MARTIN WINFREE'S RECORD BUYING GUIDE
Introduction
For my birthday last year, my wife Peggy's son Ernie Guyton gave me a remarkable present: He had gone by a used record store and picked up an assortment of albums for me. Ernie told me that he had a lot of fun picking them out for me, and I sure enjoy having them. After thinking about it over several months, it occurred to me that this is a pleasure that only a small minority of Americans has ever participated in. I learned early on that purchasing used records was the most cost-effective way to build a formidable record collection, and it is my considered opinion that this is still true today. Although it is easy enough I suppose to order records online (I do it all the time after all), and despite the fact that the number of outlets for purchasing music has dwindled drastically, the tactile experience of actually handling and viewing albums while considering a purchase is a much more fulfilling experience to me, not to mention the "Eureka!" moment when a long-sought record is finally in my hands.
There are hardly any of us who have not visited the video store to pick out movies for nightly viewing, though sadly, that pleasure is on its way out as well. However, what you might not realize is that, for the $3 to $5 cost to rent a movie from Blockbuster, the great majority of well-known record albums can be purchased in mint or near-mint condition. What's more, a sizable chunk of recorded music is available for less than the $1.20 that it costs to rent a movie from Redbox nowadays.
The bottom line is that I just never have made enough money to pay full retail for every piece of music that I want to buy. As an example, I have been a big fan of Everything but the Girl basically from the first time that I heard "Missing"; and I can't tell you how many times I went to the mall CD store in the 1990's intending to finally get one of their earlier CD's, only to be stopped short by the prices every time. Paying $14.95 for 10 songs, and I don't know a single one of them? One day I went to the big semi-annual Record Convention in Hillsborough, NC and found an Everything but the Girl LP for around $4 and also an album by; that was the more obscure band that Tracey Thorn was in before EBTG was formed. The latter album was priced at about $10, and that album was definitely worth the price.
So I thought I would do my small part to promote the remaining record stores out there (independent and otherwise) by coming up with a "Record Buying Guide" summarizing what I have learned over the four decades that I have been a serious record collector. I should point out that I mostly collect the music, whereas other collectors might specialize in everything that has ever been issued by bands like the Beatles or KISS, or try to get the most valuable covers or hidden disc differences. I have done some specializing myself now and then: I have purchased dozens of Bob Dylan bootleg albums plus nearly all of his regular releases; and several years ago, I was buying up every Linda Ronstadt compilation album I could find, even though I already had virtually all of the music. I also keep my eyes open, and I actually did have a chance to get the famous Andy Warhol banana cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico album for a halfway reasonable price. (I'm just as happy that I didn't buy that one and just got the reissue album instead, since it would have gone down in Katrina like all the rest). My attitude is this: Why buy the same old Parallel Lines album that everyone else has, when I can get the Brazilian import for practically the same price? (Thus, I don't consider the Blondie album that Ernie gave me to be a duplicate.)
So, rather than just talk about it this month, let me see what I can do to interest you-all in getting a hold of some rock and roll history for yourselves. Rock and roll future also, because mark my words: CD's are going to go the way of cassettes eventually, and vinyl albums will be the primary physical medium for music in years to come. The annual Record Store Day is also coming up on "Black Friday" (November 23), where record stores across the country have special events and concerts scheduled.
How to Play Them
If you don't have a record player anymore, you can often find one at a thrift store and sometimes at a yard sale; however, you will likely need to replace the stylus, and that is not an easy thing to do anymore. You might need a new stylus anyway, even if you already own a record player; it wouldn't hurt to check. Radio Shack still sells turntable styluses, but you have to mail-order them now, and you need to make sure that you get one that will fit your player.
Belk and some of the other department stores stock old-fashioned turntables manufactured by Crosley; most now offer LP-to-CD recording capability, which is pretty cool, but the prices have moved up also: from the $150 to $250 range, to the $300 to $400 range. My experience has been that the Crosley players are designed for light-duty use only; I sometimes play 6 or 8 albums per day several days a week, and I have been through 3 or 4 of them in the past decade or so.
