The
last two weekends have been fruitful at the car boots.
More of the stack in the
second picture soon. The stack of 45s in the first picture all came from one
seller whose car boot was in fact the back of a hearse! As I walked up to his
pitch he called out “soul, funk and r&b, all dead stock, £1 each”. Before
me were about eight boxes and I could immediately see they appeared to be all
US singles (i.e. the ones with the large centres). I thought I had died and
gone to heaven and was contemplating the need for a run to the cashpoint. As it
turned out there were multiple copies of most titles so there were probably no
more than about 60 different titles in all (LOTS of James Brown – I Cried, Soul
Power and Super Bad). They clearly were nearly all unplayed dead stock, and
mostly soul and funk as stated. Apparently they had been pulled out of a US
warehouse in 1972, and had languished ever since in some small corner of
England. That back story gets me every time.
In the end I settled on about 20 titles, the artists in question
being: The O’Jays x2 – Ronettes – The
Soul Children – C.L Blast - Johnny Jones – Madlyn Quebec – Sam
& Dave - Eddie Floyd – Vicki Nelson – CODs – Earl Van Dyke - Natura’elles –
Fantastic Four x2 – James Brown – Mandrill , and the only non soul/funkers - The
Family – Strawberry Alarm Clock – Kay Tolliver.
A few of these are real
stand outs but it is the O’Jays single that is really grabbing me at the
moment. What a double sider from their pre PIR days. Looking on ebay it does
seem to regularly sell when it turns up, but usually for less than a tenner. I
should have picked up some more copies. I should have at least bought one more
because I might wear out my sole copy pretty quick.
In the coming days I’ll put
up a few more from the bunch I think.
The
same weekend, coincidentally I found a copy of The O’Jays In Philedelphia. Before they settled on PIR in the
Seventies, The O’Jays appeared on a number of different labels in the Sixties.
After Bell they were, for a short time, on Neptune. This was a nice find, and I
can’t imagine it turns up very often , especially in this sparkling condition.
There is something special about an album on
a small label that you are only used to finding 45s on. I didn’t notice until I
got home that it had a drill hole. I have never seen a drill hole on an album
before. Luckily the aim was true and the hole did go through the label and not
the playing surface!
2 comments:
Find!
Shit! I never get that kind of luck. I'm incredibly jealous
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