Chet Baker Deep In A Dream And Chet Baker Autograph 1954

Click and double click on the photo above to enlarge it.


Here is a link to information about the book shown above.
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Dream-Long-Night-Baker/dp/0679442871

Alabama Misspells Mississippi On Football Tickets

Click on the link below to read about how Alabama misspelled Mississippi on football tickets.
http://www.ajc.com/sports/bama-misspells-mississippi-on-591008.html

One thing you learn growing up in Mississippi is how to spell the word Mississippi.
This way: Miss iss i ppi.

Record Collecting As Time Travel 1995 Back To 1955

Click on the above picture to enlarge it.

This is another story in my record collecting career. Every year St. Margaret's Church in D.C. has a large rummage sale. I have been going to it for years. It is one of the largest and one of the best but it is very crowded so it is important to get there an hour or more early and get in line up front right by the door.

One year I got there about 2 hours early and sat and looked across the street at the Universal Building and was remembering the record store that used to be in that building years and years ago. It was called The Disc Shop. Quite often when finding old jazz records I would find a small sticker on the back of the LP that said THE DISC SHOP and gave the address of the shop.

Here is a good article from The Washington Post about the history of the DISC SHOP and its owner.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012801072.html

So I sat on the church steps and thought how nice it would be if I could go back to 1955 and walk across the street into that record store and buy all the original first pressing jazz albums they had back then.

The Japanese jazz record collectors want the original first pressings of the jazz LPS from that era in near mint or mint condition. The records have to be clean with no scratches and the covers in Near Mint condition also.

So finally the doors to the church opened and the sale began. They put all the records and books in the chapel laid out on the pews. I found this out the first year I went by going the wrong way and going all through the church and the many rooms of items before I located the books and records.
But the year I am writing about I knew where to go. I was the first record guy in the room. I wasn't expecting anything.

I ran down front and there were long rows of old Jazz 10" LPS from the 1950s. I found 40 choice items. On the back of all of them were stickers from THE DISC SHOP right across the street from the church. 50 years had passed and somehow the records has crossed the street and found their way into the sale. Someone from that neighborhood had most likely donated them. It could have been the wife of a man that had passed away. Sometimes the wives will keep the records for years and years before selling them or donating them to their church or charity.

As I was finishing going through the records and putting them in 2 boxes two other record dealers showed up. Only about 5 minutes or less had passed since the doors opened. They had been way back in the line which stretched all the way down the block and more. They were too late.

One of them asked me if those records(meaning the ones I had in the 2 boxes)were original 10" Jazz LP's and I said they were.
The other young man offered to help me carry them to my car. They were both record guys I knew and was friendly with.
I went to the cashier and paid for the LPS. One dollar each. It was a great find. All the 10" LPS were in nice clean condition.
I was amazed to find such old records in such nice condition and the DISC SHOP stickers on the back made me feel I had stepped back into the 1950s where the records were from. Listening to the music when I got home even added to the feeling of time travel.

Collecting Jazz Records For Fun And Profit

Click on the above photo to enlarge it.

Click on the link below to read about that price guide and read some reviews.
http://www.amazon.com/Goldmines-Price-Collectible-Albums-1949-1969/dp/0873412885


My first lucky break was surely beginner's luck. I looked in the classified section of The Washington Post around 1980 and saw an ad for an estate sale listing a large jazz collection.
It was scheduled for the coming Sat. I was off from work on Friday and it was at an address not far from my house so I went over and knocked on the door early in the morning.

Two ladies were inside. They had just driven up from Shenandoah,Va. One of them told me the records were in the basement. I went down to take a look.
There was one other man walking around the house but he was not interested in the records.
The two sisters were cleaning out their brother's house. The had already sold all the furniture and they told me they had found socks filled with silver dollars stuffed down in the sofa.

