SIXTY ALBUMS

 

 

SIXTY ALBUMS

By Charles Kraus

 

1980 -- We were living in LA at the time and meeting our expenses felt more like a theoretical exercise than a probability.  It often involved borrowing funds. Upon occasion, it meant selling possessions.  Even, if absolutely necessary, portions of my record collection.

Our existence was middle-class bohemia interwoven with the prospect, or at least desire of ‘making it’ in the entertainment industry. Being young, and therefore equating our circumstances with the dues-paying portion of life that one goes through at the beginning of a journey, we had the energy, optimism and fortitude to experience all this as an adventure. Still, parting with 60 albums was a big deal.

            I owned several thousand, but thought of them as components forming a single thing, a collection. A collection is what you get after you’ve sifted through the prospects, rejected undesirable candidates, sought out and filled in key elements so you owned Oscar Peterson’s first album as well as his latest album. Plus, the original cast recordings of every Broadway show you’d been taken to as a New York child, but not the scratched copies, those had been replaced by pristine pressings as they were discovered in various swap meets and second hand shops.  A collection included Ella’s Decca, Verve and Pablo sides.

Did you know that Del-Fi records and its sibling, Keene Records, originated in a basement in Van Nuys, California, pretty much around the block from where we lived when I sold my early Sam Cooke (Keene) and Richie Valens (Del-Fi), part of the 60, to raise the $800 we needed to pay our rent?

The dealer perused the stacks I’d designated as expendable, selecting just the albums I would have chosen, the cream, the best of the best, had I been at the purchasing end of this transaction.  Mostly he pulled from the $25 piles. A few from the $15.  Each time he claimed a record, my exasperation grew.  How could I allow this fellow to dismantle my collection?

Then came the trick.  To the fifty or so sides he’d selected, he made a show of adding a number of less desirable titles from my $2 offering -- Mel Carter, Cher, Mantovani -

albums I couldn’t actually explain or justify owning.   Finally, he reached into the  “PRICELESS – MAKE ME AN OFFER’ display, plucked a gem, in this case, the VJ No. 1001, sealed, never played, album, the El Dorados “Crazy Little Mama,” thrust it into the center of his stack trying to make the selection look like an afterthought.  It was, of course, the one album he truly desired, and to some theoretical upscale collector, worth more than the combined value of the other 59 records.

“I’ll give you $800, 60 albums, take it or leave it.”

Contrary to the prices in the Record Album Price Guide, the true value of a record is what someone is willing to pay for it.  This was easily the best offer I would be getting prior to our potential eviction notice.  It honored the music and the artists, if not the collector.  Me, the dealer dismissed as naïve.  Didn’t I didn’t know that VJ 1001 was worth a fortune?  Yep, but only to buyers offering a fortune, and they didn’t happen to be in the room

Then again, I’d paid a dollar fifty for the VJ.   I was not exactly getting a poor return on my investment.  Yea, ok, all right, you win, give me the cash and leave as quickly as possible.

We finished our transaction.   My buyer took a moment to browse through the remainder of my collect, the albums laying neatly against a neutral wall, the ones with the sign affixed reading, NOT FOR SALE. 

And then came what amounted to my real payoff.  More than the $800.  More than the comfort taken in having raised the rent by selling 60 albums that cost me about $50 to a guy who would probably pass them along to wealthy collectors for prices I didn’t want to know about.  The record dealer looked up from my NOT FOR SALE albums and said, ‘wow.’  

Wow is not a multisyllabic word.  It is not complex.

This particular ‘wow’ meant that finally, someone -- not my wife, not my neighbors, not my friends, none of whom took a particular interest in record collecting, could ever offer.  It meant finally, someone understood that the vinyl disks resting against the neutral wall were not just refugees from Goodwill stores; they formed a genuine representation of the jazz and pop essentials, a virtual history of recorded music, so far.  Wow meant I knew what I was doing.

His smile contained a certain respect.  

You could not pay the rent with a smile, but you could live on this one for a long long time.  I’m still getting residuals.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Decided To Turn 65

[2011]

Why I Decided To Turn 65

By Charles Kraus

 

They are about to express birthday wishes to me again. Early on in my earthly

rounds, such salutations could not come often enough, especially if accompanied by gift-
wrapping. Back then it seemed to take forever to get from one birthday to the next, and I
was quite anxious to do so. I wished to accumulate a series of hallmarks, thereby
qualifying me as an established member of the adult class.
            A reassessment of my fondness for birthdays came shortly after turning 30. Our
two daughters had captured my complete attention. One day I realized they would grow
up and move away. Perhaps we could slow down the clock, savor the family process.
Why all the rush?
            At this point in what is left of my life, I do my best to deflect birthday greetings,
trying not to cringe when these are offered. There is a certain responsibility that comes
with turning the big Six - Five. A certain plateauing.  People want to know if my aspirations have been achieved, and I don’t necessarily care to discuss the topic.

