I Just Couldn’t Give Up My Records

 

When I was growing up, my finest possessions were records. First the 78s with Guy Mitchell, Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney—“C’Mon a My House,” And then the 45s with the late ‘50s hits of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley and the Comets.

 

But the 12-inch, 33s became my true treasures. The Columbia Record Club brought me My Fair Lady, Frank Sinatra and my first jazz albums.

 

I couldn’t give them up in 1963 when I drove across country from San Francisco to my new job in Dover, Del. About 200 of them were piled in the backseat and weighed my 1956 Ford  down. I needed new tires when I got to Wells, Nev. And new shock absorbers in Salt Lake City. If I were in a floating balloon, I would have tossed out bags of sand. But not my records!  It’s a wonder I ever made it.

 

I added to my record collection over time, and I didn’t get rid of them as CDs took hold. Years later, I began to wonder if they were valuable. The idea was strengthened when I took Pickett’s uncle’s 1940s 78 records from Cluster Springs to a Richmond dealer.

 

He looked them over, didn’t find anything special but agreed to take the whole stack of 200 records for $200. He said the real demand was for jazz records of the 1950s.

 

Really? I had a ton of them in Washington. I brought about 30 that I was willing to spare and started to count the money in my head. Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis. What gems I had! But the dealer didn’t like all the scratches in these records and the wear and tear in trips across country.

 

“Wait, what’s this?” He said. It was a pink Cal Tjader record, with Mongo Santamaria, and Vince Guaraldi, who later wrote the “Peanuts” soundtracks. As he opened the sleeve he liked the unusual pink color. Then he took his finger, pointed to a hole in the record and stared at me.

 

“Oh, that was from playing darts in our rec room. I wasn’t very good at it.” Without saying another word, I packed the records  all up and took them home.

 

So I kept the records but I didn’t play them at all in the 2000s because all the new music was on CDs and itunes and I didn’t fix the broken LP player. Finally, when we downsized to a new apartment, I gave them all away to the Goodwill.

 

Then vinyl made a comeback. Everybody wanted vinyl again. My timing was terrible.

 

That’s OK. I can get everything on YouTube now anyway!