vinylmania (or: things i found at the wfmu record fair)
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Why does someone with thousands of records in his apartment need to spend hours digging through crates of vinyl?Because picking up new/old music is filling holes in an on-going, and ever-expanding, narrative. You find an LP you've never seen before, something called "Gillespiana" on Verve, and realize that it's a collaboration between Dizzy Gillespie and Boris ("Lalo") Schifrin. All the songs were written by Schifrin, who also plays piano in the band, and great horn players such as Clark Terry and Urbie Green are involved, so you plunk down $3 to see what this project sounds like.Then your eyes light upon a Hamilton Camp LP on Warners, arranged and produced by Felix Pappalardi. The band on this one includes Van Dyke Parks, Bud Shank, Glen Hardin, Larry Knechtel, and both Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer on drums. How can you not spend a tenspot on this?It goes on like that...an album by a group called The Hangmen, on Monument, with yet another version of "Gloria." A 1987 Archie Shepp-Horace Parlan album you've never heard of, but it has songs by Ellington, and Strayhorn, and you want to hear how they do "Stardust." And what is this Vince Guaraldi thing on Warners, produced by Shorty Rogers, with a handful of Guaraldi originals, and, hmmm, "Watch What Happens." That could be interesting...And 45s: a song called "Big Brother" by a group called The Persuasions (not the accapella group), written by Randy Newman. A Newman song you're not familiar with...how did that happen? The Dutones doing "The Bird." A ye-ye single, "Jimmy Attends-Moi," by someone called Laura Ulmer ("accompagne par Michel Colombier"). And a Bacharach-David movie song "Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed?," sung by Linda Scott. Record-buying is piecing things together, satisfying curiousity, finding lost songs, discovering odd one-offs. Just a few hours at the 'FMU Fair, and the purchases narrowed down the degrees of separation between Dizzy & Lalo, Shepp & Strayhorn, Linda Scott & Burt Bacharach, Van Dyke Parks & Felix Pappalardi.So you spend $2 on an album, "Pick Hits of the Radio Good Guys Volume 2," because there's a song by Mann & Weil ("Heart") that you don't remember ever hearing. And the artist is someone named Kenny Chandler (who?). Well, the track kind of sucks, but the $2 was not spent in vain: the LP also contains "Dartell Stomp" by The Mustangs. You transfer the track to iTunes, put it in a playlist alongside "Surfer Stomp." It's a good day.
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