I don't have it saved and I'm not going to write it again so post away....I just asumed everyone has heard that one already.
OK, here is it.
"Jr. & The Soulettes
I was lucky enough to start searching for the private press record back in the 80's when not too many people cared about such nonsense....it allowed me to track down, talk to and sometimes even meet all kinds of characters...
So at Chris's request.....the Jr. & The Soulettes Story
Musta been the late 80's or early 90's....my partner Mark and I took a trip up to Oklahoma City to look for records. Most of the day we hit various Flea Markets with pretty good success. Multiple sealed copies of Guiness and Tomorrow label LP's, about 20 sealed copies of the Markley LP, and alot more, most of them at $1.00 each.
Our last stop of the day was a place called The Memory Market, which is still there today. It's a large metal building that housed about 10-15 various antique dealers who specialized in "junk". The back 1/3rd of the building was run by two elderly women who dealt in nothing but records. Tens of thousands of records, LP's and 45's. We started digging in and it was apparent that we were the first ones to go through this stuff who were looking for what we were looking
for. The first hour yielded titles like Badge & Co. a very beat up copy of The Marble Phrogg, Darius, Trizo-50 and many more.
The market was going to close at 6:00 and it was about 5:45 when I came across an amazing looking record titled "The Psycho-Delic Sounds Of Jr. & The Soulettes". The cover was a "10" with Jr. playing a Gibson Firebird behind his head while doing a split on the stage. I called Mark over, we pulled out the little Big Bird record player we carried with us and put the LP on to give it a spin. It was beyond warped, totally destroyed with only about 20% of the surface area being playable.....enough though for us to know we had found a MONSTER, yet bizarre LP. Mark pointed out that it had an
Oklahoma City address on the back.
We paid for all the LP's and headed straight for the pay phone in front of the place. We looked in the phone book and sure enough, we found a Harold Moore Jr. & Sr. at the same address. I called the number and was greeted by something that could only be described as sub-human animal sounds.....Uhhhhhoooerrruggyhg....I could not make out a single english word this guy might be uttering. Then a second party picked up another line and told "Jr." to hang up. It was Harold Moore Sr. and he was one very friendly guy.
It was late winter and by 6:00 it was starting to get dark, yet Hariold Sr. invited Mark and I over to his house with the promise
that "I have a whole suitcase filled with those old rekkids, you fellas come on over". We got directions and began to drive to the house......it wasn't long before we realized we were going to the worst part of OKC.
In the South it's pretty well known that if you live near the railroad tracks or by the river, you're probably in the bad part of
town. The Moore house was built on stilts, with the river on one side and the railroad tracks on the other. We parked, went to the front door and rang the bell.....no answer. Then we knocked on the door pretty hard.....again, no answer. mark walked around to the side of the house and followed some very loud "Disco" music to a room in the back of the house. He looked inside and saw Harold Sr. sitting in front of a column of amps and receivers that were producing this very bass heavy music. he banged on the window, got Mr. Moore's attention and he waved for us to go back to the front door.
Harold Sr. opened the front door and acted as if we were long lost friends...he quickly invited us in while yelling up the stairs
at "Jr." while apologizing to us for his "effed up son". He brought us back into the "music" room and it was pretty bizarre. In the middle of the room stood a camera on a tri-pod. In each corner of the room that the camera was facing were little triangular stages built into the floor with a full length piece of plexiglas from floor to ceiling in front of each "stage". The stage was about large enough for one person to stand on.
Mark was an electronics engineer and in an attempt to start a conversation he asked Mr. Moore if he had the "schematics" for this contraption he had built out of about 20 amps and receivers. His response was "Schematics!! I just found this stuff in the garbage and makes it". Our goal was to get some LP's and get back to Dallas but Harold had alot to talk about and wanted us to stay.
After being there about 15 minutes Harold says..."You boys wanna see my puppet"!! How do you answer that question to a grown man?? Of course we said "Sure!!"....He opened his drawer and pulled out a puppet made out of a sock. You know, one of those winter socks that they make "Sock Monkey's" out of. "This here is my snake" and I'll be damned the thing had a hat that could not be described as anything but a "Pimp" hat and a big fat set of lips.
He then went on to explain that everything in the room was set up for the puppet....the music, the camera, the stages. He also explained that all his grandkids loved the puppet but he couldn't tell them about the puppet's "night life". He then pulled out a video, put it into a VCR and began to show us just what the puppet was all about. Before I attempt to explain what we saw I have to say that this moment was surely the most surreal in my life and I'd have given anything to have had a camera as I knew I would have to repeat what I saw and that no one would believe it.
The video starts off with that same bass heavy, thumping, Disco music and the pimp puppet "dancing" to the beat. Then a black woman, a naked black woman comes into the frame and begins to dance with the puppet. This goes on for about 5 minutes with the puppet doing various obscene things to what appears to be this super-imposed naked woman. The video stops, a new song starts to play and now the puppet starts dancing with a different, nude, black woman. Friggin' Amazing!!!
After about 10 minutes we've seen enough and tell Mr. Moore that we have to be going. Harold then explains at Mark's request just how he makes these movies. On a Friday or Saturday night Harold usually goes out and picks up a hooker. Not for sex, but to dance with the puppet. The naked hooker stands behind the plexiglas in one corner of the room while Mr. Moore operates the puppet behind the second piece of plexiglas in the opposite corner. The way the camera is set
up on the tripod, it is able to not only record the puppet, but uses the plexiglas to make a reflection of the woman in the opposite corner so he gets the effect that they are actually dancing together!!! GENIUS!!!!
