and passing them up for mint copies of "black music" which honestly consisted of Earth Wind & Fire and Bill Withers LPs...there were also thousands of 45s that i didn't bother looking through because they didn't have covers :( it is way early in my life of digging so i think i hit the gold mine. about a year passes and the amount of knowledge and research i did made me think i should go back...
so i get there and the place is a beauty salon. the owner tells me to go to the deli next door and ask the owner for any info on the since closed shop. i get there and he tells me the husband had passed away, the wife became a recluse and closed the store. they wouldn't give me any info fearing i was going to kill the lady or something so i went to the town clerk and asked her for some info. she directed me to where the woman lived. i walked up and knocked on the door. she tells me ALL the records were taken to the dump because nobody wanted them but she had a shoebox full of 45s she took mistaking them for some women's high heels. in the box were 5 mint copies of The Champ on Cotillion and about 10 random private garage 45s. to this day i still wonder what i missed in search for "rare funk" ehhhhhhh
2) this one kind of gets me pissed off. but no one to blame but me. i have always believed there are enough records for every body. you hook a person up and they should get you in return. well i guess sometimes i am too nice for my own good and really wanted the acceptance of others too much...
i was at a garage sale that advertised records one day and the guy only had about 2 boxes. he told me i should walk across the street as there was a gentleman who had a whole lot of them. i knocked on the door and an old hippie Chong looking dude comes out. super nice guy. tells me to follow him out back to his barn where he has about 50,000 records. i follow him and he wasn't lying. i was pulling out a lot of weird rock for me at the time. and some mint copies of standard fileable stuff. Electric Prunes, Egg, yadda yadda.
one whole wall was disco and i wasnt that interested or versed on it at the time. he said he was a HUGE disco collector. i looked through like one shelf of it and pulled the only LP in it which happened to be ""Pam Todd & Love Exchange" LP on Shyrden. i didn't even know what it was until i got home and did a little asking around.
in an attempt to be cool with this guy who "said" he had tons of indie rap stuff for me...lets just say his name is Tom Habra and he owns a shop called 23rd Centipede Musack. i tell him i know of a guy who has about 5,000 disco 12"s. about a year goes by and i return to the barn. my guy tells me "Tom" came by and bought all the disco from him. i approach Tom about this on my next trip to the shop and he tells me "oh yea thanks for that contact" this was after 10 minutes of him telling me he swears I didn't give him the info. ummmm ok. he then proceeds to give me my finders fee. a whopping $10 off my overpriced purchase and 2 reissue copies of Dr. Dre-Deep Cover 12"...
i let it pass for a while and head back to the barn with my friend. we scour the barn together and my friend pulls about 400 LPs for his shop. pretty common stuff. 3-$10 pieces. it is about 100 degrees out and the barn is sweltering. i get to the near end and am looking through crappy soundtracks and tell him i have to leave. i show him where i got to and say bye....
i get a call later saying in the 2 or 3 shelves i missed he found an acetate of a group called Country Water. a rural psych monster that we still to this day cannot find any info on. my friend was quoted as saying "if Rockadelic doesnt know it then SHIT i have NO CLUE" well i guess i missed out once again....
I've always felt that I got into the game about 10 years too late.
Makes you want to go out and dig and also restores the faith after the many excursions that come up with nothing.
I wish I had something anywhere near worthy of adding to this..
The entire time we are in the place there is only one other person in there, an older guy that looks like a deer in headlights. I ask how he???s doing and he looks up at me like Golem and says, "I collect rockers and garage and this is the craziest place I have ever been." He has about 1500 records in his stack and dude is on a mission. He tells me that on the other side of the building is an identical room filled with as many sealed LPs. They are a whopping dollar each, but at this rate I might need to sell my brother into slavery to afford everything. I think between myself and Thomas we had maybe a grand to cover all record costs and the drive back to Kansas City. A grand in this place gets you 4000 records, probably more. I make a call back to Ron Rooks, my boss at the Music Exchange, and tell him that I just walked into an unbelievable business opportunity. I ask him if he could wire us maybe $3-4000, and I would drop a major bomb on LPs and 45s, rent a truck and bring it back to KC. Rooks tells me that he has all his liquid cash tied up in buying a new building for his shop and it would be basically impossible. This was a major regret for both of us in the future. So I take home what basically amounts to my largest score of my life to that point. Both Thomas and I are visibly hyped from how awesome this experience was. I pledge to go back in about a month, borrow a grip of money from my relatives, and go as hard as I can for as long as possible.