The man had been a photographer. He lived with his mother. After she died he lived alone.
There were about 400 jazz albums in the basement as well as about 1200 jazz 78s. The 78s were 25 cents a piece but I was not interested in them. They break easily and take up too much room to store and most 78s have no real value.
So I just bought the best of the jazz LPS. There were plenty of original Blue Notes and Prestige albums there. I called my friend and he came over and bought the rest.

The albums had stickers from the record store in Washington D.C. where they had been bought back in the 1950s. It was located in D.C. around 13th and G Streets N.W. It had been a small store specializing in modern jazz.
My friend and I went back the next day and all the 78s were gone. The lady told me that two old men had been fighting over them.

The only reason I got the records on Friday was that the ad had been in the paper all week and many other collectors and dealers had been there knocking on the door but the two ladies were down in Shenandoah,Va. all week and no one was home until they arrived on Friday morning just before I got there.

Those who had come too early missed out just like those who had come too late.

I sold them all and made my first large profit. I was hooked. All it takes is one big score and the novice becomes an addicted collector,trader,buyer,seller. Vinyl addiction is much like drug addiction. The customer buys more in order to sell to buy more. It doesnt take long for the customer to become a dealer. And if they work hard and are lucky a wheeler dealer.

The link below is to a good jazz record collector web site.
If you scroll down you can read some of his and others collecting stories.
I like the one about him buying records in a lot on Ebay. He took a chance and won.Most collectors would never bid the way he did. It is not a good thing to do. He just got lucky. You can then go to his homepage to read more. He is a real pro.
http://jazzcollector.com/page/2/

Over the years I sold all my valuable jazz records to Japanese buyers and record store owners.
In the beginning this record mania was like the 1849 gold rush to California. Those that got there first made out. Those that came late did not.
We used to joke that the ones really making money are those that write and sell these price guides.

Still Down In The Groove Record Collecting LP's Still A Vinyl Junkie

Click and double click on the above in order to enlarge and read it.
By the way I did not buy those records someone else did. There was not much interest in those records since they were library records and some if not all had significant wear on the vinyl. But there were some interesting spoken word LPs among them. That was about all of value there. The other music was common and commerically not of value.

I just happened to be in the library when the Washington Post sent a photographer over to photograph them and they asked if I would pose for the picture. The other guy is someone who worked in the library back then. This article and photograph appeared in the Washington Post on April 7th,1999.


Record Collecting is a great hobby and a great way to learn all about the history of recorded music. And the joy of finding rare LP's in out of the way places. I have been doing this since 1979.

I will tell some record collecting stories from time to time. Some great finds stand out as good memories.

I had a friend who I had bought records from in the past. He collected vintage glassware but he would call me if he found some records. He called me to say he had some records for me and to meet him on Sat. morning at an estate sale out in Fairfax,Va. I said O.K. Sat. is the busiest day of the week for yard sales and estate sales so I told him I would meet him early at the address he gave me.

When I got out there it was around 6am and it was still dark. I went up on the porch and there was no light. I saw a pad of white paper on the door. I thought great these are the "numbers". Numbers are given out to try and create order and avoid a mob scene at sales.

I took the piece of white paper out into the street under the street light. It was blank. Obviously not numbers. I found out later the guy who lived in that house(he was deceased) used that pad for his friends to write notes on when he wasn't home. A real old fashioned message system to say the least.

Finally my friend showed up. The records he had to show me were not what I was looking for but I decided to stick around for the sale since I was already there.
The owner of the house had died of pancreatic cancer. He willed all the contents of his house(and maybe the house also)to his church and they were running the estate sale. That is very uncommon.

His house looked to be in such bad condition that it was ready to be condemned.
When the sale started we were among the first inside. I went into what was some kind of greenhouse just off the living room. Inside were many plants and quite a few 45 rpm records. I started looking through those. Not many buyers had showed up at this point. This sale had been poorly advertised. They did hang some signs outside as I recall.