Am I not supposed to have attained something? Wealth? Stature? Wisdom? Or, how about solvency, shouldn't I have that by now? I have or should have achieved a reasonable level of maturity. I must have learned important things, things worth knowing and passing along before I become senile and misplace my findings.

            The paperwork says “year of birth 1946,” but I am actually a person of many ages. Upon waking, I am 18. By noon, I have reached 50. After dinner, I hover over the line of scrimmage, feeling 65 to perfection. On nights requiring me to remain coherent past 10 p.m., I glimpse 75, and have by then lost track of my comprehension and my glasses.
            I would like to sum up all that I've concluded during 65 years of trial and error. This will be short. I have two items.
            Researching this project, I reviewed many of the things I once thought I knew for sure:
That tattoos were for sailors. For a while, I was sure the planet was heading to a peaceful resolution of its differences. And anyway, wars of any sort didn't much matter because we lived in the USA – an ocean beyond the consequences of harms way. I supposed that, what with science, and literature, and advances in education, people would grow more logical, more reasonable. I even knew that because my father had his hair when he was 65, I would have mine. Myth, myth, myth, all theories and suppositions that I have subsequently discarded.
            Here is what I now know for sure:
Randomness rules. This is not necessarily a pessimistic assessment. Random
comes in good as well as awful. One reason I wish to continue having birthdays is
because, from around many a blind corner has come a pleasant surprise. Who would have
guessed that being a husband and a parent could be so wonderful? That the advent of spellcheck would change my life?
            Rumor has it I'll be receiving an I-Pad for my birthday. Once I learn to use it,
I am told, I can input my schedule, my plan for tomorrow and beyond. Fun thought. However,
the other thing I learned is:
            You can schedule anything you please, but tomorrow doesn’t necessarily work
from your notes.
            
                                                                    ////
Seattle resident Charles Kraus is a writer and performer.

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

Shelf life: confessions of an unrepentant book collector

By Charles Kraus. Baltimore Sun, 5/13/08

Books collect dust. People collect books. At least, some people do.

I've been one of them for about 45 years. Of course, if my wife has anything to do with it, I've squeezed my last volume onto a shelf. "One more book, and I'll call the folks in the white coats and tell 'em we have a case of bibliomania on our hands," she is fond of saying.

We are just about out of shelf space. It has become necessary for me to cram new acquisitions horizontally into those little spaces between the vertically arranged books and the shelves above. Last year, I lobbied for an additional bookcase. My wife took a slow, theatrical glance around the room, a gesture designed to say, "Where the hell would you put it?"

She'd made her point, yet we both knew I would continue buying books.

They say that parents who enjoy books end up with kids who enjoy books, so it is possible to fix much of the blame on good old father for my attempt to re-create New York City's 42nd Street library right here in my house. His was an impressive - albeit more manageable - collection, an assortment of science, pseudoscience, history and literature. It was primarily acquired from the Lower East Side secondhand bookshops that flourished from the 1940s through the 1960s.

About the only form of gambling in which my father would participate was the clearance table crapshoot. A table full of discards would be offered for $3 apiece. Next week, the remaining volumes went for $2, and on week three, a dollar. Should you purchase a book immediately, before someone realized what an incredible treasure the bookseller had mistakenly placed on the table? Or should you wait, hoping to pick it up at next week's reduced price?

From time to time, as I accompanied Dad on his book-buying rounds, I'd spot like-minded devotees rummaging through the stacks, calmly at first, but with increased measures of desperation and resignation, while trying to locate the book they now knew they should have purchased the previous week.

I own more books than my dad did at the height of his collecting days - more than I will ever read. Some, though relatively few, are investments: perfect first editions, signed, rare, ancient volumes that may eventually be transformed into part of my retirement fund. The rest, given enough time and decent lighting, I would love to read.

If you enjoy an author and happen to come across more of his work, at prices too good to ignore, or books about the author, given away on Sunday afternoons by flea market proprietors who don't care to lug them home - aren't you obligated to acquire them? If you happen to be perusing stacks of books heaped in the corner of a cluttered, marginal thrift shop, stacks not alphabetically arranged but perhaps organized there by the level of mildew implanted in the binding, should you not rescue the worthiest of the lot? Are you not required to keep one of the last copies of the 1927 first edition of Daniel W. Streeter's Camels! from reaching oblivion? And what about Treadmill to Oblivion by Fred Allen? You going to let them find their way to the trash bin?