Page 17 - BiTS_07_JULY_2021

years to do this because we had so much stuff. While we were doing this, I would walk around the

flea market and look for records in between selling stuff from the grandparents' estates. There was
another guy there that was running around looking at records as well. He was looking for different
things than I was. He was looking for those rather elusive rhythm and blues 45s from the early to
mid-50s, late 50s and I noticed that he was looking for something different and we struck up a
conversation. He was about 14 years older than I was at that point. He was in his late 20s and I was

16 and he kind of thought it was interesting that someone as young as I was, was interested in 78s
and 45s. He didn't really care about 78s at all. He was looking for those 45s. He kind of taught me a
little bit about how to buy and sell 45s and I sort of became like a student to him as a teacher of
what to look for. He actually lived not far from where we lived and somewhere along the way, I
discovered that he had a liking for
blues records. Not 20s and 30s stuff.
He didn't know what that was, but like

Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and
John Lee Hooker and things like that,
so I listened to that stuff, and I
thought it was fascinating. I always
was interested in things from before

my time, so we're talking about the
early 70s at this point, and these
records were from the 50s and I liked
the stuff from the 50s, and so I started Dr Demento
liking the blues stuff, but I always
wanted to go further back, if possible,
because I had heard things on the Dr Demento show that were back in the 20s and 30s on 78s. He

played occasionally some jazz records or novelty records from that period too. Not so much blues,
but I soon discovered that Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were inspired by Charley Patton and
Son House and people from 20, 30 years earlier than when they made records and so I started
looking for that stuff. The first batch of it I ever found was at that same flea market. There was a
guy that pulled in there who was getting rid of an estate himself. It was some relative who had

owned a record store somewhere in the Los Angeles area, back in the 20s and 30s and there was a
pile of 78s. And I mean a big pile. The whole flatbed of the truck was filled with 78s stacked about
two feet high. Now I had no idea what I was looking at, at that point. I mean, I knew some of the
names of the big people, but I didn't know all the obscure stuff and I didn't know what this was, but
apparently, it was a lot of blues and jazz because I bought one. One! I invested a whopping 50 cents
in one record and the record I bought was a song called 'Baby Keeps Stealin' Lovin' on Me' by the
Mississippi Sheiks on OKeh, and I took that home and I listened to that, and I thought that was

really cool and it was different than the other blues type stuff I was listening to because it had
fiddles and other stuff in it. Anyway, I just started getting further and further into it, all the while I
was dealing in rock and roll records. LPs I would buy at garage sales. I had a driver's licence by this
point. I would go to garage sales, buy LPs from contemporary rock bands and do that on the
weekend, go to school on Monday and open up the back of the trunk and sell them to the kids for 2

bucks. I'd buy them for 50 cents or a dollar, sell them to the other kids in high school for 2 bucks
and I started just wheeling and dealing records out of the back of my car. All the while continuing
to look for more early records and all that. It just kept going and going and pretty soon I got hooked
up with other collectors that were more into the vintage blues and all that and became friends with