Getting down to business we asked for the LP's promising to pay him some big bucks. He goes into a closet and drags out a very old and beat up suitcase. He opens the suitcase which is FILLED with sleeveless 45's. Not an LP to be seen. "Oh you boys are looking for those BIG rekkids" he said....."I don't have any of those, they were all ruined". Needless to say we were disappointed but we bought a few of the 4 different 45's from him, two of them being non-LP cuts.
Harold apologized for not having any of the LP's and told this story.....
He had 4 children, Jr. and his three sisters who had been abandoned by their alcoholic Mom. Harold Sr. worked for a very rich Jewish woman who took a liking to the kids and bought them musical instruments and paid for lessons(This explains the Gibson Firebird).
She made the kids a deal that if they learned how to play at least 3 songs she would get them a slot on some local TV Telethon. The kids took to music very quickly and within a year were appearing on local TV. The response was so good that the woman paid for them to record an LP but suggested they write "original" songs.
This is where Harold Sr. comes in, writing all the songs that appear on the LP, with most of them being attacks on the drunken and supposedly abusive ex-Mrs. Moore......"Mama drinks Tequila, She stays drunk all the time"......once the LP was recorded and pressed the next step was to get them in the local record stores. At least one store told Mr. Moore that they could not stock them unless they were shrink wrapped. Harold went to a butcher shop where his brother worked and used their shrinkwrap machine to seal the LP's....unfortunately this was a high heat machine and he melted every single LP in the process. This wasn't discovered until someone bought one and brought it home....all the LP's were pulled from the
stores and rather than re-press it, the woman decided to release some 45's.
The 45's themselves are a work of art....with photos of each of the kids heads on the label....very home made and cheesy looking. As Mark and I were leaving the Moore's home he asked for two favors.
One was to write to the Guinness World Book Of Records and request that his kids be put in as "The youngest group to make an LP and play their own instruments" which we did to no avail. The second was to never tell his grandkids what we saw the puppet doing...which has not been a problem to uphold.
No matter how well I told that story there is no way you can begin to understand just how weird it was. If I ever win the lottery
this will be just one chapter in a film I'd like to make about some of the folks I've met in this wacky world of music....hope you
enjoyed.
Rich
P.S. The day after we got home I made a cassette of the LP and a xerox of the cover and sent it to legendary Psych dealer Paul Major. Paul truly thoughtthat I had made this whole thing up and that there was NO WAY an LP like that existed......he eventually believed me."
So I take home what basically amounts to my largest score of my life to that point.
This is the part of the story that's wildest to me.
I was telling Netti about this thread last night & she only half jokingly said her best digging expedition as far as quality purchase wise was going to Dante's house & buying from his sale boxes lol
ive got a Word doc with your Jr + Soulettes story cued up and ready to paste if you dont..... :wow:
I don't have it saved and I'm not going to write it again so post away....I just asumed everyone has heard that one already.
that story is like a campfire ghost story man - every time i see it i have to read the whole thing! its such a legend it just HAS to be in this thread!
thanks MoogMan for the pasting. funny how so many saved that one like a mythical raer file.
that story is like a campfire ghost story man - every time i see it i have to read the whole thing! its such a legend it just HAS to be in this thread!
thanks MoogMan for the pasting. funny how so many saved that one like a mythical raer file.
You're welcome, Karlophone.
That story is so crazy that the first time I readit I though it should be saved for the future generations.
Every year for the last 20 years or so I have taken a week-long digging road trip, a tradition which began with my partner Mark and has continued after his death with my brother John. We usually hit a 4-5 state area, drive 2-3,000 miles and look at records every day for at least 8 hours a day. It???s in reality probably harder work than I do at my regular 9-5 gig. We spend a few weeks prior to each trip lining up leads and planning out each day to the smallest detail. Might sound crazy but it???s efficient.
In the early 90???s Mark and I took a trip through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. Highlights were hitting Ron Rooks place in K.C., a collector???s house in Springfield, a Record Show in St. Louis and our first trip to the great Record Exchange in St. Louis back when they had more than one location. We were just tearing it up finding piles of private press and major label psych LP???s at great prices???.too many to name. On the last day of the trip which was a Saturday we had one more spot to hit in Arkansas and then we had to high tail it back to Dallas because Mark???s band had a gig that night.
We made it to the shop in Arkansas around noon and figured we had about 90 minutes to dig. The store was pretty big and Mark went to one end and I went to the other and we started speed digging. Within the first 15 minutes we had each pulled about 10 LP???s. All of a sudden the owner comes over and says ???What are you boys doing????. We tell him we???re pulling out records to buy and that we don???t have much time. He says ???Nobody can look through records that fast, you boys are on drugs!???. We kinda laugh but he???s not amused. ???I want you out of my store, you boys are on drugs???. We realize he???s serious and we try to explain that we???re on the last day of a buying trip, our car is filled with LP???s and we have to be back in Dallas by 7:00. He???s not buying it and tells us to leave again. We ask if we can at least purchase what we???ve already pulled out and he says ???No???
We laugh about it all the way home amazed that he wouldn???t even take our money as if it were ???drug money??? or somesuch and we vowed never to go back there. Time passed by, my partner passed away, and about 10 years after the above incident my family and I are on a vacation that takes us through the town where this store is. I decide to stop in and see what???s up. The store has the same owner but he has changed it around so that NO ONE can look through any records. You can only shop there by asking him for a specific title and he???ll go through his stock to see if he has it. It just so happened that that week I had learned about a major label 45 that was worth a bunch of money???..since it was fresh in my mind I asked him if he had it. Sure enough he comes out with a copy and tells me $4.00. He obviously doesn???t remember me as the guy that was ???on drugs??? and I buy the 45 and leave???very happy.