After a few minutes my friend came into the greenhouse and told me that I had better come in the living room that there were a lot of records there in a cabinet.
I went in there in a hurry. No other record collectors or dealers had shown up at this point.

Over in a cabinet in a corner was a large collection of LPS. I started at the top in the cabinet. It was a real fine collection of rock and roll from A to Z. But as I pulled each one out to examine it for condition I found that all the records were badly scratched. The owner had drunk himself to death I found out later. Obviously he was drunk when he played his records and he scratched them all. None were in condition good enough to buy but I kept looking. Finally I got to the bottom shelf.
There I found the jazz records. It was a really good collection of modern jazz and they were NOT scratched. None of them had any marks on them. He had died before he got down that far. I bought several hundred and headed home.

Before I left I looked at the rest of what was in the house. He had collected American Indian artifacts and prints and pictures and feathers and such. The back yard was some kind of interesting garden gone to rack and ruin and seed.

When I got to my car the fellow in the car parked next to me was calling someone to get their opinion on what he had seen inside.
He was smart because it was not clear whether the pictures inside were merely copies and not worth much if anything at all.

The rule of thumb in going to these sales is stick with what you know.

More Hotel Detective Stories From Washington D.C. Help Security! There Are Two Gays Kissing In The Hotel Swimming Pool At The Shoreham Hotel

In 1977 I was working as a Hotel Detective at The Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. I have more posts about this and you can find them by scrolling down below.
The Shoreham has a very nice swimming pool. That is the Shoreham swimming pool in the photo shown above.

One morning very early around daybreak I saw a duck swimming in the hotel pool. It had dropped down for a quick dip. The Shoreham Hotel backs up to Rock Creek Park which is a large urban park that runs through D.C.
Lots of geese and ducks fly over from time to time. This was a mallard duck that had dropped in. I watched it for some time but did not bother it.

Another time I was called to get a dog out of the pool. It had fallen in and could not get out. It was swimming around barking for help. I helped it get out. It was stray dog that had somehow found its way into the pool area.

But this story is about another incident.
I was working with a guy named Harry. Harry was an alcoholic or ex alcoholic. He was also a retired D.C. Homicide Detective. He was a large beefy Irishman who had hands that shook all the time. He had the tremors.
We got a call from the lady Asst. Manager and she said there were two gay men kissing in the pool and she didn't know what to do.

Now Harry seized hold of the situation and said "We will take care of it. I know what to do." And he took off at a rapid pace toward the pool. I thought this should be very interesting since I had no idea what to do about 2 gay men kissing in the pool. I followed him anxious to see what he was going to say and do.
The Shoreham is a large hotel. It took us some time to get there. By the time we got there they were gone. I never got to find out what he was going to do.

I told the story to my friend named Bill who was the Chief Engineer at the hotel and he told me he would have told them they had to get out of the pool because there was a short in one of the lights and they could be electrocuted.

The link below is about the history of laws in the District of Columbia concerning this sort of thing. Far down in the article a man named Blick is mentioned. He was a legend still being talked about in the 1970s and 1980s. He had files on all sorts of people in D.C. Maybe more than Hoover. When he died what became of his files became an important matter. I can't remember who got them or what happened to them.
http://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/districtofcolumbia.htm

Marlin Died And Is Being Buried Today

I searched around on Google and found Marlin's Youtube channel. There are seven videos on it. Double click on the video above to go to his YouTube channel and see all 7 of his videos.


This is the photo that ran with his obituary in the York,Pa. newpaper. This is how Marlin looked in his younger days.


Marlin died a week ago and is being buried today. He was 76 years old. He had been dying slowly over the last 8 months.
I got used to seeing him every day for the last ten years or more at the coffee shop I go to in the morning. He would read 4 or 5 newspapers every day. He would sit and read every word sometimes tearing out a story to take home. He would sit at the same table and read for 4 or 5 hours never talking to anyone.
There are many seniors that come to this coffee shop every day. Most of them know each other and socialize. Marlin kept to himself. He did not want to be bothered but he would be friendly if spoken to.
One guy I know called him Professor Marlin.


