TREASURES UNTOLD

A MODERN 78 RPM READER

My good friend Josh Rosenthal who heads Tompkins Square Records out of San Francisco, recently published a fascinating book on 78 rpm records, the book being a collection of essays by collectors on the joys, perils and caveats on the condition - the condition being both that of the records in question and that of the mindsets of those involved.

The writers include Josh himself, 15 year old Jay Burnett, John Heneghan, David Katznelson, Dick Spottswood - technically an interview, Joe Lauro and others, including yours truly.

It is a limited edition, and I do believe Josh may have some copies left, one of which I imagine he'd be glad to sell you. He can be contacted at info@tompkinssquare.com

The book also comes with a CD of old-timey tunes associated with the era. Yes, I know what you are thinking. A CD? Why not a real old-time 78 album? Well, in a word, economics. Think about it.

To give you a little taste of the written contents, the first half of my contribution follows.

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THE LUST FOR SHELLAC: Confessions of an addict

It was still dark when I left the house early on a Sunday morning. Oakland was

blanketed in fog, the mist rolling in from the Pacific, across the bay, and I was thankful

for the car’s heater as I drove to El Cerrito in that trembling dawn.

`

By the time I reached the parking lot outside Down Home Music, the visibility had

improved to a gray light, and I saw that there were already five or six cars parked there.

A couple of dozen men and one or two women were down on their knees looking

through crates, and as soon as I parked and turned off the motor, they left the crates

and approached my car, their anticipation palpable—grinning, smacking lips, jostling—a

madding crowd indeed. “He’s brought the Black Pattis!” shouted a wag, and the mass

snickered.

Getting out of the car, I opened the trunk and pulled a couple of crates toward me—

crates filled with 78s. 78s from the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, and maybe one or two

from the turn of the century. Who knows? I wasn’t keeping tabs; I just wanted the

records gone. Well, mainly. Most I probably would just give away when the swap meet

was over, but there were a few, just a few, that I rather cherished. A few that I felt I owed

some kind of responsibility toward. A few that had some kind of historical significance:

some early white cover versions of R&B tunes, covers dating from late 1953 to early

1954, musically square and derivative, but the beginnings of rock ’n’ roll nonetheless.

Historical artifacts, markers along the way to the present. I didn’t want to keep them, but

there was this feeling that they deserved a good home, a little appreciation.

The crowd pressed toward the car and the open trunk. A certain rough decorum was

observed by the majority, but a couple of rabid collectors threw social ethics to the wind

and elbowed their way to the front, each commandeering a crate. One was in his sixties

or seventies, dressed in an ill-fitting and boxy gray suit, gray sneakers, and a baseball

cap over a thick thatch of graying sandy hair. The other was more youthful, in his late

twenties or early thirties, a trim beard, tight black jeans, and an air of no-nonsense

laser-like attention. I knew them both. The younger one regularly went on junking trips

to Virginia and the Carolinas and was, for his years, remarkably well-versed in jazz,

country, blues, and South American genres. The older guy collected early dance band

records and was a fount of knowledge when it came to personnel and recording dates.

Many years ago, someone told me that Robert Crumb, the artist and 78 collector, used

to lead his retro string band The Cheap Suit Serenaders at shows around the Bay Area,

and when I had first laid eyes on this oddly clad gentleman, my initial impression was

that he was possibly an actual Cheap Suit Serenader himself, and I had to wonder if he

was conscious of the fact that his suit was so horrendous. It was an odd choice of attire

for an early Sunday morning in the East Bay chill.

Behind them the mob gazed, gawked, and goggled, straining to get a better view of the

records as they were rapidly pulled from the crate, scrutinized, and then discarded for

the next one. “King, Modern, Specialty... Oh look, a Crystalette…” The label names

were recited as if they were Holy Writ, the observers mentally trying to play the records

in their minds as familiar titles came up, and then the initial two collectors came to the

end of their crates and switched, ignoring the press behind them.

Watching them reminded me of past meets I had attended, similar scenes around the

country, and back in Europe too, in the ’60s and ’70s. It really had been quite a mad trip,

looking all the way back to the very beginnings.

