Revisiting the Vinyl

Mark and I gave away our turntable after the CD collection took over and everything got uploaded onto the iPod. The vinyl—everything from gospel and jazz to rock 'n roll and blues—remained in boxes in the loft. But once I told the boys they had to clean out all their stuff by the time they were 30, I decided it was time to clean out all the vinyl, or at least what I could manage to sell and give away.

Jakob went through the jazz to start his collection. I think I let David Correia take what he wanted. Then I found a collector in Santa Fe who went through not only the rest of the jazz but the rock ‘n roll, blues, and country. I can’t remember what he paid me—maybe $100 for the lot—but it was a relief to see it find a home other than the garbage bin.

I figured I’d never sell the classical, but after I put a notice in the Town Crier, our local newsletter, a man from Taos called to say he’d take all of it. I spent a nice afternoon with him at his sign making business and when I left he handed me fifty bucks.

I kept one box of records, which sat in the loft for another couple of years until I decided it was time to get another turntable and listen to them so I could figure out why these were the ones I’d kept. I found a used turntable at a thrift store, replaced the needle by ordering online, and was ready to go.

So here’s what’s in the box. Two records that Mark and I, respectively, brought to the relationship: The Loading Zone and Joy of Cooking. Both bands were from Berkeley and survived only a couple of years in the late sixties and early seventies. But they had some remarkable women in them: Linda Tillery of The Loading Zone, and Terry Garthwaite and Toni Brown, who led Joy of Cooking as guitarist (Terry) and pianist (Toni) as well as lead vocals (Terry’s voice is amazing). Tillery went on to a solo career, as did Toni and Terry, who in 1980 joined up with Rosalie Sorrels, another great vocalist, and monologuist Bobbie Louise Hawkins (former wife of poet Robert Creeley) to release Live at the Great American Music Hall. These albums represented a time and place for Mark and me as individuals and as a couple.

What else is in the box? I’m not sure why, as I prefer R & B, but the blues are well represented: the white guys who discovered black blues, like East/West, the Butterfield Blues Band (the first record I bought at Antioch); Blues Breaker, John Mayall with Eric Clapton; English Rose, the early Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green (Black Magic Woman); and the black guys they emulated, like I Need You, Elmore James; Trouble in Mind, King Curtis; Night Life, Luther Allison, and the really old time blues singers Billie and Dede Pierce and Jimmy & Mama Yancy.

The R & B I prefer isn’t as well represented, I guess because I have so much of it in iTunes and CDs. Laura Nyro’s Gonna Take a Miracle with LaBelle is a stunning revelation of the depths of her versatility as soul singer as well song writer (on her other albums). The other favorite is Pieces of a Man, Gil Scott-Heron. What could be better than The Revolution Will Not Be Televised? I gave a brand new copy of the record to Jakob for Christmas.

The only Grateful Dead music I’ve ever owned are the two albums in the box: American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead. Box of Rain and Uncle John’s Band are pretty catchy tunes, although Jerry Garcia’s vocal range is about as good as my baseball pitch, and I’ve never understood Deadheads. Some Dylan and Joplin rounded out the Rock ‘n Roll until I found The Best of the Everly Brothers at the thrift store the other day. Then Jakob gave me the Stones Let It Bleed for Christmas, with the best album cover ever produced and one of the greatest songs recorded: Gimme Shelter.

My other favorites represent the best of other genres: Black Snake Blues, Clifton Chanier of Zydeco fame; A Little More Faith, the Reverend Gary Davis of gospel fame; the Gypsy Kings of flamenco and salsa; and my all time favorite folk singer, Barbara Dane, who sings It Isn’t Nice with the Chambers Brothers. In fact, I’m going to put it on the turntable right now.

And finally, the most unusual album in the box has to be Grace Paley reading from her story collections “The Little Disturbances of Man” and “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” in her nasal Bronx accent. My literary and musical worlds conjoin there.

So that’s the story of what’s in the box, which isn’t in a box anymore but is lined up below the many shelves of my CDs, which I’ve been wondering what to do about as I start downsizing. But Jakob just informed me that he’s starting a CD collection—I didn’t know CDs were the latest retro thing—so I gave him the start of his jazz collection: John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders Archie Shepp, etc. There are still hundreds left. There’s also a box of barely audible 45s that Mark and I collected as teenagers. I also found them up in the loft, cleaned them up, organized them by genre—Rock ‘n Roll, Rockabilly, R & B, and played them one more time. Remember You’re My World, Go Now!, I Go to Pieces, Laugh Laugh, and The Lion Sleeps Tonight? RIP.