About 3 years later I am taking another trip that will take me by this store so to be prepared I put together a list of about 20-25 local records that I feel they have a pretty good chance of having. I stop in and am about to present the list to the owner. He looks up at me and says ???I remember you, you???re the guy who bought that really valuable 45 from me for 4 bucks. You are banned from my store, get out???. I just laugh and leave???.maybe when I get a haircut I???ll stop in again some day.
I love that one, we had the total opposite experience in that store, he & his wife were very helpful & we even got to dig through stuff, although we had to give him the records to refile after we listened, which was good because Netti's first attempt at re-alphabetizing & filing stuff went horribly wrong lol
Although I have to say we were well prepped to get on his good side beforehand by a friend before we left Memphis
Would definitely go back, (in fact it will probably be our first stop on the way to ARC later this year) dude has some incredible record squirrelled away in there.
There was a legendary collector in Louisiana named Jimmy Strickland. He lived out in the sticks about halfway between Angola Prison and Bunkie. His collection was somewhere around 20K strong, all LP???s???and it was amazing. Basically every rock LP you can name from 1968 ??? 1988 and an amazing selection of 60???s Soul including all the early Motown releases. On the back bottom left corner of every LP he wrote his name and the exact time and date he purchased the LP. In the 90???s Jimmy was diagnosed with Cancer and when it became obvious he wasn???t going to beat it he told his closest relative, his Uncle, to take all his records after he died, pile them up in a field and burn them. His logic was that he didn???t want his relatives to fight over his collection (not sure why a last will and testament wouldn???t have prevented that).
When Jimmy passed away his words were proven to be prophetic as at least three different relative fought over who got his collection and it wound up being split up three ways between his Uncle and two cousins. All three started selling Jimmy???s LP???s and word got out pretty quick about it. Les Harris of San Antonio was one of the first ones in and he cleaned up on the 60???s LP???s grabbing about 2,000 of them. A local New Orleans dealer was also in early and did well. My buddy Loopden called me and asked if I wanted to go check it out and we headed out there to see what was up.
Rural Louisiana can be a depressing and somewhat frightening place. Our first stop was at one of Jimmy???s cousin???s place and it was obvious the records he had inherited were worth more than the house he was living in. We went in and there were roaches and animal feces everywhere. The floors were wood but right in the middle of the Living Room there was about a 4 ft x 4 ft section of the wood missing, exposing a dirt floor underneath. There were a couple of kids running around the house which was just plain nasty in every sense of the word. As we were going through the records they were telling us how badly they needed the money and how a bunch of their relatives were dying from cancer just like Jimmy did. They told us that ???cancer was in their drinking water??? to which we replied that maybe they should stop drinking it but that little nugget of knowledge didn???t seem to register with them. We pulled some nice stuff???Velvet Underground, some Krautrock, a few nice box sets???definitely a good score for being the third or fourth guys in.
Next we went by the Uncle???s house which in comparison was a mansion. He had gotten all the mid-70???s ??? 80???s stuff and we must have been the first one???s who were interested in that stuff because we cleaned up. Lots of imports, punk and hard rock. Not only did Jimmy have pretty good taste, he took great care of this collection and everything was Mint other than his scribbling on the back covers. We never made it to the third stop but we drove back to New Orleans with a very nice haul of about 500 LP???s. Some time later a dealer from Houston went down there and bought what was remaining.
Since that time I have found records from Jimmy???s collection in many different places, identified by his ever present writing along the back bottom seam. I have also met 5-10 people who have records in their collection that were Jimmy???s that they bought at various times and places. I am certain that right now somewhere there are some of Jimmy???s records sitting out for sale somewhere and his legacy will live on through those records that he wanted destroyed.
I'm not much of a poster/writer but I love this thread and have some stories to add.
I'll call this one crack building finds.
I grew up on the North side of Chicago and by the time this story takes place in 1992 crack had been around at least 8 years and pretty much destroyed my neighborhood. I was 17 years old and wild as hell. Most of my friends were in gangs and dealing but I was just a goofy white dude for the most part. I started DJing at 12 years old with some shitty Geminis I got for cheap and that was it for me. Around 1990 I got into making beats(my high school had a MPC 60 and tons of drum machines and keyboards). Of course at the time most of Hip Hop was sample based so I was always looking for records to sample.
One night my friends and I got out to a University in the sticks about 2 hours away to party and see some people we knew. We stumble up on a frat party and try to get in but are rudely turned away at the door. So we go around back and see some kegs. We took one of the kegs and put it in the car for the trip back to Chicago. It's the dead of winter and we get back to the neighborhood. There was an abondoned crack building that we went into to drink the keg and stay warm. There were about 10 of us and we almost killed a half barrel! We were in this basement with wooden stroage lockers and I start wondering what might be in those lockers.
I start looking in lockers and theres nothing until I took a peek into a locker and there were 6 crates of records! I started going through them and I see James Brown, Bar Kays, Syl Johnson, Cymande, Philadelphia Intl, etc... There were tons of Soul classics.
The Cymande record is still one of my favorites to this day.
I lived right across a huge field from the crack building so I had my buddies help me lug the crates home. I formed a deep appreciation for Soul after that find. up until that point I had only been into Hip Hop, House, and Jazz. My pops was a Be-Bop piano player in the 50's in Chicago and used to study with Dick Marx so there were always Jazz records in the house.
It just goes to show you never know where you'll find some heat!
I stop in and am about to present the list to the owner. He looks up at me and says ???I remember you, you???re the guy who bought that really valuable 45 from me for 4 bucks. You are banned from my store, get out???. I just laugh and leave???.maybe when I get a haircut I???ll stop in again some day.