It had started back in 1954, at the home of my godparents, the Gants, in London. I had

been dispatched there for a week or two while my parents traveled in Europe. The

Gants’ son, Anthony, four or five years older than I, had a record player and a small

stash of 78s. In the pile were two we played over and over. “Cool Water” by Frankie

Laine, and “Shake, Rattle and Roll” by Bill Haley and His Comets. The Haley record

was on Brunswick, a black label with gold lettering, and my eight-year-old mind,

listening to the sound of the singer and ignoring the print on the label, heard the song as

“Sheik of Raddlin’ Row.” After all, I was in London, the city of weird street names such

as Rotten Row, and peopled by folks from around the world in national dress: Africans in

colorful robes, Indians in shining saris, Eastern potentates in flowing white, and sultans

and sheiks all around…it all made sense to me.

The following year, back home in Winchester, the ancient capital of England, I was at

home in bed recovering from having my tonsils removed. Mum and Dad gave me a

wind-up gramophone as a get-well present and a bunch of old 78s. Most of the records

were vaudeville and pop from the ’20s and ’30s. The only ones I can now recall were a

slightly risqué (to nine-year-old ears) Decca-labeled tune entitled “Connie in the

Cornfields” and an HMV recording of “In the Mood” by English bandleader Joe Loss.

Both were mildly entertaining, and I certainly dug the dynamics of the riffs of “In the

Mood,” but I was yearning for something heavier and persuaded Mum to buy me “Rock

Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and His Comets. Over and over I feverishly cranked the

gramophone, religiously changed the needle for every play, and gloried in the sound of

rock ’n’ roll. “Rock Around the Clock” was great, of course, with that pulsing beat and the

shouted vocal—an open-ended invitation to mayhem—but it was the B-side that really

got me. “Thirteen Women” was a blues, though I did not know it at the time, and its

riffing saxophone and reverb-laden guitar spoke to me in a way that no other music had

ever done.

Having your tonsils removed is not a happy experience, and for days I awoke to

blood on the pillow and the sorest throat in the world. Being too sore to speak, my folks

gave me a bronze handbell to ring if I needed something. To my mother’s initial

amusement, which rapidly turned to intense annoyance, I found myself waving the bell,

keeping time with Bill as he sang “Rock Around the Clock,” giving great emphasis to the

Comets’ riffs as they built in the second solo. Tiring of running up the stairs to see what I

needed, I was told in no uncertain terms to only ring the bell if I needed Mum urgently.

Come 1956, I became aware of Lonnie Donegan and his frenzied mix of American folk

and blues songs, known as skiffle, and by the end of the year, Tommy Steele, one of

Britain’s first rock and rollers, captured my attention. By year’s end, I owned two or three

Haleys, a couple of Donegans, and a Steele or two. And then, Decca’s London

American label picked up the rights to Specialty Records, and Little Richard was

unleashed in Britain. “Ready, set, go man go,” and I was off to the races. This was

unbridled mania in the first degree—that frenzied voice, pushed to near-apocalyptic

ecstasy by a band whose sense of urgency matched that of Richard. His delicious

screams were the perfect segue for saxophone solos that were the very epitome of

rock ’n’ roll and a transcendent Good Time Playing “Ready Teddy” and “Rip It Up” over

and over, while delighting in that voice, that band, those saxes, and that drummer—oh

man—life changed forever. I still dug the Haleys, the Steeles, and the Donegans, but it

was the intensity of the Specialty performances that impressed, that made their mark

upon this ten-year-old.

The other thing about these 78 rpm records that impressed me was their fragility. I

remember walking across my bedroom and stepping upon my copy of “See You Later,

Alligator”/“The Paper Boy” by Bill Haley. It shattered into five or six pieces. I was

heartbroken. Next to “Thirteen Women,” it was my favorite Haley disc. Optimistically, I

asked Mum for glue and set about reassembling the pieces back into a 10-inch disc.

Sadly, and predictably, the result was a fiasco. My haste and desperation resulted in

misaligned pieces and glue was everywhere. The record was entirely unplayable. It was

around this time I was walking home from school and saw a shiny disc in the gutter.

From its glossiness it looked brand new, but there was only half of the record there. It

was “Oh, Boy!” by the Crickets. A disc that had obviously been cherished, coveted, and

longed for, until that fatal moment arrived, and it had slipped from someone’s grasp. And

there it lay, in the gutter, just half a record. And now, nearly seventy years later, I still

wonder what happened to the other half.

