37 Years

(This article was originally composed on 9/23/2019)

As I write this, I am several days out from October 1st, and as those who have been following me for some time here, that day has a special significance for me - it is my anniversary of collecting vintage records, this year being the 37th.  Going back to that 25-cent 1955 Harry Belafonte RCA LP that Mom got me on October 1, 1982, my collection has now spanned almost 4 decades.  With each passing year, I get a more complete collection, but there is always something new to discover, which is why I will probably actively collect until I draw my last breath, which will hopefully be many years away yet!

First, let us get to the boring part of the discussion - the numbers.  As of October 1st, my collection consists of 1289 CDs, 974 LP records, and 115 DVDs of related interest, in addition to approximately 300 or so 78's and a few 45 EPs.   The numbers indicate a steady, growing collection, but the numbers also somewhat belie the details.  This is what I will elaborate on now.

This year, acquisitions have actually been slow in coming - I actually did not even purchase any media for months between November 2018 and this past May.  However, acquisitions actually picked up starting in August, and the emphasis this year for me has been on acquiring long-lost LP records I have been looking for as well as vintage big band movies on DVD.  This was kicked off with the purchase in August of a 52-record collection titled The Great Singers which was originally released as a collection in 1985 by a company called the Easton Press.  The 52 LP records in this collection are grouped into boxed albums of 4, and that totals to 13 volumes.  Like the Franklin Mint big band set (which I acquired in 2005) this collection was a monumental collection which featured the famous recordings of legendary male and female vocalists such as Tony Bennett, Dinah Shore, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Lena Horne, and a virtual cavalcade of other legendary names.  However, from my perspective the set was somewhat incomplete, as some notable legends were left out completely for some odd reason - notably Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Dean Martin, Jo Stafford, and Vic Damone, to name a few.  Despite that limitation though, the collection is still an excellent one, perhaps the best ever assembled, and although lacking in some areas it still has collectible quality.  I thought perhaps there were more than 13 volumes, although my research concluded that 13 seems to be the full collection.  Although the legendary pop vocalists that predominated during a period between the big bands and the rise of rock and roll are not a primary focus of my collection efforts, a quality collection of them is still good to have, and this one is by far the best.   Like the monumental Franklin Mint big band collection, the likelihood of a collection like this being reissued on CD is practically impossible, being that neither Easton Press (whose primary focus these days is on books) and Franklin Mint (which now specializes in collectible curios) are in the music business anymore.  This is the perfect lead-in now to some important commentary I wanted to share on observations I have made over the past 30 or so years.

Back when I started my own collection, I was a 12-year-old kid without access to a lot of money to really invest in the collection I wanted, so the majority of my early collection endeavors were focused on junk stores, in particular, the legendary Rio Mall I have discussed before.  But, back in that time, many places - Time-Life, Reader's Digest, Easton Press, Franklin Mint, etc. - did have mail-order record subscription deals, and some of what they offered was phenomenal.  The Reader's Digest sets are particularly good, and I still have several of those boxed sets in my collection even now.  At that time, records were extremely easy to get too - all you had to do most of the time was just send in a business reply card for the record set you wanted, and in a couple of weeks it would arrive.  However, the catch was that those records had to be paid for, and a set like that could run upwards of $50 at that time.  In my first years of junior high school, I made the mistake of ordering a crap-load of these, and at one point I had six Reader's Digest sets that I ended up never paying for.  That was a regrettable mistake I made up for later when most of my original record collection was lost in storage a couple of months after I married Barbara, and it was a sort of poetic justice now that I look back on it.  The Easton Press set comes into this discussion as it was one of those orders I initially got years ago, as that set was released at around the time I was 14 years old and I sent in the card to get it.  At that time, I only received the first volume (Bennett/Clooney/Shore) and after some years I had actually forgotten about that collection until I saw the whole set on eBay a couple of months back and was able to get them all - the difference is that this time they are paid for in full!  Many companies do not even issue records or CD's anymore for ordering like they used to, and even that 12 tapes for a penny deal the major music clubs like Columbia and RCA used to have don't exist anymore - I haven't seen one of those clubs in over 14 years actually.  In a way, it is a tragic reality, but on the other hand we now have Amazon and eBay which offer most of this same stuff at even better prices.  My plan in the coming year for my collection is to "fill in the gaps" of my vinyl collection, and I will elaborate more on that shortly.