RH - you must get your non-native accent game up when the situation calls for it.
???I remember you, you???re the guy who bought that really valuable 45 from me for 4 bucks. You are banned from my store, get out???. I just laugh and leave???.
and maybe insert the comment "well, at least i'm not on drugs......" just to screw with the guys head a little more, as itf it isn't screwed up enough already....good story!
I stop in and am about to present the list to the owner. He looks up at me and says ???I remember you, you???re the guy who bought that really valuable 45 from me for 4 bucks. You are banned from my store, get out???. I just laugh and leave???.maybe when I get a haircut I???ll stop in again some day.
RH - you must get your non-native accent game up when the situation calls for it.
true, I definitely enjoyed the following exchanges in the south last time.
seller: "where are y'all from then?"
me: "New Zealand"
seller: "oh, New Zealand, down by Australia? You sure are a long way from home now, you just come all this way to buy records?"
me: "Yep"
seller: "Well then, we'll have to give you the special New Zealand discount!".
Seemed good when I told them I wasn't Australian or English (also probably helped that I was buying a lot of records anyway).
except at the gas station in Little Rock where it went like this.
female attendent: "So where are you guys from?, you're not from around here are you?" (as I'm paying after I'd asked her to assist me filling up the rental car for the first time which seemed to annoy her)
me: "New Zealand"
her: "Well you better not stay too long then"
We leave Little Rock & head for Dallas a little confused by the exchange.
@moogman, amazing story but aren't you afraid this story about Harold, his puppets & the hookers is now online & that that might be a possibility his grandkids are gonna find out about it by Googling his name that now appears to be on Soulstrut?
@moogman, amazing story but aren't you afraid this story about Harold, his puppets & the hookers is now online & that that might be a possibility his grandkids are gonna find out about it by Googling his name that now appears to be on Soulstrut?
That story was told by Rockadelic; I just reupped it.
In any case we can delete it if needed.
@moogman, amazing story but aren't you afraid this story about Harold, his puppets & the hookers is now online & that that might be a possibility his grandkids are gonna find out about it by Googling his name that now appears to be on Soulstrut?
That story was told by Rockadelic; I just reupped it.
In any case we can delete it if needed.
Peace
This happened almost 20 years ago....the grandchildren are now adults....I'm sure they can handle the truth about the puppet.
@moogman, amazing story but aren't you afraid this story about Harold, his puppets & the hookers is now online & that that might be a possibility his grandkids are gonna find out about it by Googling his name that now appears to be on Soulstrut?
That story was told by Rockadelic; I just reupped it.
In any case we can delete it if needed.
Peace
This happened almost 20 years ago....the grandchildren are now adults....I'm sure they can handle the truth about the puppet.
So was that Harold Jr on the phone making the weird noises? If so what was going on with him? Was he locked away in the basement/ closet or something?
But even now, as adults, they don't even wanna know what their dad did during night-time...;) (but the chance they find out about it is very minimal, enjoyed your story very much!)
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"!!!
thats ill ... i can only imagine who burnt the house down some disgruntled digger
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"!!!
thats ill ... i can only imagine who burnt the house down some disgruntled digger
at a yard sale which had about 5000 records back in 1990. found a mint meters look-ka-py-py. when i went up to pay the dude said "i can't sell you that record. i borrowed it from someone and forgot to give it back"
i was heartbroken and angry.
female attendent: "So where are you guys from?, you're not from around here are you?" (as I'm paying after I'd asked her to assist me filling up the rental car for the first time which seemed to annoy her)
me: "New Zealand"
her: "Well you better not stay too long then"
We leave Little Rock & head for Dallas a little confused by the exchange.
Small-town intolerance, eh? In America? It sounds as if the "little rocks" were located above her shoulders, if you know what I mean.
female attendent: "So where are you guys from?, you're not from around here are you?" (as I'm paying after I'd asked her to assist me filling up the rental car for the first time which seemed to annoy her)
me: "New Zealand"
her: "Well you better not stay too long then"
We leave Little Rock & head for Dallas a little confused by the exchange.
Small-town intolerance, eh? In America? It sounds as if the "little rocks" were located above her shoulders, if you know what I mean.
female attendent: "So where are you guys from?, you're not from around here are you?" (as I'm paying after I'd asked her to assist me filling up the rental car for the first time which seemed to annoy her)
me: "New Zealand"
her: "Well you better not stay too long then"
We leave Little Rock & head for Dallas a little confused by the exchange.
Small-town intolerance, eh? In America? It sounds as if the "little rocks" were located above her shoulders, if you know what I mean.
It was a weird vibe.
This ain't America, is it? Where can I be?
As long as she's not dealing with folks from other count... Well, as long as she doesn't get a job in public serv... Well, as long as other people aren't inv...
When i first began digging for breaks, in the years '86-'88 (before the first re-issue flood of the early 90's), there were the well-known and usually mobbed-out spots uptown, which were expensive; there was the other option of scanning through the local retail outlets, for actual still-in-print LP's (Issac Hayes & a lot of the Stax catalogue for example) and of course it always paid to look back through that most under-rated of sections - ya' mum n dad's & other family collections...
At the same time, Marley Marl was killing it weekly, with his every release containing breaks n loopage that you had just dug up! (bastard! lol), so it seemed we were always 2 steps behind the US when using unearthed gold to make demos...
