Saturday April 13 is Record Store Day, in honor of all the independent retail stores like Boo Boo Records and Cheap Thrills in San Luis Obispo that still sell vinyl LPs and 45s.
It’s a day near and dear to my heart, because the only way you heard music back in the 1950s and ’60s was by placing a 12-inch or 7-inch recording on a turntable and letting her rip. 78 RPM records were still available, but they were being phased out by vinyl that could handle more songs and wouldn’t break if they were dropped.
Columbia and RCA were the chief competitors in this new marketplace in the late 1940s. Columbia invented the LP (Long Play) initially for classical music, and RCA engineered the 7-inch single with a big hole in it for the pop market. RCA could afford to take such a chance; the company made special record players to play the smaller discs.
My parents bought me one such machine, and it was one of the worst decisions they ever made. You see, prior to that time, the music source in a post-’50s home was in the form of a big console in the living room, where everyone gathered to listen to what the grown-ups wanted to hear, like musicals, classical, and pop.
Now with my new portable machine, with tiny speaker included, I could bug out of that scene, which I did, and stay in my room all day rocking and rolling to Little Richard et al. Of course, no one in our household ever saw me again, and everybody shook their heads whenever they walked by my room where my walls lost their plaster from sounds like “Tutti Frutti” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.”
From that point on, I was a real gone cat as they used to say in the parlance of the day. Which meant that since I avoided classical, jazz, tin pan alley, or folk, and preferred music written by cretinous goons (as Frank Sinatra once said), I was labeled like everyone one else in my blue suede shoes as a juvenile delinquent.
Hey, I didn’t carry no switchblades; I just liked music with a beat to it. So rock that around your clock. And when Elvis hit the scene, I screamed as loud as all those 16-year-old girls because I knew that rock ’n’ roll was here to stay.
I also knew that I had to work in order to buy all those 45s I wanted to listen to. That’s when I met Joe Prein, who owned a record store on Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park. The neatest thing about his store were the three or four booths lined up along the wall, where you could enter a private domain and listen to records on machines constructed for such a purpose. You didn’t even have to buy them. But of course I did. With interest.
“You want to buy that? It’ll cost you 89 cents,” he demanded.
“I haven’t got 89 cents, I’m a kid,” I replied. “How ‘bout a quarter for a down payment?”
“I’ll do you one better,” he said. “Since you’ve been in here every day for the last two weeks and wore out all my needles on my record machines, I see the value of you as a potential customer. So I am going to set you up with a charge account. You know what that is?” I was nine. My idea of a big time was a candy bar. My eyes wandered over to all the platters he hung up on his walls.
“No, sir,” I answered, but I knew a deal was about to be made.
“You can have this record today, and you don’t have to pay for it until next week.”
“What’s the catch?” I queried. Even at my age I was dumb but not stupid.
“A penny per record interest,” said Joe Prein, who knew he could now make a living off of just me alone.
“Wow!” I exclaimed.
“All you have to do is sign right here,” he prompted, with a twinkle in his eye. I scribed my signature, and signed my life away.
I was broke for a long time and suffered the summertime blues, but I felt like a rich man thanks to old Joe Prein. He gave me the opportunity to enjoy the music on vinyl I still love to this day.
If you want the latest vinyl from your favorite bands, or if you want to discover what vinyl is all about, find out what’s available at your favorite record store this Saturday. For more info, check out Record Store Day.