The other emphasis I have focused on this year is the acquisition of vintage big band movies on DVD.  Over the years, the DVD part of my collection has been focused on four areas - live concert
and TV programs, "Soundie" collections, documentaries, and full-length motion pictures.  There are a number of good feature-length big band movies that were produced between 1927 and 1959, and I now have most of them due to a major objective I have had this year, that being finding the ones I was missing.  Some of the ones I have obtained the past year so far feature Kay Kyser's orchestra (Carolina Blues, Playmates, Swing Fever, That's Right You're Wrong) as well as many vintage pictures featuring famous big bands in a central role (Private Buckaroo featuring Harry James and the Andrews Sisters, Hollywood Hotel featuring Benny Goodman and Johnny "Scat" Davis, Sun Valley Serenade featuring Glenn Miller, and Las Vegas Nights featuring Tommy Dorsey).  However, these efforts have not been without challenges.  Defective discs have been an issue recently, as I have had to return Carolina Blues 3 times before getting a playable copy, and I also had an issue with the vintage 1943 Ted Lewis picture Is Everybody Happy?  At this writing though, everything is good, and I have playable copies of those films in excellent condition now.  I have also had delivery issues - one set I got on eBay was a 20-volume Time-Life collection called Your Hit Parade that features the original recordings of practically every hit song between the years 1940 and 1959, and it is a magnificent collection.   The problem here was not with the eBay seller, but rather with the typical ineptitude of the postal service, which took practically a month to get a package here which should have been delivered within a few days.  However, they did eventually get here, and the gracious seller even refunded me the money I paid for them due to the trouble it took to get them, so all is good.  These small logistic snags are a pain in the butt to deal with, but they will happen on occasion.  As long as they work out though, all is forgiven and forgotten.

The CD part of my collection has had minimal growth this year, but I did manage to get my hands on some amazing collections.  The first that comes to mind was one of the first purchases I made for the new fiscal collection year, and it was of a 5-CD boxed collection of legendary accordionist Charles Magnante that I have had my eye on for several years.  In addition, I also managed to obtain a 2-disc collection of legendary Russian Jewish mandolinist Dave Apollon, a must for any vintage big band/jazz collection, as well as the 13-CD collection of Glenn Miller's complete recordings that were produced on the anniversary of his 100th birthday in 2002.  I also was able to get some fine CD reissues of the Dukes of Dixieland and of some early 1890's reissues from cylinder recordings, which include the sides of many proto-dance bands such as Edward Issler and others.  The year for CDs then was both modest but good. 

One of the things about collecting the kind of music I collect is that it entails history.  It is more than just a collection, but more like a personal historical archive.  Few of us these days actually collect this type of music anymore, as many of those who originally enjoyed it have now gone onto their eternal reward.   For the young 20-something Millennials, the Beatles are now considered "ancient," and Elvis Presley to them is actually prehistoric - God forbid you to mention anything to them about such people I collect such as Kay Kyser, Glenn Miller, or Guy Lombardo; the very mention of those names is met with a blank slack-jawed expression and an asinine comment such as "did they sing with the Backstreet Boys?"  Most retail music stores - which I rarely frequent now that they are corporate entities that offer little in the way of quality music - don't even sell vintage big band collections save the occasion cheap knock-off import of Glenn Miller or something (big bands neither started nor ended with the recording "In the Mood" by the way - there is a lot more to it than that).  The labels such stuff is produced on and mass-marketed to the nostalgic aging "Boomer" that may have some affinity for hearing "In the Mood" on occasion because it gives them the "warm fuzzies" over the memories of their deceased parents who grew up with the music.  And, that leads to some other observations.

As I approach my 50th birthday (at the time you are seeing this and I am typing it, I am now in my 50th year of existence) I'm somewhat shell-shocked by the reality that the hippies of my parents' generation are now the old geezers in their 70s, and those who were that age when I was a child are either now dead or at the youngest in their early 90s.  It also brings the reality more clear (especially after getting my AARP membership recently) that I am on the threshold of being a senior myself now - that is a lot to absorb frankly.  Equally perplexing is the fact that I am in my 37th year of collecting records, and when I first started my collection many of the LPs I had then were around 30 years old; today they are over 70 years and qualify as antiques in many cases.  Also in observing how popular culture has radically changed in just over 30 years also makes it more important to preserve good entertainment, especially now since many cultural icons of the past, notably in recent years Kate Smith, are being defamed by the dominant culture as "offensive."  A whole other discussion awaits on that at a later time though, as I am in the process of addressing that at length in a future writing.