I have had better luck with a Jensen deck that I ordered year before last through my wife's Shell credit card; I just happened to see an ad for it in an insert in the bill one month. It was priced at around $150 and beats the Crosley unit in its other features, with a CD player (three-disc capacity) and dual cassette player/recorder (instead of single CD and cassette players), plus AM-FM radio. The sound quality is better for sure; instead of the little built-in speakers, the Jensen deck has separate full-sized speaker cabinets. I had to order a new stylus the other day and was delighted to find that they were priced at only $5 each, versus $14.95 for the Crosley ones.
I should hasten to add that both the Crosley and the Jensen turntables are fairly cheap equipment; you should get ready to put a little weight on the tonearm to get the albums to play properly. I used to have a nice audio system, but those days are behind me now, whether I like it or not. Most of my record collection went through Hurricane Katrina, and though I have tried my best to clean the albums, those are not the sort of albums that you want to play with a high-end, moving-magnet cartridge. In short, I go through a lot of styluses.
I also noticed that the prices of the newer Jensen decks like mine are now in the $120 range, and there are just turntables available as well. If you have ever thought about getting a new record player, now is your chance. Check them out at the Spectra website: www.spectraintl.com/index.php/jensen.html .
My Birthday Present
To return to the present that Ernie bought me, one of the albums was a long-time favorite that had not yet surfaced for clean-up from Katrina – Blood, Sweat & Tears' Child Is Father to the Man – and I almost immediately played it. I waxed enthusiastically about that album a couple of months back, and that was due in no small part to being reacquainted with that wonderful music. Two other old friends that hadn't come up for cleaning either were also included: Blondie's Parallel Lines, and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
But most of the albums I did not have. He included Styx's second album, Styx II, that I quite enjoy; and The Best of Bread (by Bread) reminded me again that soft rock can be quite delicious. The original My Fair Lady (featuring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews) was another treat; I was also delighted to notice in small letters "Not for Sale" on the white label, meaning that it was a promotional LP. Thus, although this LP was a big seller and is quite common, this gives the album some collector's value. The reason is that, besides being rarer than the commercial or record-club releases, promotional and DJ albums were the first ones manufactured; and the quality tends to be a little better.
Winelight by Grover Washington, Jr. was his curve ball to me; I had only vaguely heard of him but later read that he is one of the nation's leading saxophone players. I liked the album so much that I picked up a two-album retrospective by another of the smooth-jazz pioneers, George Benson that I enjoyed just as much. There were other albums as well, but these are some highlights that I remember. And that is just the kind of eclectic mix of albums that I gather myself on the too-few occasions that I go out shopping for records.
The Current State of Affairs
Of course, living in Atlanta, Ernie has more options than I do for finding records. I have made some wonderful finds myself at one record store there, Criminal Records (gotta love that name, right up there with Vinyl Solution among my all-time faves – the one that I went to with that name was in Tuscaloosa, AL as I recall).
On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Maynard's Music on Government Street in Ocean Springs – www.recordstores.com/index.cgi?rid=170 – is the "last of the Mohicans". They do a fine job, with dollar bins, and a great assortment of used albums and CD's, plus a lot of discs from local bands. The main record and CD racks are at the appropriate height for easy shopping. Every time I go by there, he has gotten in ever more interesting albums; I got a big box full the last time I went earlier this year.
Nomenclature
When I say "record", as you might imagine, I mean the standard 12" album that is now often referred to as "vinyl". There are, however, other types of vinyl out there. EP's and 12-inch singles are superficially the same format, except that there is less music on them – 6 to 8 songs typically on an EP, and anywhere from 2 to 4 on a single (and often they are different versions of the same song). "EP" stands for "extended play", the way that "LP" means "long play"; I am reminded of the various sizes of coffee offered at Starbucks in words that all mean "large". More music than you might think has been released on 10" albums, that is, the same size as a 78 rpm record. Record stores don't like them because they don't want to devote an entire rack to a fairly small amount of albums, but a lot of mail-order collectors' items come that way.
Speaking of 78's (the singles of the 1950's and earlier), the rap against them is that they are scratchy. There is a reason for that: Much of the vinyl used to make 78's was stiffened with clay, and needles back then looked and acted a lot like spikes. Thus, where the plastic gets worn away over the years, the needle is going directly along dirt. Their value is historical for the most part these days; a typical 78 is the unique recording of a particular performance on either side that is normally not reproduced anywhere else, except in later compilations. That is the reason that references to older musical recordings are often referred to as "sides".
