As you know, I have returned to blogging on a regular basis. So, what was I doing during my long absences over the past several years? I was touring with the Munchausen Theatre Orchestra, playing cow bell. Unfortunately, most of our performances were cancelled due to illness. As a result, venues quit booking us. I must admit that the presence of our conductor always gave me an ill feeling. He always told me I was sick. What a creep. In any event, I quit the Orchestra and am once again in tip top blogging shape. Even my cow bell no longer sounds sick.

I have some exciting news (well, exciting to me) about some acquisitions to my vinyl collection over the past several years that may lead many to question my sanity. Once you hear what they are, you may be saying to yourself “What’s all the fuss about?” or maybe “You are not joking, are you? Why would you want to collect that?”

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am obsessed with the records and tapes once owned by my parents. I inherited what was left of their collection when my mother passed away in 2008. At that point, the 45s that even still existed were in poor condition with many unplayable. The LPs and tapes had fared tremendously better.

Living in the country surrounded by farmland with few families with children within a mile radius of our home, I often found myself home with my mother and nobody else. My siblings were all older and had married and moved by the time I was ten years old and spent little time at home when they were teens since they all had busy social lives. My dad worked two jobs and was gone nearly 80 hours per week until, when I was nine years old, he quit the railroad and just worked at the steel mill. I had a neighbor who was my age directly across the road, and we played together often, but still, I was often alone as well. Left to my own devices, and taking a liking to music from as far back as I can remember, I helped myself to my parents’ collection of 45s beginning around the age of three or maybe four, and that fascination with their 45s continued until they obtained a reel-to-reel tape player when I was ten years old and a phonograph that played LPs when I was 12. By the age of 12 I had become very conscientious regarding the care of music media. At that point I expanded my listening to their tapes and LPs, and I treated these new items much better than the singles they had let me play with when I was younger.

So when did this fascination with records begin? Well before all that, some time before or shortly after my birth my parents purchased a 45 rpm record player. Seven-inch singles were first issued in 1949, just four years before my birth. A family friend worked at the local RCA record plant and gave “reject singles” to my parents. Although called “rejects” there was nothing wrong with their sound; maybe the printed label was too light or dark in color, or torn before application to the record but the record would play fine. Also, sometimes a record that was part of a set of more 45s was the only record in the set that was not defective, leaving a “broken set”. So, the factory considered all these records just “throwaways” and gave them to the plant workers who wanted them. There were all sorts of recordings, from classical music to big band, and jazz from the 30s and 40s reissued on 45. There were performances from Broadway musicals, late 40s country western, 50s pop and early rock and roll. The RCA plant also manufactured records for different labels besides RCA Victor, such as Columbia, Decca and Capitol. My parents had a variety of records that had been given to them, plus they added to that collection with their own purchases. They also bought records for me and my siblings. Many of their purchases included knock-off discount records of the current hits in pop, plus rock singles for my sister and children’s records for my entertainment.

My parents had a 1937 Farmsworth radio that stood about four feet high in our living room. The record player sat on top of the radio and used the radio’s speaker since the player had no speaker of its own. The living room chair happened to be situated beside the radio and fortunately for me had a wide arm rest. As a preschooler I would climb and stand on the arm rest to be able to play the records. Being a preschooler I was very rough on them. One record in red vinyl especially caught my attention and my mom unfortunately caught me chewing the record leaving teeth marks. I was probably three years old at the time. I remember her taking it from me and she tried to play it but it skipped so badly it was unplayable and was presumably disposed of since I never saw it again. While recently talking to my brother who is 12 years my senior (pictured above) I learned what artist was on that record. Amazingly, he just happened to remember the record as being “Tales From the Vienna Woods”. With that information, I researched on Discogs for red vinyl, Red Seal RCA Victor recordings of this composition. I found it! It was backed by “Blue Danube” and was composed by Johann Strauss, Jr. and performed by Leopold Stokowski and his Symphony Orchestra (later reissues listed as The Philadelphia Orchestra), issued on 45 in 1949 in both black and red vinyl. I researched and found the record on eBay, in red vinyl and very good condition. It was very inexpensive, so I purchased it. I had often wondered about this record but just decided to ask my brother and now I have it without teeth marks. To be honest, it doesn’t bring back any memories of the musical content so I must have been about three years old, at most.

I remembered there was a yellow two-45 set of Pinocchio children’s records that I vaguely recall applying the same teeth treatment. They mysteriously disappeared when I was about four. I tracked down a nice quality set of this yellow double 45 several years ago. I was amazed at how I suddenly remembered so much of it when I played it – something I had not heard since I was four years old. I also noted that the red and yellow vinyl did not taste any different than the black vinyl records.

Another children’s record, by The Singing Princess, skipped due to a crack in the record as far back as I can recall, most likely due to my mistreatment. Well over a decade ago I found a near mint copy of this 45 on eBay at a very low price. I just had to have it.

These are not the only records of my preschool misadventures. There was an Extended Play (EP) 7” 45 rpm record on the Royale label. Royale was a discount label that in the mid-50s would record artists-for-hire, under the name Royale Dance Orchestra and Singers (and similar iterations) and they would perform the hits of the day, attempting to sound as close as they could to the artists who made the songs popular. There were two songs on each side of the record. My parents had two of these Royale EPs, one being easy to find and the other quite rare. One such song that fascinated me happened to be on the rarer EP. It was a Perry Como hit titled “Ko Ko Mo” performed by this Royale group. Our player would not play the entire song because it was the second song on the side, and the grooves went too far into the center of the record so the automatic reject of the tone arm would occur before the end of the song. So here I was at the age of four, trying to force our record player to keep the needle on the record until the song finished. I was determined to hear the song’s ending and repeatedly played it several times. I remember my mom was lying on the living room sofa and said she had a headache and asked me to stop, but like any four-year-old on a mission, I didn’t. So, she came over to me, grabbed the record and smashed it. I would never hear it again… until last year. I found a copy on eBay after watching for it for over 20 years. It is on an LP by The Royale Popular Orchestra and Singers, titled “An Hour of Tops in Pops” that covered the entire “Royale Dance Party” record sets, containing all the songs on the two Royale EPs my parents had purchased in the 1950s; no more worries that the run-off groove would eject before the song’s end. This one was a bit more expensive than the red record but well worth it. It arrived in near mint condition, and it has now been digitized and added to the collection of songs from my parents’ collection.

When the red vinyl “Blue Danube” 45 arrived I had finally gathered all the recordings I remember that my parents owned, including those that had been lost or broken over the past 70 years. Since I had ruined so many of their 45s, I sought out better quality copies or CDs with those exact recordings. I now have them all in the best audio quality available and have digitized all of them, then transferred to CDr. My parents had several 7” records, so the collection filled five 80-minute CDrs which I can now play in our surround sound system.

I began this mission well before the passing of both my parents. My original intention was to burn them and give a copy to them to enjoy revisiting what they listened to in the 1950s. Thankfully I did give them what I had gathered by 2002, which was most of the recordings. However, it took me until 2024 to complete the quest; 16 years since the passing of mom and 20 years after dad’s passing.

During this process I realized it brought me as many fond memories and so I continued until I obtained all of them. When I had nothing else to do or no-one else to play with or talk to in my earliest years, those records were my friends. They also taught me to appreciate music in ways I am still learning to understand. Thanks both to the varied collection of record plant rejects as well as the diverse 45s bought by my parents in the 50s and early 60s, there was a variety of musical styles. Perhaps this is a major reason I enjoy every genre of music to this day.