When I actually return to Robert???s a month later, the place is completely empty, not even some raggedy empty sleeves on the floor. LPs and 45s are gone, shelves are gone, even the bootleg jewelry that was sold in the foyer is gone. I never learned where the stuff went, who bought it, when it was liquidated or anything. I never even got to flip through one LP, much less go to town in that other room. Whoever had the brilliant idea to buy the whole shit, lock-stock-and barrel, did so at the right time and at the right place. I???m thinking you could have had the whole kaboodle for less than $50K. In retrospective eBay terms, someone set themselves up for a long, long time.
Still plagues and haunts me to this day.
Postscript: I learn later that some older people in the used record business, like Fred Bohn in PGH, had had exclusive access to Robert???s in the 70s and 80s, all with a ???Word is mum??? promise. Fred told me that for 50s vocal groups and rockabilly the place was absolutely unparalleled. You apparently had to pay a (at the time) kind of ridiculous ???entrance??? fee to get into the warehouse, and promise to buy a decent amount of stuff, but once in, the records were still under $3.
More DC stories plaese...
I had heard about a bunch of records from a Juke Box company being out in Henderson, Texas.. All I had was the owner???s name and I didn???t know if the company was still in business or not. My brother and I drive out there and find his address and go to his house. While my brother waits in the car I go knock on the door and it???s the right guy. I tell him I???m looking for records and he invites me in. He brings me to a room with some old juke boxes in it and asks me what kind of records I???m looking for???.as I???m explaining he opens up a closet and pulls out a box of 45???s. He pulls out 2 and hands them to me asking ???You mean like these???????.I???m staring at copy of Memphis Minnie on Checker and a red wax copy of The Eagle-aires of Chicago on JOB. Trying my best to keep a good poker face I say ???yeah, exactly like these???. He snatches them back from me, puts them in the box and they go back in the closet. He tells me he is busy today but if I come back next week he???ll bring me to a warehouse of records that will be for sale. I leave and tell him we???ll see him next week.
The next week we take the 3 hour drive and meet him at his house. He tells us to follow him in his pick-up truck and he???ll take us to the records. We drive out to a farm and take a dirt road up to a big barn. We go inside and there are 50-60,000 45???s. We start digging and figure out real quick that ALL of this stuff is crap???..80???s and newer Country, re-issued 50???s hits and Madonna 45???s out the wazoo. I very politely tell him that we???re not interested in these and are looking for stuff like he showed me in his house. He tells us he has another warehouse across town and to follow him there. We go to a pretty run down neighborhood and pull up in front of a large cinderblock building with one very small, dirty window. We go inside and it???s wall to wall shelves of 45???s and about 25 1970???s style juke boxes. We start digging and this is much better stuff. Late 50???s through late 60???s R&B, Blues and Soul. Everything is $2.00 each. The lack of light made it hard to see what we were looking at but after an hour we had piled up about 300 nice titles.
A few minutes later the old man comes in and says ???Time to square up, I???m going fishing???. We buy the 300 singles and ask if we can come back and finish some time. He says??????You can come back in 2 weeks but if you want I???ll take you to our business that my son runs, he has records there too???. So we follow him to his still operating Juke Box business and he introduces us to his son. He brings us to a room with shelves about 16 feet high and a ladder on wheels so we can get to them all. Tells us everything is a buck and we dig in. Mostly hits but some pretty cool stuff like the 13th Floor Elevators on Contact, Moving Sidewalks on Wand, lots of local East Texas stuff???.The Heard ???Exit 9??? being the highlight. We buy another 250 45???s and take the son to lunch. He tells us his father has been approached many times about selling records and that he always blows people off???..but now that he???s getting older he???s a little more mellow and has decided to start selling off some old stuff. I tell him his dad had invited us back in 2 weeks and he tells us to meet him at the Shop and he???ll take us back to the cinderblock building so we don???t have to bother his Dad.
We show up two weeks later right on time and he drives us to the building. As we pull up we see another guy with a big truck and the Dad having a friggin shouting match???and it looks heated. We get out of the son???s car and start walking when all of a sudden the old man turns to us and starts yelling at us too!! ???All you guys are trying to rip me off???.this is why I don???t sell stuff to a bunch of crooks??????..Huh? The son herds us back to the car and tells us to wait for him. He goes and calms his Dad down and then returns. He explains that the other dude had just offered his Dad $50.00 a piece for the juke boxes and dad blew a fuse. He apologized and said we wouldn???t be able to look at the records today. He drives us back to his place, apologizing all the way. He tells us to call him in a few weeks and he???ll try to convince his dad we???re OK and not trying to rip him off (After all, HE named the price and we didn???t even try to bargain with him). I notice that at the Juke Box shop he used a lot of the type of chemicals that the company I work for makes and promise to send him some.
