Library haul stories.

edited May 2011 in Strut Central
I was inspired to create this topic from the the digging stories thread.


I've always been interested in how people come into the possession of large library collections, since these records weren't generally released to the public. Does anyone have a good story to share?

  Comments


  • behemothbehemoth 2,189 Posts
    at da library

  • soundsrealsoundsreal 128 Posts
    There's a guy living in Missisaugua now who actually co-owned a library music label in the late 70's and early 80's looking to get rid of massive quantities of his deadstock library records to the first interested person who comes along. The label in question is not exactly in demand but I imagine there must be a few other stories about diggers coming across people like this but with better material up for grabs that have scored large.

    If your objective is making a large score of unheard library-type stuff for production purposes then you can get in touch with me and we can discuss, but if what you want is to find the classic and valuable library stuff like dewolfe et al or dig out a funky late 60's type gem I wish you all the best.

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    I bought the CBS collection in NYC when they decided to get rid of their records. I got at least 5000 library Lps, including complete runs of KPM, Southern, Selected Sound, Freesound and others, all in triplicate. Virtually every top library record was in there - Stringtronics, Feelings, Afro-Rock, Jungle Obsession - the only gap was that there wasn't a lot of Italian library titles.

    This was basically my intro to library records, and I spent many, many hours going through them.

    At first I thought this thread was about buying records from libraries, and I was going to share my story about recently buying the New York Public Library archive (30,000 Lps), but that will have to wait for another thread...

  • MoogManMoogMan Sao Paulo, Brazil 1,173 Posts
    In 06/2006 there was a record fair where I went to try to sell some stuff.
    A seller (Mario), from who I bought records for about 7 years, said to me he had some stuff I should see. They were some moog records on Montparnasse (J.J. Perrey/Pat Prilly).
    We had lunch together and I asked him from who he bought those records, he said he bought them from a guy (Marco) who had bought around 1500 records, lots of movie tapes and some gear from a film studio. Mario said he left behind about 1000 of those "sound effect records".
    I asked him to give me Marco's telephone number. I called Marco and went many times to his house to look the records.
    I bought lots of Montparnasse, Themes, IM, MPI, PSI, Saint Germain des Pres, April Orchestra, CREA/Mondiophone, Omicron/Sound Workshop/Liuto, Patchwork, RCA Media, KoKa Media, and other small labels.
    Also, I bought around 300 10"s from the Conroy label, that are from late 50's to late 60's.
    Aside this haul, I think I only found other 5 library records here in Brazil in 15 years of digging.
    I still dream of finding another lot like that.

  • MoogManMoogMan Sao Paulo, Brazil 1,173 Posts
    I posted about this lot, and the list of records I found at Waxidermy.
    If you want you can check it here:

    http://waxidermy.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2678&hilit=library+lot

  • behemothbehemoth 2,189 Posts
    Horseleech said:
    I bought the CBS collection in NYC when they decided to get rid of their records. I got at least 5000 library Lps, including complete runs of KPM, Southern, Selected Sound, Freesound and others, all in triplicate. Virtually every top library record was in there - Stringtronics, Feelings, Afro-Rock, Jungle Obsession - the only gap was that there wasn't a lot of Italian library titles.

    This was basically my intro to library records, and I spent many, many hours going through them.

    At first I thought this thread was about buying records from libraries, and I was going to share my story about recently buying the New York Public Library archive (30,000 Lps), but that will have to wait for another thread...

    were waiting ;)

  • MoogManMoogMan Sao Paulo, Brazil 1,173 Posts
    behemoth said:
    we're waiting ;)

    What he said.


  • the_dLthe_dL 1,531 Posts
    Horseleech said:
    I bought the CBS collection in NYC when they decided to get rid of their records. I got at least 5000 library Lps, including complete runs of KPM, Southern, Selected Sound, Freesound and others, all in triplicate. Virtually every top library record was in there - Stringtronics, Feelings, Afro-Rock, Jungle Obsession - the only gap was that there wasn't a lot of Italian library titles.


    At first I thought this thread was about buying records from libraries, and I was going to share my story about recently buying the New York Public Library archive (30,000 Lps), but that will have to wait for another thread...

    double :face_melt: , plaese shur the story!

    I have only ever come across one major library collection in a second hand store when i was on my honey moon in New Zealand but it had been gone through before i got to it, but a friend of mine once walked into a thrift store and asked if they had any records, the thrift store was next door to a tv station that had just dropped off thier entire library so he walked away with quite a large collection.

  • jammyjammy remixing bongo rock... 813 Posts
    my friend did his audio degree work experience at a television/radio station here. he discovered the library records which were plentiful (around 2000) and asked them how much they would sell them for. $1000 and a meet me in the car park at 6pm later, the deal was done. we spent a good two weeks going through that mammoth haul!

  • BeatnicholasBeatnicholas 1,005 Posts
    usually find them "in the field", or off a collector i know. biggest haul was at a record fair in zurich. dude had a couple of crates full, bought the whole lot off him for a couple hundred quid (they were all interesting, good ones - janko nilovic, telemusic, golden ring). think he put the money towards the only 2 records he bought all day - a mulatu original on ethopiques and the impossibles, "hot pepper". horses for courses but i think i did better than he did.

    as an aside, there was a guy at that fair that had two don cunninghams behind his stand side by side. a grand each

  • DownstrokeDownstroke 81 Posts
    A buddy of mine pulled a mammoth haul from a house clearance auction back in the early 90's. About 1800 titles, pretty much the entire KPM 1000 series, DeWolfe, Chappell, Bruton etc, for just ??30.00!

