The 45’s list that TRUMPS ‘em all!! a/k/a List #90

www.saturdaynightrecords.com (has 20,000 additional records not on this paper list; also some genres not listed here, like Religious 45’s, and Modern Punk/new wave.)

Frank Merrill SATURDAY NIGHT RECORDS, P.O. box 669, Macomb IL 61455 USA

REMOVE ALL DASHES, for email:

07 JANUARY 2016 – FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS…it’s gonna get crazy in here! THIS LIST IS VERY LATE, POSSIBLY NOT FULLY ISSUED UNTIL EARLY FEBRUARY. CONSIDER THIS TO BE MY ONLY 2016 LIST. My next list will be issued January 2017…**OR MAYBE NOT UNTIL JUNE 2017**. My big list needs to come out in January, but I’m “losing that” slowly because my lists are now more work than ever before. I have put at least 300 more hours into this list than into any other list in my lifetime (even including the two or three Super-Sized ones I’ve done. I research my records much more thoroughly than in the past…AND, NOWADAYS, I go through many more records to assemble my material. This is part of downsizing toward retirement and such – in the past, I would list the “good” contents of maybe 35,000 records. THAT’S GONE, I don’t have any “good boxes” like that sitting anywhere anymore, and I go through much more stuff to gather a List. This list includes what I “distilled” from about 200,000 records, this time. I admit I have a bunch of boxes of good records for future lists, though I’m trying to include ALL the “premium” stuff I currently know of, into this list. TONS of solid $4 and $5 records will simply not get listed yet, basically. But, going through so many records, and using whatever (re)sources I have to get the unlisted stuff to bulk-buyers, TAKES A LOT OF TIME. Yes, I’m sure it added hundreds of hours to this list – including the “over-sorting” (too many records for this list) and decisions on which to postpone for future lists, including **a few thousand** that I auditioned or otherwise priced. YES, MY 2017 LIST MAY NOT BE OUT UNTIL JUNE, but I’m far better off it I do my best to stick to winter. Unlike List #89, I’ll have NO trouble getting 24 pages into this list. “More work” on my lists will be the rule from now on. I’m also getting a better sense of how long I hope to be putting out lists. I’m thinking that three more lists is the most likely.

MY PRICING AND RESEARCH STRATEGY HAS CHANGED…for SOUL-and-related, at least…AND it’s also more likely for me to “notice Popcorn” (and maybe rockabilly/Boppers that looks like Country) and price that more sensibly. I am nowadays looking up many thousands of records on Popsike, a website that summarizes RECORDS (and nothing else) which have sold on eBay in recent years. There is finally enough history that I’m more likely to spot records (worth $20 and more) on there, than in Price Guides – this has only recently been true. As recently as two years ago, there simply wasn’t enough history there. NOTE THAT I AM NOT PRICING AT THE UTMOST PRICES shown on there…I want a good chance of selling the records that I list! So if there are a few results between $73 and $205, and quite a few results in the $35 to $58 range, I may price it at BID//MIN:50 (bid item), or something like that. Some records are more consistent and I might do them Set Sale. I can also see what records sold for recently, and take THAT into account. I have almost entirely abandoned the Manship (soul) price guide in favor of Popsike, which I think is more accurate, because it’s entirely up to CURRENT/today…just two days ago it showed me a Mel Tillis record that’s POPCORN which absolutely I would have never caught otherwise. I think you’ll like my prices, and I think I feel a lot better about them, than in the past (my entire life, basically) when I had to rely on printed price guides ONLY.

TRAVELING BETWEEN LISTS, AND “WHERE DID ALL THESE RECORDS COME FROM?”: These records come MOSTLY from my own Stock, and MOST OF “the better stuff” from record fairs. Nowadays “road trip” records are DECREASING, and the records from my own stock (including some from *my own collection* which I never play) are INCREASING, especially now that I’m very heavily divesting Overstock. Record Traveling is no longer a great source because most dealers at record fairs bring “leftovers” they couldn’t sell on ebay. Most big finds were made 15 to 30 years ago, and I only have good records via my “brute force” of buying and buying years ago. Some of the records that I put aside many years ago (or “accidentally” somehow didn’t manage to sell all of in 1984 or 1978, cheap) have “aged” very well, like the Hooterville Trolley, etc.