The 45 was what most people bought until well into the 1960's. Their size is only 7", and there is normally a big fat hole in the middle that never made a lot of sense to me. The collectors of 45's are a breed apart; they pay almost microscopic attention to every detail on the disc, and some aren't afraid to pay $1,000 or more for rare items. Now, a record collector won't likely take out his thousand-dollar record to actually play the songs on it, anymore than the owner of a thousand-dollar gold coin is going to break open the hermetically-sealed container in order to flip the coin to start a football game. These people are often collecting artifacts as much as music, though many have old-timey jukeboxes that they stock with vintage 45's.
I don't see a lot of tapes anymore, except at yard sales and flea markets. Eight-track tapes have their aficionados; they are big and bulky and play just fine as long as they don't jam. My brother Tom Winfree has quite a few, but I never bought too many myself. Cassettes are the first format that truly threatened to push vinyl out of the record stores. A guy that I worked with years ago was a music lover, and he and I used to talk about records and bands all the time. I was astounded later to find out that he didn't own a record player; all of his music was on cassettes (this was in the early 1980's I guess). I always thought that pre-recorded cassettes had poor quality; what's more, the few that I owned invariably developed some sort of problem: Sometimes they just jammed, but usually there was a warble or two in some of the songs – what is referred to in the field as "wow and flutter". I never seemed to have any of those problems with compilation tapes that I made myself (and I made dozens); thus, it seemed pretty clear to me that the record companies were manufacturing them as cheaply as possible. Once CD's became available – and, more to the point, once portable and car CD players came out – all of the convenience advantages of cassettes were matched and then some. As to the others, I am not sure that I have ever seen a DAT (digital audio tape) outside a store. Reel-to-reel tape is a good medium for archival storage and has few of the limitations of the consumer-oriented tape media; however, most music was never recorded for sale in that format originally.
CD's are still the main format for buying music; but as I mentioned already, I think it is pretty clear that they are on their way out. I resisted getting a CD player as long as I could – finally I got one for Christmas, and that was that. However, I was not particularly impressed with the vaunted perfect sound quality of the CD's – there was even a fair amount of hiss on several of them, I noticed, and that's just sloppy – and even the industry finally admitted that the early generations weren't quite up to snuff. My impression also is that CD's have little or no collector value for the most part. Maynard's Music in Ocean Springs has all or almost all of their used CD's priced the same. Most stores don't go that far, but the pricing is pretty consistent nonetheless.
I heard the other day on CBS Sunday Morning that CD's are barely 60% of the music market now, with most of the remainder being sold digitally. On the other hand, vinyl sales were up to 14% last year, and it isn't all nostalgia that is driving these sales either – a lot of young people are discovering the joys of LP's. Some people are now putting their music collections "in the cloud" and then somehow accessing it over the Internet; as painful as it was to lose my collection to Katrina, I cannot imagine doing that myself.
Where to Buy Them
Mall CD stores are one obvious choice to find records, assuming that your area still has them. A few years before the Sound Shop stores in the Biloxi and Gautier malls closed, the Biloxi store had opened a sizable vinyl section. It started out with new LP's, but sections of used albums soon followed. Although the major chains like Tower Records, Camelot Music and Virgin Megastores have fallen by the wayside, F.Y.E. is still around, at least for now.
By the way, whereas CD's were originally priced higher than LP's, the reverse is true today: New vinyl records are typically priced at around $24 to $28 retail. At one point, I was wondering if the major record companies had forgotten how to manufacture them: Sometime in the late 1990's or early 2000's, I picked up a vinyl copy of the hit 1988 album by the Godfathers, Birth, School, Work, Death; and it didn't play right from the first spin. However, the ones I have purchased recently have a real pristine sound and blow CD's out of the water, IMHO.
You also might be surprised at how heavy vinyl records have gotten to be. Many reissues and some new releases are on 180-gram platters; that's 6½ ounces of record album. Some of the record covers are unusually heavy also nowadays, so the whole package can weigh in at close to a pound.
Used record stores are my outlet of choice. Well-run stores like the one in Ocean Springs, Maynard's Music have a good selection, reasonable prices ($4 to $8 for most albums), and "dollar bins" of albums priced at $1 (or sometimes $2 or $3). Typically these stores also offer new albums, CD's (both new and used), magazines, and other music-related items. Quality is usually high for both the discs and the album covers, even for the albums that you can get for a dollar. They are often located near colleges or in counterculture-type neighborhoods and only rarely in shopping centers or strip malls, but there is no real pattern to them.
