To Update The Record Collection · 12:41pm Sep 8th, 2016

Hello there.

Yesterday, I went to PDQ Records off Grant Road in my area once again and picked up another few vinyls. Even though I've increasingly gone back go buying VHS tapes (and in fact had a couple on my mind at the time) I never really gave up on collecting vinyl records.

And so I bought 2 LPs and 3 45s, two of which are EPs and one of which is a hit single from the past. Click the little green button to get started!

LPs

Both of the LPs I got yesterday were released on Columbia Records.

One of them is an album by Tony Bennett titled I Left My Heart In San Francisco. Everybody familiar with Columbia's LPs will know this album. It was put out in June of 1962 and hit #5 on the LP charts the following month. Meanwhile, many people associate the title track of this with San Francisco more than many another song about that town. Plus, one of the various FIMFiction users in many follower lists these days lives in the San Francisco area, so I figured he'd know that song. The album is also copyrighted 1962, the only year (that I know of, prior to the adoption of the P symbol) in which Columbia marked their LPs (at the time of its adoption, RCA Victor was the only major label to do so on a consistent basis, having done it as early as 1955). The album comes in its original sleeve, a segment of repeating blue bars with the Columbia logo on it. The disc was pressed at Columbia's Hollywood, CA plant (relocated to Santa Maria in 1964 and shuttered altogether in 1981) and was one of the first to have the ''Two-Eye'' label (the earliest variation had black print at the bottom with no arrows). It's in very nice condition although the jacket has a bit of a vertical ripple at the top right of the front cover.

The other of them is an album by Andy Williams titled Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head. Everybody knows the title track: B. J. Thomas' version was a huge hit introduced in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and was played during a sequence in Spider-Man 2 in which Peter Parker finds himself in a blissful mood after abandoning his Spider-Man identity and its responsibilities. Andy Williams was one of several artists to record a version of the tune. At first, when I purchased it, I assumed this album was from 1969 (it's an unmarked disc!); I figured it would be from 1970 after reading the tracklist more carefully (this contains one of the first recordings of ''Bridge Over Troubled Water'' that are not by either Simon or Garfunkel; S&G had been guests on Andy Williams' NBC program); reading the Columbia album overview carefully, I found that this LP came out in May, 1970. It hit #43 on the LP charts the month after its release. This is a gatefold album, it contains liner notes from producer Dick Glasser and songwriter Mason Williams (Andy opens this with a rendition of the latter's ''Long Time Blues''.) It comes in its original sleeve; this is a variant on Columbia's very famous and oft-misused ''Here's How Records Give You More Of What You Want'' sleeve). This comes from the Pitman, NJ plant (methinks) and was one of the last albums to have Columbia's two-eye label; in June of 1970 (or July, depending on your source and/or during the summer in general depending the pressing plant), Columbia switched gears and went to the all-round Columbia label we all know so well and which they used for the remainder of the vinyl LP's heyday.

45 EPs

Both of the 45 EPs I got yesterday are on RCA Victor.

One is a children's record: The Little Engine That Could, as read by Paul Wing . . . and that is all I know about this guy (aside from the fact that this is not being read to the kids by the former Academy Award winner for Best Assistant Director) I love how, on the front it says, '''When I bark, you turn the pages in the book' says NIPPER, the RCA Victor Pup.'' Too bad the kids had to wait until they had Internet access (of course, they didn't at the time of the EP's release) to find out that NIPPER is actually the EMI pup that RCA Victor had been borrowing all these years. Flipping through the pages on this one, this reads more like a radio transcript than it does a children's book. The two EPs are from (presumably) 1949, the year that RCA Victor issued the 45. Back then, RCA used their 45 RPM record the way Columbia had use their 33 RPM record: on EVERYTHING THAT WASN'T A 78. Alas, the customers preferred using the 33 RPM speed for albums and the 45 RPM speed for singles and EPs like this one. IDK where this record was pressed; I have to look it up again.

The other EP is a country record (which is VERY commonplace on RCA Victor): Country Classics by Eddy Arnold. This set was released (as I read) in 1952. I'll post a scan of this (and all the other records) very soon; the back if it apparently shows that whoever previously owned this copy of it (which was pressed RCA Victor's Indianapolis plant) had coloured in the larger Os and wrote down the price he/she paid for it (2.94). The album is a gatefold, and has 8 tracks (2 on each side of 2 45s). This is a very wonderful collector's item.

From ABC Records (pressed at Columbia's Santa Maria, CA plant), it's "I'm Easy", the top 20-hit written and sung by ~~Jim Croce~~ Keith Carradine, which came out of the (then) controversial country music opus Nashville, where he played Tom Frank, a member of the feuding folk trio in the film. The tune won the Academy Award for Best Original Song of that year, and was released as a single shortly after the 1976 Academy Award ceremony (which was on ABC - natch!) The song topped the Adult Contemporary chart while hitting #17 on the Billboard Hot 100. The B-side of the disc is ''200 Years'' by Henry Gibson (who played the character known as Haven Hamilton in the film).