After that brief detour down the proverbial rabbit-trail, we want to get back to the discussion at hand.  So, for the coming years, what do I hope to accomplish?  It is time to set out some goals, as there are a few for this coming year in particular in regard to the collection.

To begin, I am going to revisit some vinyl acquisitions.  There are a number of things out there on LP that I doubt will ever be privileged with being reissued on CD recordings, and I have in mind a few significant things from years ago I would like to acquire on vinyl this time.  Some of what I am after I once had only in the form of cassettes (nothing worth preserving should be put on cassette, as they are crappy in quality), and my personal opinion of cassettes is that they were a technological mistake that never should have happened - even fragile 80-year-old shellac 78s have outlasted most cassettes honestly.  Cassettes tended to mess up, tangle, and although cheap were impractical for quality recording purposes.  I will also add 8-tracks and VHS tapes to that, as both of those were equally worthless in quality, and thanks be to God they are not marketed anymore!  Despite that reality, in past years (in particular my teens) I was able to get my hands on some good stuff on cassette, and later thankfully did find out these were available on vinyl and even on the occasional CD reissue.  Thanks to both eBay and Amazon, I am now able to access those and have indeed already started the process of obtaining some of them.  In this coming collection year, I hope to focus more on acquiring those particular vinyl recordings, in particular, those which never have had the opportunity to be reissued on CD.  Back in my high school years in the 1980s, for instance, I recall finding at the old Ames Mart in Kingwood, WV, a number of volumes of a set of classic Italian jazz imports that were collectively titled "I Gigante del Jazz," and what these featured were rare later-era recordings of jazz legends.  One of them was a cassette I originally had which featured Lionel Hampton material from the early 1970s, while another in the series featured Duke Ellington, and in particular one of the best recordings of his composition "C Jam Blues."  Yet another item of interest was an LP I found that was on the old Mercury label dating from the early 1960s of a good Dixieland group called the Riverboat Five, and the title of the record was From Natchez to Mobile.  The original record I had of this was something I picked up around January of 1983 at an old junk store in Shanks, WV, called Elmo Barnes's, and that establishment was a fierce contender with the Rio Mall for thrift shops back in the day in the area.  A third LP item I have in my scope this year is an old Reader's Digest boxed set from the late 1970s of vintage 1940's big band and pop classics entitled Juke Box Saturday Night, and another on my list is a 1960's polka band that recorded on the Liberty label then called Paul Potski's Pumpernickles.  The good thing about this is that although the possibility of seeing any of these reissued professionally on CD is negligible, I have the capabilities to record them on CD myself now, and can even digitize them on computer.  Upon doing that project - which I have been working on periodically since 2013 - I plan on eventually putting a lot of my rarer vinyl items on a flash drive and then having them even more readily accessible, as some of them I have not heard in years.  I am also setting my sights on more big band TV programs, such as those available of Ray Anthony's 1950's program, and as far as CDs are concerned, there is one major set I want that I will mention.  In the early 1980s, Time-Life produced a good LP collection of the vintage recordings of the big bands, and each band leader was given an album with two records.  Originally, I only had one - Glenn Miller's collection - but the whole set has around 22 albums.  Time-Life did reissue those on CD, and I have seen them available on eBay as a collection, and their acquisition is a good possibility this coming year.  The other big CD purchase I have on my scopes this year is a massive 24-disc collection of Duke Ellington's The Centennial Collection, which was released in 1998 in lieu of his 100th birthday.  That set is very expensive, but it is one of the most comprehensive Ellington collections I have seen, as it contains all his recorded output over a 50-year period (1920-1970).  That one is conditional - if I am able to get it this year, I will, but it is not a priority. 

This concludes our year-end collection anniversary retrospective, and for the next year - 38 - I plan on posting a few pictures of the collection.  Thanks again for visiting, and happy listening until next time!