In the summer he would take off his tennis shoes and sit with his bare feet under the table. No one bothered him. He would bring a muffin from 7-11 where he stopped to buy his newspapers. Then he would get his senior coffee and settle down in the handicap booth to pour over his newspapers. He really didn't want to be disturbed.

He rode a bike to the coffee shop every day around 6:30 a.m. He did tell me once that he had sold his car ten years ago. And he had stopped using it long before that.
When he traveled he traveled by plane or bus or the subway. He liked to go into DC and go the exhibits at the National Geographic Building.

He had retired long ago. His obituary is at the bottom of this page.
He had worked for the MITRE corporation.
This is a good link to the wikipedia page explaining what the MITRE corporation is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitre_Corporation

Here is a link to the MITRE website.
http://www.mitre.org/

He had traveled all over the world in his life.

Several months ago he had a seizure and fell out of his booth at the coffee shop. They called the ambulance which took him to the hospital. Someone stole his bike from in front of the coffee shop while he was in the hospital.

He did have one or two people from the coffee shop that tried to look after him. They would take him food and drink at home when he was ill. He stopped eating at one point.
He had to go back in the hospital when one of the guys found him on the floor by the door at his house.

His family came down from Pa. to visit him in the hospital.
Finally he got so sick they put him in a nursing home. He lasted about 2 months there and then he passed on.

He did have one final trip to Mexico last Christmas to see a friend of his in Mexico City. He was down there all of Jan. because his passport expired while he was there and he had to wait to get that cleared up before he could return to the U.S.A.

Marlin was an intellectual. A smart man who had once been a pilot. He once owned his own plane. He was a no nonsense man. Very blunt and to the point. But very hard to get to know. He kept to himself

He knew he was dying. He lost weight. He stopped eating.
He told us, "I am dying". He was in a great deal of pain. He had cancer all over his body. They gave him pain medication.

He rode his bike right up to the last weeks. Even when he could hardly walk he could ride his bike.
He told some of us of his trip to Mexico when he came back last Feb.

I really did not know much of Marlin or his life but I found him to be an interesting man. Most of us really don't know much about each other. We just think we do.

Marlin's Obituary in the York Pa. newspaper
Marlin L. Leiphart |
ARLINGTON, VA Marlin Leo Leiphart, 76, formerly of Red Lion, entered into rest at 7:45 a.m. Tuesday, August 24, 2010, at at Manor Care in Arlington, Va. He was born in Brogue-ville, on December 15, 1933, and was the son of the late Earl and Rachel (Altland) Leiphart. Mr. Leiphart was a satellite communications engineer at Mitre, where he worked until his retirement. He was an avid worldwide traveler, a private pilot who enjoyed flying his airplanes, a special government clearance officer, and a member of the Smithsonian Institute. Surviving are two daughters, Dr. Victoria Leiphart and Lisa Smith, both of California; two grandchildren, Peter and Christy; three brothers, Charles Leiphart and wife, Doris of Red Lion, Samuel Leiphart and wife, Beverly of York, and Donald Leiphart and wife, Mary Jane of Red Lion; two sisters, Janet Heist of York and Geraldine Snyder of Red Lion; a half brother, Wayne Barshinger and wife, Mary of Red Lion; two half sisters, Elaine Sixtos and husband, Fernando of York, and Sharon Leiphart of Erie; and numerous nieces and nephews. There will be a viewing from 9 to 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 1, 2010, at Burg Funeral Home, Inc., 134 W. Broadway, Red Lion. The service will begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the funeral home. Burial will be at Bethel U.M. Cemetery. Contributions may be offered to Grace Fellowship, 1405 Seven Valleys Road, York, PA 17408. www.BurgFuneralHome.com
Published in York Daily Record & York Dispatch on August 27, 2010