I am writing today from my office breakroom area during my lunch hour, and today is Monday, October 1, 2018. For many, it's not something too significant, but in my own personal life it marks a very important occasion - it is the 36th anniversary of my extensive music library. The original story has been regaled in previous posts, so I won't get into the elaborations of that here. However, it is of interest that as of the past couple of years, I have made at least three trips to the Rio Mall in Rio, WV, the place where my first LP's came from all those years ago. I don't buy as many LP's today, due to the fact I have almost everything I am looking for as well as the fact that space is limited to store them. However, there have been some significant finds this year, so we'll talk about those a little.
The one tragic note in all of this is that Joan and Gary Sprunk, a nice couple in Arizona who made reissues of some rare LP's I had in my original collection, no longer offer those CD's for sale - their company, Arazol Music, is now strictly an on-demand service. However, fortunately before they changed their way of doing things, I was able to add to my collection this year many good CD reissues of my old LP's. Although I now have the technology myself to do the conversions to CD format, the professional look of the Sprunks' products were much more attractive in my collection.
I was also able to get a few other vintage CD's of my original LP collection from a company in England called Sepia Records, a service I started to patronize the previous year when they released that 1963 Vaughn Monroe Dot LP that was part of my original collection on a CD. This year was a goldmine in regard to them - I was able to get a 4-disc set of Tommy Dorsey's early 1950's Deccas, some of his best in my opinion, and that was a collection I have been after for some time. I also managed as well, via Archaeophone Records, to finally obtain a CD reissue of James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra Victor sides that were cut between 1913 and 1915. The other important addition was some good CD reissues of Ernie Heckscher's LP's on Verve from the early 1960's, as well as a rare remote radio broadcast of his orchestra from San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel in the early 1960's. The final thing to mention is some very rare 1890's cylinders which have been reissued by a service called Tinfoil Productions, and those contain some important recordings of Edward Issler's Orchestra, perhaps the earliest professional dance orchestra to record. These were some valuable finds. On DVD, I got the new revamped King of Jazz, which is the 1930's masterpiece that featured Paul Whiteman as well as Bing Crosby's first appearance on film. The cover of the DVD is a bit racy (it has a naked Art Deco picture of a woman on front) but it is still a welcome find.
In the past couple of years or so, I see some trends happening that may impact my collection in the coming years. For one, more and more music is available as digital downloads, including some extremely rare material. I have not catalogued those into my collection yet, although I have collected a significant number on several flash drives. Will this mean the end of CD's and vinyl? I don't believe it will, but no doubt digital downloads are worth taking into consideration.
So, what else is new for this coming year? Currently, I have my eye on a 5-disc collection of legendary accordionist Charles Magnante, and plan on purchasing that within the next couple of months. Also, the Dave Apollon collection is something in the forecast, although the current Amazon prices for it are astronomical - I need to find a more economic means of getting that for sure. My present collection stands now at around 990 LP records, just over 100 DVD's, and around 1235 CD's. As noted before, my collection continues to grow, but at a less rapid pace than in years past. So, next year at this time we'll see where it goes.
Again, as we begin the 37th year of collecting vintage big band/dance band recordings, I'm anticipating a good year. And, we'll be updating that as well in a year from now as well.