It was probably around this time that I first encountered one of the new-fangled LP/45

players. I was visiting a school friend and watched in fascination as he played a 45 on

his parent’s radiogram. It was the needle that really drew my attention—it looked like a

tiny, thin bit of wire—so very different from the thick steel needles I was accustomed to. I

think I found the fact that this little bit of wire actually worked was much more impressive

than the 7-inch size of the slightly flexible vinyl disc.

By 1957, I had graduated from the wind-up to a Garrard turntable that Dad had

engineered into a cabinet beside my bed. The deck slid out on rollers and played

through an old tube radio. I had the luxury of lying in bed and playing my precious 78s.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets on the British Coral label joined the collection, as did

Charlie Gracie on Parlophone, various skiffle records by Chas McDevitt, the Vipers,

Nancy Whiskey, and the theme song to Six-Five Special by Don Lang. Six-Five Special

was Britain’s first rock ’n’ roll TV show, and was watched avidly by me and thousands of

others every Saturday, at five minutes past six, on the BBC.

The Garrard, later followed by a Westminster portable player, was a multispeed deck,

and thus my library began to include 45s and, slowly, as they were expensive (several

weeks’ worth of pocket money), I added an LP or two. Through the collection of friends’

records, watching Six-Five Special, and very occasionally, radio play (the BBC was slow

off the mark to embrace rock ’n’ roll), I discovered Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Carl

Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Burnette and the Rock ’n Roll Trio. And thus,

inexorably, the number of 45s increased while the 78s collection stagnated.

By the late ’50s, I made the acquaintance of the three or four record stores in

Winchester and delighted in the fact that they not only allowed you to take records into

the booth to play, but actually encouraged it. Very quickly, I was listening to Joe Turner,

Louis Jordan, and Jackie Wilson—sometimes on 78, but increasingly on 45, as the

older and more fragile format was rapidly going out of favor. Talking to the clerks at the

stores, I also discovered the catalogs that the major record companies sent them and

realized that I could leaf through these tomes and order older titles by my heroes.

The horizons expanded.

And then, I discovered the junk shops, or the “antique stores” as they styled

themselves. Dad’s business was in buying, selling, and repairing antique clocks,

watches, and barometers—often items that were centuries old, handmade, and thus

real antiques. He looked down on these stores, scoffing at the “junk” they sold. But, as

the junk nearly always included a few dozen records, my friends and I regarded these

places as unheralded temples to great taste, and we toured them on a weekly basis. My

hip modern friends disregarded the 78s in these stores, instead concentrating on 45s

and the odd LP. Of course, I looked through those records too, but I never overlooked

the 78s. I had been late in coming to Elvis, but I came home with a handful of his HMV

78s, issued before RCA had its own UK operation. “Heartbreak Hotel”/“I Was the One,”

“I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”/“How Do You Think I Feel,” and la crème de la

crème, “Blue Moon”/“I Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine.” Oh, what joy! The ethereal

“Blue Moon” with Elvis’s voice, going from falsetto to baritone, all the while drenched in

shimmering reverb over hypnotically lazy drumming from Buddy Cunningham. This was

young Elvis, recorded by Sam Phillips in August 1954, and the exuberance of the other

Elvis’ voice sounding impossibly young, skittering through archetypical proto-rockabilly. Those blue and silver HMVs sat proudly next to the black and silver London Americans, the red Parlophones, and the royal blue Deccas.

So, my early teenage years were a time of great musical discovery, aided and abetted

by a love of bikes and cycling. Owning my first 10-speed opened up an entirely new

world. A world of sudden independence and mobility. A world untrammeled by the

tyranny of bus routes and schedules, of depending upon others. Other towns beckoned,

and the closest was Southampton, just ten or eleven miles away. Southampton with its

then-seedy St. Mary’s district, with a multitude of junk stores. Southampton, that vast

dock city with its big population of record-discarding inhabitants. Southampton was our

regular Saturday morning destination as we pedaled our 10-speeds with empty satchels

upon our backs, our pumping legs energized by the excitement of the hunt, our minds

bedazzled by anticipation.

