"A LIFE COLLECTING VINYL"

Anybody who reads Right Track regularly probably has a story similar to mine. One day in school, a kid came to class, asking, "Hey, did you listen to Rock'n'Roll last night?" He was, of course, referring to the new nightly show of disc jockey Alan Freed, the self-proclaimed King of Rock'n'Roll, on New York radio station WINS, 1010 on the dial.

Not wanting to be left out, I took my family's radio into my room that night and tuned in. For a kid who'd been listening in my parents' car to "Sixteen Tons" and "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett," and cringing at "The Yellow Rose Of Texas," Freed was a revelation. I made my mother take me to a record store, where I plunked down three weeks' allowance on "Honky Tonk," "Blueberry Hill" and "Priscilla," by somebody called Eddie Cooley & the Dimples. I was hooked.

Next, it was "Oh What A Nite," and a walk up the street to another record store which had bins containing, not only an artist's latest, but records they had made before! Thus, I was able to get "Baby Baby" and Frankie Lymon's earlier sides, like "The A-B-Cs Of Love" and "I Promise To Remember." That was the moment when this obsession for "what came before" began.

High school came and, down by the train station, was a magazine stand that sold used juke box records, six for a dollar. At that price, I could afford to take chances, often because I knew the label had things I usually liked: Atlantic, Vee-Jay and others. Then, one day, a kid from the lunch room and I started talking records. He said he went to this store down in the subway near 42nd and Broadway called Times Square Records which had great old records on the wall, some at outrageous prices, like five dollars each. I went down there and these guys were talking way over my head, about labels like Chance and Red Robin, which, even then, were long out of business. There was a red plastic copy of "Golden Teardrops" on the wall for the insanely high price of ten bucks! Ten dollars for one record? I bought a reissue on Vee-Jay for a tenth of that and had enough left over for a Louis Lymon on Fury and a Jesters on Winley, plus a slice of pizza and a Pepsi.

Every American of a certain age can tell you where he was the day John F. Kennedy was shot. Nobody but "Greasy Harold"behind the counter and I can say they were at Times Square Records when the store's owner, Slim came in and said, "Hey, did youse hear, da President just got shot." At that very moment, I was holding a 45 by Johnny Ace, the singer who'd also been shot in Texas, not quite a decade earlier.

Soon, people started recording my songs and I started making records and having some success. Record collecting took a back seat to having a life. After a brief fling with mini-fame, a briefer marriage with child and it was 1970 and, what with the dismal state of contemporary music, collecting old records started to look good again.

To augment my meager income playing local clubs, I took a job as guitarist/conductor for the Shirelles, who played a few times a months on the flourishing oldies circuit. On the road, I'd hit local record shops, usually only to be told I'd been beaten to the punch by Canned Heat or Peter Wolf of the J Geils Band. Occasionally, I'd get there first. There was a distributor in Palm Beach, Florida which a local musician took me to. We had to drive all night from Miami, after the gig, to get there at 8am, when they opened the doors. All the Florida collectors had pretty much cleaned out the good stuff (the musician himself had picked up Elvis on Sun five years earlier), but I spotted a door under a staircase and we went inside. Somehow, this tiny room had been missed over the years and we found pink Mercurys and yellow Atlantics galore, all for a nickel apiece.

Then, there was Wilmington, North Carolina. A seaport, it had a diverse population, a good sign for record hunters. After rehearsal, I went down the street to a shop where all I found was Dinah Washington's "Big Long Sliding Thing" for a buck. The lady at the counter told me the store I wanted was a couple blocks away. With only three hours before our bus was to depart, I went there. The person at the counter told me no one was allowed to look at the 45s but she'd look herself for anything I asked for. I said "Anything on the Gee label?" She pulled out a couple of Cleftones and two copies of the Anne Kaye, all for a quarter each. No Aladdins and certainly no Chance records.

With time running out, she took me up to an attic, where she said I could have any 78 for a dime. I don't collect 78s and I expected to see piles of Bing Crosbys and Guy Lombardos. Well, the first box I picked up was a 25 count box of "A Star" by the Five Crowns on Rainbow. Not before, and not until the first time I kissed Ronnie Spector, had I ever felt my knees get weak. But, up in that attic, they got weak and I had to go across the street and get two Pepsis to calm down.

