Experienced record collectors have a skill that only comes with the passing of time. It’s the ability to riffle through two stacks of vinyl at once. With thumbs keeping the passed albums in place, all other fingers furiously crabbing through the crates, the index and middle fingers are the key digits in this rapid-fire scanning system. Meanwhile, the collector’s eye shifts quickly from side to side, from box to box, able to land on a keeper with only the merest hints of fabulousness suggested by the album cover.
In St. Louis these double-fisted collectors can be seen working through the understock shelves at the Record Exchange or the dog-eared dollar bins at Euclid Records. They’re certainly all over the place at the St. Louis Record & CD Show at the midcentury American Czech Center in South St. Louis, which almost serves as these collectors’ official, five-times-a-year convention. But as to what they’ll light upon, that’s up to each idiosyncratic vinyl junkie.
For this collector, it’s the local albums that always draw a second look and—usually—a purchase. If it’s got a St. Louis angle, it’s almost certainly going to be picked up, the liner notes read, the record checked for scratches and stuffed in a take-home bag.
Take a recent find at the Record Show, the gospel LP Let Jesus Into Your Heart. Credited to “The Pen of James ‘Jimmie’ Jones,” this album would no doubt be passed up by many a music collector. Those looking carefully might see it as a product of the E.L.J. Record Co., headquartered years ago at 1344 Waldron, St. Louis, Mo. But those simply looking at the cover would already catch the main STL reference: a none-too-subtle, full-cover rendition of the Gateway Arch, a black-and-white drawing of the then-new landmark that dwarfs the courthouses and skyscrapers of downtown to half-sized scale.
But the graphic keeper is a circle on the lower left-hand corner. There, in full, glorious color, is a round snapshot of what we have to assume to be the one and only James “Jimmie” Jones. He’s seated at a piano, his left leg angling toward the camera, with a white, over-the-ankle boot complementing a gleaming, turquoise suit. It appears that our presumed Mr. Jones is at a storefront church, as a stained-glass Madonna looks down on the scene from a plain, paneled wall. There’s a red carpet, and a microphone perched over the keys. This is all
we see.
The back cover liners only discuss the music, with nothing about the album’s creation or its musical players. “We all have sinned against Heaven and God,” it suggests, “but after letting God come into our lives, then we can proceed to Press On.”
We’re left with a strange, almost hollow token of a moment in St. Louis musical history. At some point, a musician thought this music important enough to release, important enough to even inspire those looking “for up-lifting and soul reviving.” That songwriter and arranger surely committed his recording to analog tape, in a $15-an-hour studio, sending away the masters to a far-off duplication facility, all under the auspices of that tiny E.L.J. Record Co. Maybe it sold a few copies to folks who tuned into the gospel scene via AM radio broadcasts, sponsored as they were by furniture companies and soap factories.
Looking at these records, you get to build those back stories yourself. You get to build them when you pick up Head East’s classic rocker Flat as a Pancake, the band members captured on the back cover in a North County diner, where they are found comically eating, of course, pancakes. Or when you finally locate Singleton Palmer’s Dixie by Gaslight, with bandleader Palmer sitting onstage amidst his six-piece group, all of them resplendent in red jackets, gray slacks and blue ties. Or when you’ve lucked into The Four of Us by Russ David, as he and the other two members of his trio crouch in front of the Louis IX statue of Art Hill, the horseman all but obscured by an advancing nightfall. These are St. Louis records. They are filled with St. Louis stories, told in song.
When you’re combing the stacks—from flea markets to estate sales to the collector-quality shops—you never know what’s going to catch your eye. And it’s often for the sake of acquisition that we part with cash for these products. In some cases, years later, the albums have been looked at dozens of times, the St. Louis iconography shining through a shrink-wrap cover that says, clearly, “This record has never been played.”
It has been loved, though. It’s not been played, but that record has surely been loved.
Sidebar: Easy Listening
For those who miss the warmth of vinyl, some fail-safe sources:
Deep Grooves Records
6370 Delmar
314-726-0300
Euclid Records
601 E. Lockwood
314-961-8978
Record Exchange
5320 Hampton
314-832-2249
St. Louis Record & CD Show
American Czech Educational Center
4690 Lansdowne
618-654-3049
618-304-7188
314-821-9121
Vintage Vinyl
6610 Delmar
314-721-4096
Webster Records
117 W. Lockwood
314-961-4656