I send him a box of goodies and call him a few weeks later. He thanks me but says Dad???s not budging but that I should stay in touch with him???which I do by sending him stuff every 6 months and following up with a phone call??????and I do this FOR 6 YEARS!!!!! Finally he just comes right out and tells me ???Look, these records aren???t going anywhere until my Dad dies???. I continue to call him once or twice a year for another few years and it???s the same story.
One day, long after I had given up on ever scoring in Henderson, I get a phone call from a friend in Longview which is fairly close to Henderson. ???You know that old dude out in Henderson, well he died this week. I read his obituary in the paper. Now maybe you can finally get in there". I send a sympathy card to the son with my name and number but I???m just not comfortable calling him about the records and coming off like some grave-robbing ghoul. I hope to hear from the son but a good 6 months go by and nothing. I finally work up the nerve to call and there???s no answer??????I call like 20 times in a week???.no answer. So I decide that next time I???m out there I???ll stop in and see what???s going on. Few months later I stop by and the shop is closed???looks like they might be out of business. I go home and try calling again to no avail???..I finally hunt down the son???s home # and call him???. ???Oh yeah, some guy came by with a big truck and bought everything!!??? I ask him who but he doesn???t know his name???just ???some foreign guy???. I ask about the records that his Dad had showed me in his house???.???Yep, he bought those too???. I couldn???t believe it???..almost 10 years of working on this and I lose out. In retrospect I probably wouldn???t have done anything differently but it proves that a big part of this game is simply being in the right place at the right time.
Anyone know if this is Hannibal, of later Jazz fame?
Yes, same guy.
He was selling his late-father???s records. The father had been a prominent lecturer who traveled all over the world to give speeches on agricultural economics. Every once in a while he would pick up a record or two along the way.
He didn???t have much, except a near-mint copy of this Ethiopian record by Hailu Mergia featuring Mulatu Astatke on xylophone.
An Ethiopian record in this country is about rare as it gets. Yet here I was, unbeknownst to me at the time, holding onto one of the holy grails of African vinyl.
I ended up offering him a few bucks, which he gladly took.
As we headed to the bank up the road, he told me he had studied all over the world, including the United States. When I asked where, he said Massachusetts.
???I got an MBA from Harvard,??? he said, in a sincere monotone voice. ???Then I got into drugs.???
Once I did some research on the record I nearly fell off my chair. Definitely, one of the biggest records I???ve found so far. Instantly, my urge was to keep it locked away in some safe box far, far away. I began thinking about the days before I was to return back home (not for another seven months, mind you) just to insure its safe arrival to its final resting place: my crates.
[editor's note: instead, the author published the mp3s to his blog.]
LOL, Jonny. I hear that very copy made its way to a small town in Central California....
:balla:
that's rad, especially considering how little he paid the drug addled African guy for it!
C'mon now, he didn't know what it was! ;)
It wasn???t the first time we came across someone else looking for records. After a while, word of other collectors in the country took on the feel of high school rumors. A few months ago, we occasionally heard about another ???obruni??? buy up records. Although, unsure of his identity, L*** and I didn???t think it was any of the usual suspects. Still, this mysterious collector seemed to be right on our heels. He would come just after or, sometimes, right before us. We thought, ??? No worries, he???ll soon leave. There???s enough to go around.???
When this last advert appeared though, we got completely shut out for a minute. It stopped any future calls and even intercepted people we were already in contact with, but had yet to meet.
???Oh well,??? I thought. I decided to take advantage of the downtime and update the blog.
Then, things got interesting.
Another collector, whom L*** had dealt with in the past, began to call him and inquire about his (and, subsequently, my) recent movements. The call came as somewhat of a surprise to L***. As he puts it, he and this collector had a falling out sometime back. Nowadays, he???s been pretty adamant about no longer working with any his former employers. So L*** was wondering why this guy was calling now?
Funny enough, he didn???t realize I had been posting updates about our finds up on this blog. He usually paid no mind when I tried to showed him what I was doing online. As for me, I didn???t realize people of such caliber would be paying much attention.
Guess we both had a lot to realize.
Hence, why I have stopped posting for a while. All this is great for the story, but bad for business.
Then there's a video of said trustafarian running around a city in Mali, chatting up locals in English... but I guess being a "man of color" enables to connect on a level much deeper than language...