Collectors' record stores are the term I use to refer to stores that I try to avoid. They have a snooty air about them and are mainly aimed at people with fat wallets. Prices start at around $10 typically and go up quickly from there. I remember not long after I moved to the Coast locating a record store in New Orleans while on a short visit there. After a trolley ride and a long walk, I finally came upon the store, only to find that they really had nothing there which I wanted to buy. The album that I remember best was by the Angels that was named after their hit song, My Boyfriend's Back. It is an attractive early 1960's album that is not at all difficult to find; my catalogue shows a value of $30 to $40 (for albums in close to mint condition), but I have seen the album at $10 or less over the years. Well, this store had one copy in average condition that was priced at $35 and another that was pretty scuffed up which was marked at $20. Eventually I picked up three or four used CD's so that the trip was not a total loss, and even those were priced at $8. However, if you are looking for truly rare records that you are never going to find anywhere else, that is the place to go.
After that experience, I never shopped at the collectors' record store in Biloxi called Ace Music & Video. Their main competitor, Goldmines Records (I think they were called Vintage Albums or something like that originally) was located on Pass Road in Gulfport until about 4 years ago. My first few visits gave me pause; the place was a little dirty, and (without getting into details) the proprietor did not put on the best appearance. The albums all had plastic sleeves (always a good sign), but they were dirty also, and I remember having to wash my hands after every trip. I am used to the tang in my nose and throat after a long record-buying excursion that I take to be from cardboard dust, but that was something else again. It wasn't long before I realized that this man had the goods and also knew his stuff. Also, he typically priced his albums at one-half of their catalogue value. I wound up buying hundreds of albums from that store – probably more even than the Record Hole in Raleigh, where I really got my first exposure to how great used record stores could be.
Did I mention that he had the goods? Unceremoniously tacked up on the wall at Goldmines Records was one of the most famous and most infamous (not to mention rarest) record covers of all time, the "butcher" cover that the Beatles briefly had as the cover for their 1966 American album, Yesterday and Today. How the suits ever let this one get loose is absolutely beyond me: posing the Beatles among butchered meat and decapitated baby dolls, with those same beatific smiles. After they realized that they had a problem, Capitol Records simply pasted a new cover over the butcher cover and shipped the albums out. The albums with the double covers are fairly easy to spot, and it wasn't long before people were steaming off the new cover to get to the butcher cover. Nowadays, the double-cover albums that are still intact are the most valuable, not counting of course the few albums with the original covers that were sold in the first few days of the album's release.
If you get serious about it, record conventions and collectors fairs are a great place to find true rarities. I attended the semi-annual record convention at the Daniel Boone Convention Center near Hillsborough, NC for years. The last few times in the late 1990's, the crowds were a lot thinner, though the number of dealers hadn't changed so much. One that I attended in the Bay Area while I was living in San Francisco in the mid-1990's was geared mostly toward collectors' items other than albums, but there were plenty of records to search through as well. Prices can be steep though; I remember seeing an Ike and Tina Turner album, Dynamite! that I had purchased some years earlier for $15 offered for sale for well over $100.
Flea markets and antique stores are other places to find records; though many dealers don't fool with them anymore, I often find at least a small rack even in brand new stores. Other times I will find a box of albums stashed away in a corner, or just a half dozen records lying around on a table. Some shops in antique malls specialize in records, and I usually lose interest after a while in those places, since they mostly have common albums offered at moderately high prices – and multiple copies of them at that, slowing down the search process. Quality can be a problem, particularly for albums that get separated from their covers, which can get really scratched up. As long as an album is at least in a sleeve, I'll give it a glance, but not those that are simply loose in the stack.
I have had reasonably good luck at yard sales over the years; prices are often very low, and you never know what you are going to find. The same caveats listed above apply there, though quality is normally a lot better; you are usually flipping through someone's personal record collection after all.
I hit thrift stores every once in a while when I have a little free time; the price is right, and I have come upon some good records that way. Quality is spotty at best, so you have to be careful.
What to Look For
If you are just starting out, look for albums that you know. If your copy of, say, Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive is pretty beat up, you should be able to find a near-mint replacement for around $5, even though it is a two-album set. If Rod Stewart is a favorite of yours, try to find an album that includes one or more of your favorite hit songs; chances are you will like the rest of the album also.