It’s funny, after all these years, that the records one remembers most, are the ones that

got away. “Crazy Crazy Lovin”/“Hot Rock” by Johnny Carroll on UK Brunswick, which I

left behind because I didn’t know who he was, or “Big Bess” by Louis Jordan on US

Mercury for the lack of sixpence, or the nice US Epic copy of Roy Hamilton’s “Don’t Let

Go” which broke when I walked into a lamppost while talking to my fellow collector

buddy Ken Atwood. Ones that did make the trip included 78 versions of “Bluejean Bop”

by Gene Vincent, “Daddy Cool” by the Rays, “Cool Baby” by Charlie Gracie, plus

innumerable 45s by Fats Domino, Larry Williams, the Coasters, and Hank Ballard. If we

didn’t know the artist, we would look at the US label, which was usually listed on the UK

label, at least on the labels that were released under the Decca umbrella. If it was

Specialty, Chess, Imperial, or Aladdin, we knew it was a home run. Or, if it was an

intriguing name, like Little Willie John, we guessed that there was a decent chance the

record would be a good ’un.

As the ’50s drew to a close it seemed rock ’n’ roll was, if not dead, pretty sick. Bobby

Vee, Bobby Rydell, and an unending parade of insipid pop singers were on the radio

and the charts, and thus we spent an increasing amount of time in the junk stores or

perusing the back catalog of the hipper labels. We ordered Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy

Waters EPs on London and Vogue, Louis Jordan on Melodisc, Wynonie “Mr. Blues”

Harris on Vogue, and, in doing so, made the discovery that so much of what we termed

rock ’n’ roll was known in the US as rhythm and blues. Stories about R&B began to

show up in the hipper music weeklies, such as the New Record Mirror, while the

venerable Melody Maker regularly covered blues releases and touring artists, such as

Memphis Slim and Champion Jack Dupree. By the early ’60s, magazines like Blues

Unlimited, R&B Monthly, and the R&B Scene were appearing, and I subscribed to them

all, becoming pen pals with such as Mike Leadbitter, Roger Eagle, and Brian Smith. I

hitchhiked to Bexhill-on-Sea one weekend to visit Mike, who introduced me to Joe and

Jimmy Liggins, of whom he had extensive tape recordings, and then, as I was

departing, gave me three 78s: Pee Wee Crayton on Aladdin, Mister Ruffin on Spark,

and Mr. Google Eyes on Lee.

Real genuine American labels! Upon returning

home, I played them over and over, and am proud to report I still have these records

and they still sound wonderful. And in one of those little twists of fate that make life so

worthwhile, I now, over sixty years later, live across the street from Pee Wee’s niece.

Not all the purchases of unknown and hoped-for “gems” turned out golden, of course.

The most memorable failure in those early years was a very early London 78—way before the label was called London-American—by a cat named Two Ton Baker. The

label informed me that the US source was Imperial. Wow! I knew Imperial was the label

for Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis and had released dozens of great blues records.

With a name like Two Ton Baker, I couldn’t go wrong. The title was something like “Clink

Clank (in My Piggy Bank)”, which oddly didn’t arouse my usually rather reliable antenna.

I called in at a friend’s house on the way home to swagger about my find. Another

record-collecting friend was there, and both listened to my breathless account of this

discovery as I pointed to the name—so obviously a blues name—and then the

indisputable proof: the US label was Imperial. I glowed with pride as my buddy put the

disc on the turntable. The pride turned to acute embarrassment in seconds, as the

record proved to be a children’s song, and was greeted with howls of laughter.

Ah well, you can’t win ’em all.

My love of music led me to work for Island Records in 1965. When I had initially applied

for the job, it was Island’s R&B subsidiary Sue that had led me to the company, but soon

I found out Island’s bread and butter was Jamaican music and Sue barely broke even.

Not only did I fall in love with Jamaican music, which at that time was ska, but I also

became very friendly with Guy Stevens, the legendary music persona who ran the Sue

label. Our musical tastes were very similar, and over the years we would hit record

swaps together. I recall returning from one of them clutching a 78 of Wynonie Harris’

“Bloodshot Eyes”/“Lollipop Mama” on Vogue.