RECORDS, THIS LIST, AND STUFF: Amazingly, this list includes ALMOST NOTHING from my collection. I’ve been too busy getting rid of stuff. Also, the Fall record show in ALLENTOWN, PA added about 400 records to this list. That’s not a big-profit source, but it spices up my lists with genres I don’t have otherwise…and, as usual, the four days there in early Fall were fun, with a lot of laid-back social times available. It IS hard for me to remember and assimilate people’s faces, which often results in some embarrassment, as has ALWAYS been true for me. A week later I was at the LANCASTER PA record show (Keystone Record Collectors), but I was “so Allentowned out” that it was almost all saying HI to people and not buying much. I also went to the March and November HILLSIDE (Chicago) shows, as well as record shows in Boston [Dedham] and Arbutus [Baltimore].

The vast majority of records on this list came out of my old Stock, and somebody helped me locate some of the better soul records that were “hiding” in it, which helped me greatly, with the GREAT relief that he didn’t “also want all the rare stuff” etc.!!

JAN-APRIL 2015: Last year’s record list, #89, ran its course during winter. I did a 24-day trip to the Great Lakes, starting out with friends in Indianapolis, and taking somebody from there to “show him Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor” before he found his way back home on trains/buses (via Chicago). I managed to get to the Ann Arbor Film Festival (which I *WILL* miss this year) and a lot of visiting in Ohio and Michigan. There were no big surprises on #89, like the “Popcorn Surprise” on List #88 (a sudden peak/surge in buyers which reminded me of a revisit of Beatlemania), but one mishap while carrying a big box of orders, and it went flying (onto a concrete floor) when I tripped on a power cord. I avoided going “flying” myself, though, which could be BAD.

MAY 2015: A BIG OVERSEAS TRIP! I was gone for 18 days…reaching my departure/arrival point by riding AMTRAK and local transit to and from O’Hare in Chicago. It saved me $200, or something, in parking costs. The flights took me to and from…AUSTRALIA. I was very ambitious on the trip, diving right in to a car rental and getting used to driving on the “other side”

of the road – the first time I’ve done that (legally and mandatory). I spent more time in the Sydney area than anywhere else, but still not all that much time (about four days), went to a BALLET at the Sydney Opera House (“The Dream” based on Shakespeare), a lot of walking in that wonderful city and even nice on the rainy day included in that…and I even ended up at a record store there. I bought about 30 records there, and no other records in Australia, because I was trying hard to travel light. I drove all the way through Canberra to Melbourne, then pretty much straight north to Deniliquin N.S.W. (a small and cute little city I ended up liking, and I was invited to share dinner at a table with three wool brokers – sheep are BIG business in that town), then northeast through places like Grong Grong and Dubbo and Coonabarabran all the way to Murwillumbah in far northeast N.S.W.; I spent the weekend in Nimbin which might be the “hippiest” town in the Southern Hemisphere. There was a big pot festival “MardiGrass” going on…and I REMEMBER the weekend vividly because I did not “get stoned and miss it.” I stayed 100% straight (I think I had a beer or two) and, as such, I think I enjoyed it a lot more than if I had walked around “in my cloud.” This event is a BIG DEAL…with one of the biggest parades I’ve ever seen, etc. – in a town of fewer than 600 people! My most fun conversation was with a woman from France who was black – in fact a LOT of Europeans were there, and on the way out of town when I picked up a hitch-hiker from Brazil, I had then met people from all six inhabited continents. I did more flying in Australia, over to Perth…another car rental…I got to my destination near Hamelin Bay, over 200 miles south (and a bit west), and trekked the last few hundred feet to a point of land – the farthest away from home that I can ever possibly be in the world, and still be on any inhabited land. Not even any part of Antarctica is as far away. Some consider the “Southern Ocean” to be demarcated at Augusta, W. A. and, if that’s true, I put my feet in TWO “new oceans” on the same day…and I’m done now. Hamelin Bay (and Perth) is on the Indian Ocean, which I’d also never seen. Another stop…and a lot of fun…I really don’t think that my customer in suburban Perth was expecting somebody from “way on the other side of the world” to just drop in and visit him that day. He also gave me a few of an amazing record collectors’ publication which is made for the collecting scene in Western Australia; who would think that such a localised (their spelling, haha) group would have a publication that compares favorably with, say, ECHOES OF THE PAST? I have to say that seeing something like that, rather blew me away. If I wasn’t trying to conserve space, or if I was staying in the area long enough to MAIL STUFF BACK TO MYSELF, this is where I would have probably bought a bunch more records, but I didn’t. (Only later, I realized I could’ve asked him to mail them…) One other surprise in Australia…would you believe the main highway from Brisbane to Sydney (compare to, maybe, NYC to Indianapolis) is NOT fully limited-access/freeway? You actually go right through the middles of some cities. That definitely surprised me.