One such heartbreaker for me happened in the spring of '88... going through an LP collection of a cousin of my mum's, one afternoon, as they natted away over tea, i was astonished to find she had an original copy of an early Kool & Gang "Best Of" on mojo ... i didn't know any of these 'early' tracks at that point and so, flicking through it on her turntable, I stumbled across my first encounters with "Give It Up" / "Chocolate Buttermilk" / "Funky Man" / "Who's Gonna Take The Weight?", etc... DYNAMITE I thought - boy oh boy can I use this!!...
2 weeks later, having managed to persuade her to let me borrow it, I had a dope tape loop of "C.Buttermilk" going with probably some JB's over the top and that 'whooo' drop from "Kool It (Here Comes The Fuzz)"... all set then to make a fresh little demo!... and then BLAM! - what comes out that week?... "Marley Marl In Control Vol.1" - feat the Master Ace & Action cut "Keep Your Eyes On The Prize"... yep, just using the C.B. break all the way!... once again, no matter how fresh you thought you're finds were, they'd be swallowed up by the latest batch of U.S. 12"s that back then, just seemed to devastate every week. Not long after this album of course, Uptown dropped their huge "Dope On Plastic" feat K&TG;'s "Give It Up' & "W.G.T.T.W"... after this it was a case of 'time to get serious!'... Other genres were going to have to be raided if I wanted to be original - and so began my long long journey diggin' thru reams of 'broken dreams' (as Shadow once put it)...
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys, I got a job working for Music & Video exchange in Notting Hill Gate - a mecca for the bargain bin freaks and so most of our finds from that basement and the 20p over-spill shop next door, found their way onto our debut album "Executive Suite" in 1996. We stumbled blind onto David Axelrod, buckets of Easy listening albums and The Blue Mink & Nat Stuckey breaks (seriously fuckin' happy about those!)...
Am still diggin' these days... Have found some great killer breaks recently again, so now I just need to decide what to do with them... any M.C.'s wanting some 'Golden Age' vibes, hit me up
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
REALLY.
Executive Suite. Wow, that album had such an influence on me. NZ, Switzerland, UK, Israel, Sweden, Australia... jammed in my backpack, I carted that CD around the world .
Thank you for many a hazy night and for rocking an impromtu dance party in the Swiss alps, and for sealing the deal with a cute English chick on Tel Aviv beach in '95 (but thats another story)
And yeah, this is BY FAR the best thread in a long while. Thanks to all who have posted.
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys, I got a job working for Music & Video exchange in Notting Hill Gate - a mecca for the bargain bin freaks and so most of our finds from that basement and the 20p over-spill shop next door, found their way onto our debut album "Executive Suite" in 1996. We stumbled blind onto David Axelrod, buckets of Easy listening albums and The Blue Mink & Nat Stuckey breaks (seriously fuckin' happy about those!)...
Am still diggin' these days... Have found some great killer breaks recently again, so now I just need to decide what to do with them... any M.C.'s wanting some 'Golden Age' vibes, hit me up
Comments
OK, here is it.
"Jr. & The Soulettes
I was lucky enough to start searching for the private press record back in the 80's when not too many people cared about such nonsense....it allowed me to track down, talk to and sometimes even meet all kinds of characters...
So at Chris's request.....the Jr. & The Soulettes Story
Musta been the late 80's or early 90's....my partner Mark and I took a trip up to Oklahoma City to look for records. Most of the day we hit various Flea Markets with pretty good success. Multiple sealed copies of Guiness and Tomorrow label LP's, about 20 sealed copies of the Markley LP, and alot more, most of them at $1.00 each.
Our last stop of the day was a place called The Memory Market, which is still there today. It's a large metal building that housed about 10-15 various antique dealers who specialized in "junk". The back 1/3rd of the building was run by two elderly women who dealt in nothing but records. Tens of thousands of records, LP's and 45's. We started digging in and it was apparent that we were the first ones to go through this stuff who were looking for what we were looking
for. The first hour yielded titles like Badge & Co. a very beat up copy of The Marble Phrogg, Darius, Trizo-50 and many more.
The market was going to close at 6:00 and it was about 5:45 when I came across an amazing looking record titled "The Psycho-Delic Sounds Of Jr. & The Soulettes". The cover was a "10" with Jr. playing a Gibson Firebird behind his head while doing a split on the stage. I called Mark over, we pulled out the little Big Bird record player we carried with us and put the LP on to give it a spin. It was beyond warped, totally destroyed with only about 20% of the surface area being playable.....enough though for us to know we had found a MONSTER, yet bizarre LP. Mark pointed out that it had an
Oklahoma City address on the back.
We paid for all the LP's and headed straight for the pay phone in front of the place. We looked in the phone book and sure enough, we found a Harold Moore Jr. & Sr. at the same address. I called the number and was greeted by something that could only be described as sub-human animal sounds.....Uhhhhhoooerrruggyhg....I could not make out a single english word this guy might be uttering. Then a second party picked up another line and told "Jr." to hang up. It was Harold Moore Sr. and he was one very friendly guy.
It was late winter and by 6:00 it was starting to get dark, yet Hariold Sr. invited Mark and I over to his house with the promise
that "I have a whole suitcase filled with those old rekkids, you fellas come on over". We got directions and began to drive to the house......it wasn't long before we realized we were going to the worst part of OKC.
In the South it's pretty well known that if you live near the railroad tracks or by the river, you're probably in the bad part of
town. The Moore house was built on stilts, with the river on one side and the railroad tracks on the other. We parked, went to the front door and rang the bell.....no answer. Then we knocked on the door pretty hard.....again, no answer. mark walked around to the side of the house and followed some very loud "Disco" music to a room in the back of the house. He looked inside and saw Harold Sr. sitting in front of a column of amps and receivers that were producing this very bass heavy music. he banged on the window, got Mr. Moore's attention and he waved for us to go back to the front door.
