Good Album Hunting, Saturday, May 4, 2024: Wedding Gifts

On Saturday, as I mentioned, I went to a small town in southeast Missouri to attend my brother’s wedding.

As it was the first time that I’d seen him in quite a while, we exchanged Christmas presents for 2023, and he had a couple of milk crates with records in them. He said they were from our mother, but I thought that I had gotten all of her records already. When I started dusting them off and going through them, it became clear that most of the records came from someone else.

I mean, certainly some of them bear the sale tags with a G on them that indicated she’d placed them in the garage sales of the early century, but, again, most of them did not have it, and they were a mixed lot of old/small label gospel (the kind I thought I’d never own), 80s pop, and folk. I wonder if they were just other records that other people had put into the yard sale that were still in my mother’s garage when she passed away or perhaps they were records my aunt picked up before she passed away–given that they included some photos and art with a note written in our family friend Gloria’s hand, it could be any of the above.

So I dusted them off and here’s what the stack included:

• Workers Together For Him by the Pentecostal Children’s Home. Not found on Discogs)
• Birthday of a King / Christmas with Bob by Bob Harrington. $3.99
• Bizet Carmen Suite by Fortuna Records. $19.99
• To You With Love, Donny by Donny Osmond $.50)
• Where Did Our Love Go? by the Supremes $1.99)
• Honky Tonk Classics Volume 2 by Mike Di Napoli’s Trio $3.99)
• Organ and Chims by Robert Rheims for the Whole Family At Christmas $12.00)
• Poor Rich Man by Bud Chambers. The cover says he’s America’s Number One Song Writing Preacher. Not found on Discogs, but others of his are listed between $15 and $100
• Looking for a City by Jimmy Swaggart. $1.68)
• It Is No Secret by Stuart Hamblen $1.99
• Bobby Rich Sings Your Requests. $4.99
• The Best of Scripture in Song by David and Dale Garratt. $3.99
• What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye (no cover). $0.34
• Happy Holiday With, a Columbia collection (no cover).
• Live at the Lighthouse by Elvin Jones (no cover). $10
• Wheels of Fire in the Studio by Cream (no cover, and only one record from a two-record set).
• Lonely Blue Boy by Jimmy Griggs (no cover). $3.46
• La Familia by Kracker (no cover). $2.15
• The Battle of New Orleans by Jimmie Driftwood (no cover). $12.00
• You’re All I Need by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, a compilation (no cover). $7.32
• Children’s Favorites by the Jingleheimers (no cover). $1.00
• The Wilderness Road and Jimmie Driftwood. $2.85.
• Mighty Clouds Alive by the Mighty Clouds of Joy. $3.50
• Oh, Lovely Galilean by Wayne Baldridge. Not found on Discogs.
• Happiness is Gladness by Gladness Jennings (no cover). $9.99
• Sing Your Song, Jimmy by Jimmy Williams (no cover). Did not find on Discogs.
• Don’t Let The Ship Sail Without Me by the Happy Gospel Four (no cover). Did not find on Discogs.
• Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs by Marty Robbins. This copy does not have a garage sale sticker on it, so I don’t know if it’s the one from my youth, but I know we had a copy as my father played the record on Christmas. $1.98
• I’ll Keep Holding On To Jesus by the Kenny Parker Trio. Not on Discogs, but other records sell from $3 to $25
• The Lord’s Prayer by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. $.16
• Surfer Girl by the Beach Boys. $1
• Dance, Dance, Dance by the Beach Boys. $2
• Control by Janet Jackson. $.38
• You’ll Never Walk Alone by Elvis. $.25
• Elvis Sings Flaming Star by, well, Elvis. $.32
• Elvis’ Christmas Album. This is the third or fourth copy we have at Nogglestead. $.50
• The Muppet Movie Original Soundtrack Recording. This is the second or third copy we have at Nogglestead. $1.99
• Hi In-fidelity by REO Speedwagon. $.54
• The Nostalgic Voices and Sounds of Old Time Radio Vol. 2. $1.02
• You Can’t Be True Dear… in the Ken Griffin Style by Charles Rand at the organ. $.99
• Blue Hawaiian Waters by Harry Kaapuni and His Royal Polynesians. $1.50
• This Is A Recording by Lily Tomlin. $.89
• Little Things by Bobby Goldsboro. $.39
• Country & Western Stars. $1.49
• Johnny Horton Sings with a back side by Texas Slim & His Cowboys. $1.02
• Save the Last Dance for Me by the DeFranco Family featuring Tony DeFranco. $1.45
• The Brightest Stars of Christmas. $.69
• This One’s For You by Barry Manilow. $.25
• I Love You So Much It Hurts Me by Tennessee Ernie Ford. $.74
• Lawrence Welk’s Ragtime Gal by Jo Ann Castle. $1.08
• Go Honky Tonkin! by Maddox Bros.& Rose. $1.45
• Our Best To You: Today’s Great Hits, Today’s Great Stars, a Columbia collection (no cover).
• Greatest Hits The Fifth Dimension (no cover).
• Unforgettable Oldies Volume II (no cover).
• Greatest Hits Volume One by Roy Acuff (no cover)
• Happy Holidays: The Music of Christmas Volume 2 (no cover)
• Monkee Business by the Monkees, a photo disc from 1982. $9.25
• Jerusalem by John Starnes.
• Sing and Be Happy with Little Marcy. $5.00
• Andy Presents: The Book of Matthew
• The Little Drummer Boy featuring Don Janse and His 60 Voice Children’s Chorus, a Clark gas stations record.
• Perry Como Sings Merry Christmas Music. This is the third or fourth or fifth copy of this record at Nogglestead.
• 40 Hour Week by Alabama.
• The Osmonds Live
• Colour by Numbers by Culture Club. A very nice cover. In middle school, I got a button of this cover out of a vending machine for a quarter and wore it to school to some teasing. Or as they would call it now, bullying.
• Records by Foreigner, the greatest hits collection. I actually have this on cassette already–I bought it in college.
• Blondes Have More Fun by Rod Stewart.
• Dirty Dancing, the original soundtrack.
• Disney’s Christmas Favorites.
• Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and Electric Light Orchestra. Again, the third or fourth copy at Nogglestead, but the cover is very nice.
• Candyman, a Disney record.
• Foot Loose and Fancy Free by Rod Stewart.
• Gideon by Kenny Rogers.

Jeez, man, that’s over 70 new records. Some didn’t have sleeves; others were only in sleeves and not covers, so I will have to order another set of 12″ cardboard sleeves, too.

Additionally, I got two empty sleeves: Everything is Beautiful by Evie (sad to learn it was empty), This Is Another Day by Andraé Crouch And The Disciples, and No Trespassing and Other Stories for Children featuring Uncle Charlie and the Children’s Bible Hour Staff. I have not looked through all the records I have to ensure that the covers match the contents, but I might just have these sleeves. I have saved one or two others in the past when I was not scrupulous about checking the contents of the sleeves and either got a mismatched or empty sleeve. I don’t know what I’ll do with them. Perhaps recycle them as “cleaning the garage” (where the whole of the cleaning is recycling these sleeves.

At any rate, I am looking forward to listening to some of them. But I really, really need to build additional shelving now.