There were multiple copies of the Spaniels on Chance, all the Orioles, every Charles Brown you can name on Modern, Exclusive and Aladdin, Johnny Otis, the Robins and Four Buddies on Savoy, Little Esther, Young John Watson and the Dominoes on Federal, Floyd Dixon on Aladdin, Modern and Supreme, the Swallows, Strangers, Lula Reed, Wynonie Harris and Bullmoose on King, all for a dime.

Most New York collectors only went for groups so, in the early 70s, single artists and the bluesier groups like the "5" Royales, even red plastic on Apollo, were fairly easy to come by. For a musician like me, a Percy Mayfield or a Tiny Bradshaw were more interesting listening than groups anyway. Even high-priced, mega-dealers like Val Shively or Louis Silvani were selling Roy Brown and Joe Liggins for a couple of bucks, while the Five Keys on Aladdin were already pushing toward the hundred dollar mark.

As R&B records from the early 50s became more and more scarce and expensive, collectors were forced to branch out into other areas to feed their addiction to vinyl. It was interesting to see who went where. Some moved into soul, some into rockabilly, some into "my" territory of urban, horn-based jump bands, while others specialized in New Orleans records.

I dabbled in all the above, but by the mid-90s, even these areas were getting hard to uncover on 45. Labels like Ace have filled our need to have the music if not the actual artifact to fondle and label copy to stare at until our eyes glaze over in ecstasy.

Looking for an area where there might be less competition, and lower prices, I began looking for jazz 45s or pop and country cover versions of my favorite R&B tunes: Oldies But Baddies. On labels like Jax, Prestige or Mercury, I could find red plastic Wardell Grays, Gene Ammons or Charlie Parkers.

But covers offered the broadest and most unending array of possibilities. I again became as excited about collecting as I was when I first started collecting the Moonglows and the Harptones. On King, I'd find the York Brothers covering "Sixty Minute Man" and "Chicken Blues," or Elliot Lawrence, arranged by Neal Hefti, doing "Lovin' Machine," on red plastic, no less! The same tune done surprisingly well by little Teresa Brewer on Coral, with a very hip sax solo. Hey, wasn't Wynonie covering Hank Penny on that one?

Overlooked major labels, like Coral, Mercury and RCA Victor were now a treasure trove of these mad versions of familiar tunes. Dale Evans covering "Please Send Me Someone To Love," Steve Lawrence doing "Speedo," 10-year-old George Benson covering Ray Charles on "It Should've Been Me," or Bill Darnel's double-sided weird masterpiece of Willie Mabon's "I Don't Know" backed with the Clovers' "I Played The Fool."

The great thing about covers is you can either goof on them or dig the musicianship of top New York and Hollywood session men. Some, though, are really nice, like Kay Starr's "Fool, Fool, Fool" or virtually any country cover on King. Patti Page does a more than credible job on "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus" and Joe Liggins's "One Sweet Letter." And you haven't lived until you've heard "The Honey Jump," as done by Charlie Ventura, vocals by Jackie Cain & Roy Kral. For cruel laughs, there's Vaughn Monroe destroying Fats Domino's "All By Myself."

There's also nothing like collecting covers for learning about how the music business worked in those days. Did you know that, in 1952, Ferlin Husky first recorded "Gone" as Terry Preston, also on Capitol and was covered at that time for the same label by Giselle MacKenzie (her b-side was a vocal version of Maxwell Davis's "Hot Point")? Have you ever wondered why you'll find versions of "Sincerely" on Decca/Coral by Bob Wills and Louis Armstrong, in addition to the McGuire Sisters? The company had a policy of guaranteeing three versions of a given song if the publisher was willing to allow them to release the tune for 75% of the statutory rate of two cents.

As any junkie knows, a jones must be fed and collectors are nothing if not addicts for whom the act of collecting defies reason and taste. We will find something to collect!

- Billy Vera