I typically will hit the dollar bins first, if there are any. (Those boxes are often set on the floor, so you might want to ask the owner if there is a table available you can set the box on; that makes it a lot easier). Sometimes the same album can be found there which will be priced at $3 to $5 in a different rack in the same store; the quality might not even be appreciably different – it may be that the store owner is simply trying to unload some duplicates. Also, I am much more willing to take a chance on an album that costs a dollar than one that costs $8.
After you do this awhile, you will begin to discern the "look" of a disco album, or a new wave album, or a punk rock album, or a heavy metal album, or an indie rock album, or whatever. Album labels are one way to help narrow down a search. If you are an R.E.M. fan, then most of the albums on their label, I.R.S. Records will probably be to your liking as well. A good punk rock label is Stiff Records; I have scarcely ever gone wrong with them. A&M Records, the king of American independent record labels, has a wide variety of offbeat acts and some major artists as well (the "A" in the name is Herb Alpert).
Most of the credits on unfamiliar albums are going to be unfamiliar names as well, but every now and then, you will spot a famous person. Look for the record producer for instance; depending upon your own personal tastes, if John Doe (of X) or Todd Rundgren or Dave Edmunds is involved, and you are a fan, that would increase the chances that you would like the album.
A few other tips: Even if all of the quality looks great on the albums you are buying, it is a good idea to take a peak at both sides of the albums as you are selecting them (or if you hit a "hot streak" of finds, you can do that at the end of your search). Most used record stores have a no-return policy.
When buying two- or three-album sets, be sure to see whether all of the albums are actually inside the cover; it is hard to tell by feel. That is particularly true if the price seems unusually attractive. I have literally lost count of how many times I have seen a copy of the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East where the disc with the outstanding "Whipping Post" performance on it is missing. I picked up Neil Young's Decade retrospective album one time at a very good price; only two of the three albums were included, but I went for it anyway. Several decades later (ahem), when I was picking up Katrina debris, I found a copy of Decade on the far bank of the little bayou behind our house; and sure enough, only two of the albums were in the cover. That is the only unquestionable example of a record that floated that far from the house.
Typically, 12-inch singles (especially disco singles) are easily spotted; often the covers are generic, and it is common for the covers to be holed so that the labels show through. However, some of them look a lot like full-sized albums, so you should scan the printing on the back and make sure that there are more than 2 or 3 songs on the disk. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy them; I have purchased a lot of 12-inch singles over the years. It's just that you shouldn't pay album prices for singles; they shouldn't be priced at more than $2 to $4. Very few 12-inch singles have collector's item values; about the only ones that I know of are some of the earliest Pet Shop Boys singles, where their big hit "West End Girls" is shown as the "B" side.
A "Greatest Hits" or "Best Of" collection is a good way to get several hit songs by favorite artists, but beware: Not all Greatest Hits collections are created equal. For someone with a long career, the Greatest Hits set might be only the songs that were recorded while the artist was with that particular record label. Others, particularly recent CD's of bands and singers from many years ago, are really short (only 9 or 10 songs). You should check the song listing to make sure that you are getting your money's worth before buying one of these.
The 1970's was the heyday of vinyl record albums, and there are still thousands and thousands of them out there; so as the demand for vinyl has tailed off, prices even for scarce 1970's albums have come down. For instance, the three Stone Poneys albums that I got for $12 to $30 back in the day are now priced not that much higher than the other Linda Ronstadt albums. You shouldn't have to pay more than $5 or $6 for any but the rarest 1970's albums. Once upon a time, 1960's albums were not priced all that much higher than 1970's albums, but that has changed; still, many if not most 1960's albums are available for under $10. Albums from the 1980's and later are often priced even higher. Again though, you would be amazed at what you can find in the dollar bins.
Finally, you don't have to be a rock music aficionado to go to used record stores, even though just about all of them have a definite rock vibe. If your thing is gospel music, or easy listening, or classical, or Broadway show tunes, you can find some terrific bargains at rock-oriented record stores, because they usually don't know what to do with that kind of music and just price it to sell. That's true as well at antique stores and flea markets; those are also better places to find country music albums by the way.
Happy Hunting!
© Copyright 2012 by Martin Winfree. All Rights Reserved.
(November 2012)