Harold Sr. opened the front door and acted as if we were long lost friends...he quickly invited us in while yelling up the stairs
at "Jr." while apologizing to us for his "effed up son". He brought us back into the "music" room and it was pretty bizarre. In the middle of the room stood a camera on a tri-pod. In each corner of the room that the camera was facing were little triangular stages built into the floor with a full length piece of plexiglas from floor to ceiling in front of each "stage". The stage was about large enough for one person to stand on.
Mark was an electronics engineer and in an attempt to start a conversation he asked Mr. Moore if he had the "schematics" for this contraption he had built out of about 20 amps and receivers. His response was "Schematics!! I just found this stuff in the garbage and makes it". Our goal was to get some LP's and get back to Dallas but Harold had alot to talk about and wanted us to stay.
After being there about 15 minutes Harold says..."You boys wanna see my puppet"!! How do you answer that question to a grown man?? Of course we said "Sure!!"....He opened his drawer and pulled out a puppet made out of a sock. You know, one of those winter socks that they make "Sock Monkey's" out of. "This here is my snake" and I'll be damned the thing had a hat that could not be described as anything but a "Pimp" hat and a big fat set of lips.
He then went on to explain that everything in the room was set up for the puppet....the music, the camera, the stages. He also explained that all his grandkids loved the puppet but he couldn't tell them about the puppet's "night life". He then pulled out a video, put it into a VCR and began to show us just what the puppet was all about. Before I attempt to explain what we saw I have to say that this moment was surely the most surreal in my life and I'd have given anything to have had a camera as I knew I would have to repeat what I saw and that no one would believe it.
The video starts off with that same bass heavy, thumping, Disco music and the pimp puppet "dancing" to the beat. Then a black woman, a naked black woman comes into the frame and begins to dance with the puppet. This goes on for about 5 minutes with the puppet doing various obscene things to what appears to be this super-imposed naked woman. The video stops, a new song starts to play and now the puppet starts dancing with a different, nude, black woman. Friggin' Amazing!!!
After about 10 minutes we've seen enough and tell Mr. Moore that we have to be going. Harold then explains at Mark's request just how he makes these movies. On a Friday or Saturday night Harold usually goes out and picks up a hooker. Not for sex, but to dance with the puppet. The naked hooker stands behind the plexiglas in one corner of the room while Mr. Moore operates the puppet behind the second piece of plexiglas in the opposite corner. The way the camera is set
up on the tripod, it is able to not only record the puppet, but uses the plexiglas to make a reflection of the woman in the opposite corner so he gets the effect that they are actually dancing together!!! GENIUS!!!!
Getting down to business we asked for the LP's promising to pay him some big bucks. He goes into a closet and drags out a very old and beat up suitcase. He opens the suitcase which is FILLED with sleeveless 45's. Not an LP to be seen. "Oh you boys are looking for those BIG rekkids" he said....."I don't have any of those, they were all ruined". Needless to say we were disappointed but we bought a few of the 4 different 45's from him, two of them being non-LP cuts.
Harold apologized for not having any of the LP's and told this story.....
He had 4 children, Jr. and his three sisters who had been abandoned by their alcoholic Mom. Harold Sr. worked for a very rich Jewish woman who took a liking to the kids and bought them musical instruments and paid for lessons(This explains the Gibson Firebird).
She made the kids a deal that if they learned how to play at least 3 songs she would get them a slot on some local TV Telethon. The kids took to music very quickly and within a year were appearing on local TV. The response was so good that the woman paid for them to record an LP but suggested they write "original" songs.
This is where Harold Sr. comes in, writing all the songs that appear on the LP, with most of them being attacks on the drunken and supposedly abusive ex-Mrs. Moore......"Mama drinks Tequila, She stays drunk all the time"......once the LP was recorded and pressed the next step was to get them in the local record stores. At least one store told Mr. Moore that they could not stock them unless they were shrink wrapped. Harold went to a butcher shop where his brother worked and used their shrinkwrap machine to seal the LP's....unfortunately this was a high heat machine and he melted every single LP in the process. This wasn't discovered until someone bought one and brought it home....all the LP's were pulled from the
stores and rather than re-press it, the woman decided to release some 45's.
The 45's themselves are a work of art....with photos of each of the kids heads on the label....very home made and cheesy looking. As Mark and I were leaving the Moore's home he asked for two favors.
One was to write to the Guinness World Book Of Records and request that his kids be put in as "The youngest group to make an LP and play their own instruments" which we did to no avail. The second was to never tell his grandkids what we saw the puppet doing...which has not been a problem to uphold.
No matter how well I told that story there is no way you can begin to understand just how weird it was. If I ever win the lottery
this will be just one chapter in a film I'd like to make about some of the folks I've met in this wacky world of music....hope you
enjoyed.
Rich
P.S. The day after we got home I made a cassette of the LP and a xerox of the cover and sent it to legendary Psych dealer Paul Major. Paul truly thoughtthat I had made this whole thing up and that there was NO WAY an LP like that existed......he eventually believed me."
that story is like a campfire ghost story man - every time i see it i have to read the whole thing! its such a legend it just HAS to be in this thread!
thanks MoogMan for the pasting. funny how so many saved that one like a mythical raer file.
You're welcome, Karlophone.
That story is so crazy that the first time I readit I though it should be saved for the future generations.
Every year for the last 20 years or so I have taken a week-long digging road trip, a tradition which began with my partner Mark and has continued after his death with my brother John. We usually hit a 4-5 state area, drive 2-3,000 miles and look at records every day for at least 8 hours a day. It???s in reality probably harder work than I do at my regular 9-5 gig. We spend a few weeks prior to each trip lining up leads and planning out each day to the smallest detail. Might sound crazy but it???s efficient.