SUMMER: Actually just before summer, I went to Wisconsin to visit record-friend Jay and Linda, with some very fun side trips in the region with them. Would you believe there’s a DESERT in Wisconsin…with cactus and all? Rather unusual for me, there were two June-July trips…there was my FIFTIETH HIGH SCHOOL REUNION in Michigan which I greatly enjoyed. There was strange and fortuitous timing between that, and the Grateful Dead “Fare Thee Well” concert in Santa Clara was on the telly, at a nearby attic-party in Ann Arbor with some friends, mostly both nights after the reunion broke up until “tomorrow.” What a fun symbiosis of MEGA-different things happening at the same time while barely conflicting at all!! The other trip was Fort Wayne, Indiana – where I went to a national gathering of RADIO-reception hobbyists all weekend, something which I do most years. It was unusual for me to go in July, though, as these are often after Labor Day. In August (yes, I’ve left June-July now) I went to a similar, but local/regional ONE-day thing in suburban Milwaukee, which was also fun. I’ve known many there for years.

EARLY AUTUMN: 2015 was my “Eastern year” – for a 38 day trip. I know people of all types in the east, and I ended up at four consecutive record shows (mentioned earlier). I ONLY went to Dedham (Boston) to find the “mysterious guy with radio station charts” who goes there – after trying to find out about him for three or five years. I saw him, and I unilaterally offered him $2,300 for FOUR charts that I needed…for him to bring to me the next day. This is nuts EVEN FOR ME…though I DO pay well for what I need. A healthy share of this money was for ONE SURVEY…from WAMF-FM, Amherst Mass. (88.1) from 1957. ANY Fifties FM survey has long been a personal HOLY GRAIL and my $1,000 offer for the first 50s FM to turn up is an OLD offer! Even crazier, the frequency is extinct – they moved to 89.5 in *1958*. There had never been even a RUMOR that any kind of FM survey ever existed earlier than 1960. He also had a survey from 1956 from WVDA Boston, which is also waaaay over-the-top rare itself. Other than that, I spent much of the record-show day hanging out with all of my New Hampshire customers – if I’m correct in thinking I have exactly two of them, haha. A couple days earlier, I GOT TO FENWAY PARK for a Red Sox game – wheeee!! – great park! Red Sox lost 7-0. I MADE THIS UP: Shutouts are not common in Boston, but Boston Common is a nice greenbelt!! A few days earlier I saw the Baseball HALL OF FAME in Cooperstown, New York. KNOWING the grief Hank Aaron went through (threats, etc. when he hit #715), I knew his exhibit would be most emotional for me, and it was. I spent those five weeks visiting record people/customers, political friends (notably a small group of New York City people, mostly or entirely Jews, some who think I should move there…can’t come close to affording it, heh) and two days with friends in central NJ which cannot be described at all with any real language…ALWAYS in an alternative universe! I also discovered that two of my friends in eastern Pennsylvania know each other independently of me and/or anything that I do (THIS KEEPS HAPPENING TO ME! It’s really weird). I visited L. L. BEAN in Maine out of curiosity (they don’t really sell much that I will ever use or want), and I got as far east as ACADIA NATIONAL PARK, where I spent a day hiking. Before hiking, I bought their topographical map, and looking and scrutinizing later I figured that my altitude change was climbing 2,400 feet, and of course the same descent, in a series of ups-and-downs…wow. It’s highly unlikely that amount of climbing will ever be exceeded by me in a single day again.

TIMES SPENT AT HOME: I don’t generally talk about “home” very much, because there’s not much to say. Even many hundreds of hours going through records and putting a list together, etc., is NOT something that is really that “exciting” to talk much about. There have been a few pretty cool parties I’ve gone to, and my circle of local friends has finally grown after being stagnant for so long. Doing only one big annual list now, helps this. I go to an Episcopal church locally about once a month. “THE 5 (6!)-YEAR PLAN”: I CONTINUE WORKING ON THIS. I’m still hoping to conclude it by finally living in a COSOMPOLITAN/CULTURAL CITY, including consideration of being near a *good* hospital which likely I’ll eventually need, etc. The 2016 elections may affect where I move! With that and the economy, I may “go for” a place before December (before prices rise even more) – or, if there’s a recession, I may wait for the “bottom.” It would be nice to be able to move in slowly and methodically and not ALL AT ONCE as usual!!! I still have a lot of records to get rid of, so 2016 may still not conclude it.