What a cool label Vogue was. They released material from Aladdin and King, which was interesting to me because Parlophone also released King sides. I have no idea just what the arrangement was, and just how who got what, but I imagine that Parlophone, being part of EMI, had first dibs, and that Vogue got the crumbs. But what tasty crumbs they were! Earl Bostic, Amos Milburn, Shirley and Lee, Gene and Eunice, Lynn Hope … some really cool shit. I believe much of this catalog

was marketed to the UK’s burgeoning West Indian demographic, with jump blues and R&B being extremely popular in Jamaica during the ’50s. Indeed, ska itself had evolved

from a mixture of R&B and indigenous mento.

I was laid off from Island Records in May of 1966. The company was undergoing a

period of low sales—ska was slowing down and rock steady had yet to kick in—and so

my dream job came to an end. I was nineteen years old and broke. I was living on a crummy bedsit in Acol Road in West Hampstead. I had to get to the dole office, several miles away in Marylebone, to sign on for unemployment. I had all of sixpence to my name. These were pre-decimal days in Britain. Those six pennies were less than half of what six pennies would be worth a few years later, in 1971, when the currency was changed. In 1966, they weren’t worth much anyway. Might have bought a cup of tea, perhaps, or bus fare to the dole office, but it wouldn’t have been enough for a return. So, in the spirit of austerity, I set off on foot, with the sixpence safe at home. Didn’t want to spend it on some frippery.

It was late in the day, but I figured that if I walked briskly, I would make it before the office closed at 4 p.m. I had procrastinated going for several days … meetings with bureaucracy were not relished. Nevertheless, if I didn’t make it that day, my unemployment money would be delayed another week. The sixpence would most certainly not last that long.

By 2:30, I was making good headway and was probably no more than a mile from my

destination. I passed a cluster of small stores, including a junk store. It had become kind

of inbred that a junk store spotted was a junk store to be explored. I went in. It had the

usual array of bric-a-brac, old prams, lights, kettles, clothing, all bathed in the familiar

junk store aroma—a sort of old cabbage, body odor, and stale beer smell. Sitting on the

treadle of an old cast-iron sewing machine was a box of 78s. Vera Lynn, Billy Cotton,

Ken Mackintosh, old Deccas and Columbias, a smattering of Philips with Frankie

Vaughan and Guy Mitchell, and there—a refreshing oasis in a desert of mediocrity—a

London-American by Smiley Lewis. “Shame, Shame, Shame”/“No, No” with the catalog

number HLP 8367.

London was the UK’s best label in the ’50s. Owned by Decca Records, it licensed and released masters from myriad small US independents. Specialty, Chess, Herald, Atlantic, Savoy, Sun, Imperial … practically every US indie saw a UK release at some time or another on London. And there was old Smiley, grinning at me through the dust. I reached down and grabbed him. Examined him. A half-inch chunk was missing from the edge. The rest seemed OK, though—a bit scratched, but looked pretty clean.

So here was Smiley, in my hand. I asked how much he was.

“Sixpence,” replied the owner, a small, bedraggled woman who was almost invisible

amongst the clutter surrounding her.

I considered the situation. Sixpence was my entire financial holding at that

moment. Moreover, it was safely and securely stashed in my little room, at least three

miles away.

Paranoia is never far from a record collector. Until that moment, Smiley Lewis had not

entered my mind. Indeed, it was more than a fair bet that he had not entered my mind

for weeks, if not months. But now things were different. A Smiley Lewis 78, in middling

condition, lay right here in this store. Who knew what collectors were prowling, this

instant, just yards away? My god, a Smiley Lewis on London American! Right here, right

now! The fact that the sixpence lay in one direction, and the dole office in the other was no longer of consequence.

So, I would not get any dole money for over another

week. So, I’d have to go all the way back to Acol Road to get my sixpence. So, I would

spend my last sixpence on a broken 78.

So what?

There are times when circumstances trump logic, times when the irrational makes a lot

more sense than the purely rational. Learning that the store closed at 4:30 p.m., I asked the proprietor to please save the record for me, and I would be back to pay for it before she closed.

I ran all the way back to the bedsit, grabbed the sixpence, and ran all the way back,

walking in the door at 4:25 p.m.

It was mine.

Just what I did for food that week, or for rent, or for anything, I can’t remember. But I

survived. And I still have the Smiley Lewis record.

Some years later, I bought a reissue LP with “Shame, Shame, Shame” and “No, No” on

it and finally got to hear the intros.

The second half of this story will appear in a few weeks - stay tuned.