In the early 90???s Mark and I took a trip through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. Highlights were hitting Ron Rooks place in K.C., a collector???s house in Springfield, a Record Show in St. Louis and our first trip to the great Record Exchange in St. Louis back when they had more than one location. We were just tearing it up finding piles of private press and major label psych LP???s at great prices???.too many to name. On the last day of the trip which was a Saturday we had one more spot to hit in Arkansas and then we had to high tail it back to Dallas because Mark???s band had a gig that night.
We made it to the shop in Arkansas around noon and figured we had about 90 minutes to dig. The store was pretty big and Mark went to one end and I went to the other and we started speed digging. Within the first 15 minutes we had each pulled about 10 LP???s. All of a sudden the owner comes over and says ???What are you boys doing????. We tell him we???re pulling out records to buy and that we don???t have much time. He says ???Nobody can look through records that fast, you boys are on drugs!???. We kinda laugh but he???s not amused. ???I want you out of my store, you boys are on drugs???. We realize he???s serious and we try to explain that we???re on the last day of a buying trip, our car is filled with LP???s and we have to be back in Dallas by 7:00. He???s not buying it and tells us to leave again. We ask if we can at least purchase what we???ve already pulled out and he says ???No???
We laugh about it all the way home amazed that he wouldn???t even take our money as if it were ???drug money??? or somesuch and we vowed never to go back there. Time passed by, my partner passed away, and about 10 years after the above incident my family and I are on a vacation that takes us through the town where this store is. I decide to stop in and see what???s up. The store has the same owner but he has changed it around so that NO ONE can look through any records. You can only shop there by asking him for a specific title and he???ll go through his stock to see if he has it. It just so happened that that week I had learned about a major label 45 that was worth a bunch of money???..since it was fresh in my mind I asked him if he had it. Sure enough he comes out with a copy and tells me $4.00. He obviously doesn???t remember me as the guy that was ???on drugs??? and I buy the 45 and leave???very happy.
About 3 years later I am taking another trip that will take me by this store so to be prepared I put together a list of about 20-25 local records that I feel they have a pretty good chance of having. I stop in and am about to present the list to the owner. He looks up at me and says ???I remember you, you???re the guy who bought that really valuable 45 from me for 4 bucks. You are banned from my store, get out???. I just laugh and leave???.maybe when I get a haircut I???ll stop in again some day.
Although I have to say we were well prepped to get on his good side beforehand by a friend before we left Memphis
Would definitely go back, (in fact it will probably be our first stop on the way to ARC later this year) dude has some incredible record squirrelled away in there.
When Jimmy passed away his words were proven to be prophetic as at least three different relative fought over who got his collection and it wound up being split up three ways between his Uncle and two cousins. All three started selling Jimmy???s LP???s and word got out pretty quick about it. Les Harris of San Antonio was one of the first ones in and he cleaned up on the 60???s LP???s grabbing about 2,000 of them. A local New Orleans dealer was also in early and did well. My buddy Loopden called me and asked if I wanted to go check it out and we headed out there to see what was up.
Rural Louisiana can be a depressing and somewhat frightening place. Our first stop was at one of Jimmy???s cousin???s place and it was obvious the records he had inherited were worth more than the house he was living in. We went in and there were roaches and animal feces everywhere. The floors were wood but right in the middle of the Living Room there was about a 4 ft x 4 ft section of the wood missing, exposing a dirt floor underneath. There were a couple of kids running around the house which was just plain nasty in every sense of the word. As we were going through the records they were telling us how badly they needed the money and how a bunch of their relatives were dying from cancer just like Jimmy did. They told us that ???cancer was in their drinking water??? to which we replied that maybe they should stop drinking it but that little nugget of knowledge didn???t seem to register with them. We pulled some nice stuff???Velvet Underground, some Krautrock, a few nice box sets???definitely a good score for being the third or fourth guys in.
Next we went by the Uncle???s house which in comparison was a mansion. He had gotten all the mid-70???s ??? 80???s stuff and we must have been the first one???s who were interested in that stuff because we cleaned up. Lots of imports, punk and hard rock. Not only did Jimmy have pretty good taste, he took great care of this collection and everything was Mint other than his scribbling on the back covers. We never made it to the third stop but we drove back to New Orleans with a very nice haul of about 500 LP???s. Some time later a dealer from Houston went down there and bought what was remaining.
Since that time I have found records from Jimmy???s collection in many different places, identified by his ever present writing along the back bottom seam. I have also met 5-10 people who have records in their collection that were Jimmy???s that they bought at various times and places. I am certain that right now somewhere there are some of Jimmy???s records sitting out for sale somewhere and his legacy will live on through those records that he wanted destroyed.
I'll call this one crack building finds.
I grew up on the North side of Chicago and by the time this story takes place in 1992 crack had been around at least 8 years and pretty much destroyed my neighborhood. I was 17 years old and wild as hell. Most of my friends were in gangs and dealing but I was just a goofy white dude for the most part. I started DJing at 12 years old with some shitty Geminis I got for cheap and that was it for me. Around 1990 I got into making beats(my high school had a MPC 60 and tons of drum machines and keyboards). Of course at the time most of Hip Hop was sample based so I was always looking for records to sample.