    Back then, I didn't know anyone who was up on these, and I remember spending hours round his going through the titles. First time he played me Brian Bennet's 'Name of the Game' was utter facemelt! The thing was, he already had a huge collection of breaks and was an aspiring hip hop producer, but rarely delved into the library crates because he felt it was almost cheating using them!

  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    was there a not a euro dude here with like boxes of KPM/burton in amsterdam

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts
    pcmr said:
    was there a not a euro dude here with like boxes of KPM/burton in amsterdam

    And there was the Alhambra? event that I think involved Library runs. Soulstrut lost knowledge files are growing.

  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    it seems with library records you either find a couple or like 300

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts
    I found a KPM in the field in NYC once. It was the Christmas one.

  • DelayDelay 4,530 Posts
    pcmr said:
    it seems with library records you either find a couple or like 300

    exactly.

    I bought a collection of DeWolfes from a production house in Virginia. I kept a few but sold most to The Sound Library in 2001-2. It seems like places that did post production in the late seventies and early eighties are the best places to make big library hauls... duh.

  • BeatnicholasBeatnicholas 1,005 Posts
    word. a guy i know got most of his from the rubbish bins behind the BBC circa 1980-something. the same place he got the metalwork used to press BBC records like these :


  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    behemoth said:
    Horseleech said:
    I bought the CBS collection in NYC when they decided to get rid of their records. I got at least 5000 library Lps, including complete runs of KPM, Southern, Selected Sound, Freesound and others, all in triplicate. Virtually every top library record was in there - Stringtronics, Feelings, Afro-Rock, Jungle Obsession - the only gap was that there wasn't a lot of Italian library titles.

    This was basically my intro to library records, and I spent many, many hours going through them.

    At first I thought this thread was about buying records from libraries, and I was going to share my story about recently buying the New York Public Library archive (30,000 Lps), but that will have to wait for another thread...

    were waiting ;)

    It's not as exciting as it sounds, but it was still a great haul. Out of the 30,000 I donated about half to Housing Works - it was mediocre classical and easy listening etc, but they were quite happy to get them. The better classical went to the Academy on 18th st and I kept the rest - tons of sealed Columbia titles (from Teo Macero's collection that he donated), hundreds of sealed Folkways, and just a ton of records you never see. These were the archives, so they weren't in those vile plastic folders and most were NM. I pulled a bunch of Warhol covers also, including my third copy of Nation's Nightmare.

    I figured I'd be the only one bidding as most stores in NYC can't really deal with 30,000 records, so I made a low bid if I could pick what I wanted, or an even lower one if I took everything. They accepted the latter.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    Craigslist. Remember mrjeigh's haul?

    :shit_yeah:

  • HollafameHollafame 844 Posts
    I don't feel like searching for the thread, but I believe it was "finelikewine" that scored a big library collection and posted up all kinds of record pr0n

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts
    I bought a bunch off of Beatdawg and Stop and Cop back in the day. I no longer own any of them.

  • finelikewinefinelikewine "ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
    HOLLAFAME said:
    I don't feel like searching for the thread, but I believe it was "finelikewine" that scored a big library collection and posted up all kinds of record pr0n

    yeah, that was me. A few month ago I found a large collection of 400 library records from a company which does apartment clearances in a total rural area of bavaria. It included the whole golden selected sound and themes catalogue. It also contained lots of KPM, Parry Music, Sonoton, Golden Ring and more. My cousin, who is a antique dealer and who travels around quite a bit to buy antiques, told me about this collection. He described it as a 80s film music collection, for the lack of better words.
    It turned out, that a big share of it was actually from the 70s. It took me some time to realize what treasure I was sitting on.
    As I`m not library collector I sell them slowly on discogs and until now (one third of it is gone) i made a few thousand euros out of it. I paid for the whole collection 100???. Score of my life!
    I asked the guy who sold the records where he got them from. He said that he cleard the apartment of a guy in Munich, who was a composer of film music for the Bavaria Film Studios. He said that he got hold of a lot of vintage Instruments as well, but they were already gone for cheap when I arrived. There must have been big ass vintage analogue synthesizers and lot of percussion instruments...



  • leonleon 883 Posts
    Isn't there a guy on here that found a lot of library records in the dumpster years ago?

  • bigchalzbigchalz 220 Posts
    it was eric roberts. check the mix section for the mix he did with them.

  • markus71markus71 937 Posts
    About 2 years ago I bought a whole box (aprox 150 titles) of some dj. They were given to him by a friend. He had just moved and they were just taking up too much space.
    I could take the whole box for 50 euros. Couple of interesting KPM's, Theme's, Bruton but also some good Southern electronic ones and some rare stuff on Freesound.

  • tuneuptuneup 586 Posts
    a few years ago here in Toronto, the estate of a guy who was a serious soundtrack collector came up for sale. the short version is that the house was completely full of records. I really do mean completely full. 15 dealers were set on it all at once. you can imagine the temperature in the place. While many got to the "Jazz" room before me (which turned out to not be Jazz at all really) I scoped the downstairs dining room area which had 2 pathways of shelves, and came across a complete wall of Library titles. I bought the whole wall of course, and learned a ton about the genre as a result. If I remember correctly there were titles like Feelings, and that Rare German one with the Motorcycles on the front, the name of which escapes me at the moment. About 1800 records, and definitely some crap but mostly excellent. Mortgage payment...I think so.

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts


    Friend flew in and we're going to tonights Cowboys-Saints game......since I know we're gonna kill his Saints we went to do some digging so his trip wasn't a total bust.....here are some of the goodies we split...










    [img]]

  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    Friend flew in and we're going to tonights Cowboys-Saints game......since I know we're gonna kill his Saints

    Nice records, but about that prediction... :D

  • those gun covers are great. you need that one henry macini "cop themes" record to go with these.
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