33 Years!!

It is hard to believe that I have been collecting vintage big band recordings for 33 years today!  I am doing this year-end perspective on the collection to show where I am at, how I got there, and where we are going with it now.  It sounds a little odd, I know, to be celebrating something like a record collection, but it is a pretty big deal.  Many of you who have followed me all these years know the story of how it began, but there is another dimension I will share today.

It was on October 1, 1982, that I got my very first record - it was a 1959 Harry Belafonte LP of all things (a self-titled LP with a green cover and Belafonte's picture on the front, RCA LPM-1150).  Again, this is old news to many of you, but there is another part of the story I want to share today, and that is why it was a Harry Belafonte LP.  When I first started to get interested in this type of music, I listened to a radio station out of Charlotte, NC, that played a variety of this type of thing, including a lot of 1950's pop standards in addition to big band recordings.  One of the songs they played a lot, which for some reason I liked then, was Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song" (you all know this one - "Day-O, Daaaay-O, Daylight come and me wanna go home...").  Of course, I don't have much to do with Harry Belafonte today - I outgrew that many moons ago, and besides, his politics leave a lot to be desired anyway these days (same with Tony Bennett unfortunately).  Anyway, October 1st that year was on a Friday, and I was in school and Mom went shopping that day at the old "Mall" in Rio.  She was the one who got me the record, and I recall she paid a whole quarter for it.  It was quite a nice surprise, and looking back on it Mom really put some thought into that seemingly small gesture, and she deserves some credit for that.  The following month, in November, I got my first actual big band LP's, but it was the Belafonte record that got the whole thing started.

That story being told, it is now 33 years later, and today I can say I have come a long way with the collection.  As of today, my collection stands at 1189 CD's, 902 LP records, 96 DVD's of concerts, vintage "Soundies," and other great footage, and about a couple hundred 78 RPM's.  Additionally, my logbook doesn't record a number of additions I have of material people have sent me that I have preserved myself on disc, as they are not professional recordings and cannot technically be logged onto anything.  And with the stats out of the way, let's talk about this past year.

For the first time in many, MANY years, I have a collection that is so comprehensive that very little else needs to be added at this point, although I still have a few things I am looking for.  That means that this year purchases have been less as there is less we need to get, and I have noted that I have gotten slightly more DVD's this year than CD's - also, although I didn't buy any LP recordings in the past year, this year I got a handful of material I have been looking for on LP.  With the addition of an LP-to-CD recorder back in 2012, I have been able to put some rare stuff on disc too, which is nice.  Another development this year too that I briefly mentioned earlier was the fact that I have ways of putting MP3's on disc now, and have successfully saved about 20 discs of that material.  Some of it is sent via email from fellow collectors, and some I have acquired by being able to convert some YouTube clips to sound and save them on disc.  I may be doing more of that in the coming year, and one project relative to that is a series of discs I have put together called "Big Band Varieties," which is going on seven volumes.  Unfortunately, this is about the only way I can get a lot of rare material into my collection, as so much good stuff on LP has not been reissued on compact disc and much of it probably won't be either - that is largely due to a newer generation that doesn't appreciate good music as much as many of us did, as to many millennial kids these days the Beatles are considered "vintage music," and Glenn Miller or Guy Lombardo is relatively unknown to such.  That factor, as well as much of the original generation that appreciated that great music either being of advanced age or deceased (I found it shocking that World War II vets - my grandparents' generation - are starting to reach their 90's and even 100's!), much of those collections of great music on vinyl end up in the local thrift stores and flea markets, which is good news for me, as $20 can get you a box of LP's if you know what you are looking for.  Fortunately, there are still a number of us around (myself, as well as my young friend Joe Enroughty in Richmond, VA, who even has his own Lombardo-style orchestra) who will preserve this rich legacy.

I am not sure what this new year for my collection will bring, as I have been purchasing less material, but I am sure I will probably be getting some things in the coming months.  So, as year 34 dawns, it is certainly a new era in my collecting passion.  Let's hope for the best, and we'll see where we are at next October.