One night my friends and I got out to a University in the sticks about 2 hours away to party and see some people we knew. We stumble up on a frat party and try to get in but are rudely turned away at the door. So we go around back and see some kegs. We took one of the kegs and put it in the car for the trip back to Chicago. It's the dead of winter and we get back to the neighborhood. There was an abondoned crack building that we went into to drink the keg and stay warm. There were about 10 of us and we almost killed a half barrel! We were in this basement with wooden stroage lockers and I start wondering what might be in those lockers.
I start looking in lockers and theres nothing until I took a peek into a locker and there were 6 crates of records! I started going through them and I see James Brown, Bar Kays, Syl Johnson, Cymande, Philadelphia Intl, etc... There were tons of Soul classics.
The Cymande record is still one of my favorites to this day.
I lived right across a huge field from the crack building so I had my buddies help me lug the crates home. I formed a deep appreciation for Soul after that find. up until that point I had only been into Hip Hop, House, and Jazz. My pops was a Be-Bop piano player in the 50's in Chicago and used to study with Dick Marx so there were always Jazz records in the house.
It just goes to show you never know where you'll find some heat!
RH - you must get your non-native accent game up when the situation calls for it.
seller: "where are y'all from then?"
me: "New Zealand"
seller: "oh, New Zealand, down by Australia? You sure are a long way from home now, you just come all this way to buy records?"
me: "Yep"
seller: "Well then, we'll have to give you the special New Zealand discount!".
Seemed good when I told them I wasn't Australian or English (also probably helped that I was buying a lot of records anyway).
except at the gas station in Little Rock where it went like this.
female attendent: "So where are you guys from?, you're not from around here are you?" (as I'm paying after I'd asked her to assist me filling up the rental car for the first time which seemed to annoy her)
me: "New Zealand"
her: "Well you better not stay too long then"
We leave Little Rock & head for Dallas a little confused by the exchange.
http://touch.facebook.com/?w2m#/photos.php?aid=1234&id=100001488064536
That story was told by Rockadelic; I just reupped it.
In any case we can delete it if needed.
Peace
This happened almost 20 years ago....the grandchildren are now adults....I'm sure they can handle the truth about the puppet.
So was that Harold Jr on the phone making the weird noises? If so what was going on with him? Was he locked away in the basement/ closet or something?
thats ill ... i can only imagine who burnt the house down some disgruntled digger
thats ill ... i can only imagine who burnt the house down some disgruntled digger
i was heartbroken and angry.
peace, stein. . .
Small-town intolerance, eh? In America? It sounds as if the "little rocks" were located above her shoulders, if you know what I mean.
This ain't America, is it? Where can I be?
As long as she's not dealing with folks from other count... Well, as long as she doesn't get a job in public serv... Well, as long as other people aren't inv...
When i first began digging for breaks, in the years '86-'88 (before the first re-issue flood of the early 90's), there were the well-known and usually mobbed-out spots uptown, which were expensive; there was the other option of scanning through the local retail outlets, for actual still-in-print LP's (Issac Hayes & a lot of the Stax catalogue for example) and of course it always paid to look back through that most under-rated of sections - ya' mum n dad's & other family collections...
At the same time, Marley Marl was killing it weekly, with his every release containing breaks n loopage that you had just dug up! (bastard! lol), so it seemed we were always 2 steps behind the US when using unearthed gold to make demos...
One such heartbreaker for me happened in the spring of '88... going through an LP collection of a cousin of my mum's, one afternoon, as they natted away over tea, i was astonished to find she had an original copy of an early Kool & Gang "Best Of" on mojo ... i didn't know any of these 'early' tracks at that point and so, flicking through it on her turntable, I stumbled across my first encounters with "Give It Up" / "Chocolate Buttermilk" / "Funky Man" / "Who's Gonna Take The Weight?", etc... DYNAMITE I thought - boy oh boy can I use this!!...
2 weeks later, having managed to persuade her to let me borrow it, I had a dope tape loop of "C.Buttermilk" going with probably some JB's over the top and that 'whooo' drop from "Kool It (Here Comes The Fuzz)"... all set then to make a fresh little demo!... and then BLAM! - what comes out that week?... "Marley Marl In Control Vol.1" - feat the Master Ace & Action cut "Keep Your Eyes On The Prize"... yep, just using the C.B. break all the way!... once again, no matter how fresh you thought you're finds were, they'd be swallowed up by the latest batch of U.S. 12"s that back then, just seemed to devastate every week. Not long after this album of course, Uptown dropped their huge "Dope On Plastic" feat K&TG;'s "Give It Up' & "W.G.T.T.W"... after this it was a case of 'time to get serious!'... Other genres were going to have to be raided if I wanted to be original - and so began my long long journey diggin' thru reams of 'broken dreams' (as Shadow once put it)...
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys, I got a job working for Music & Video exchange in Notting Hill Gate - a mecca for the bargain bin freaks and so most of our finds from that basement and the 20p over-spill shop next door, found their way onto our debut album "Executive Suite" in 1996. We stumbled blind onto David Axelrod, buckets of Easy listening albums and The Blue Mink & Nat Stuckey breaks (seriously fuckin' happy about those!)...
Am still diggin' these days... Have found some great killer breaks recently again, so now I just need to decide what to do with them... any M.C.'s wanting some 'Golden Age' vibes, hit me up
Peace, RR.
u can gladly send em my way!
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
REALLY.
Executive Suite. Wow, that album had such an influence on me. NZ, Switzerland, UK, Israel, Sweden, Australia... jammed in my backpack, I carted that CD around the world .
Thank you for many a hazy night and for rocking an impromtu dance party in the Swiss alps, and for sealing the deal with a cute English chick on Tel Aviv beach in '95 (but thats another story)
And yeah, this is BY FAR the best thread in a long while. Thanks to all who have posted.
Snatch CWS?!