a blog about writing and self-publishing a book
THIS SITE IS A LIMITED BLOG that tells a few stories about the conceiving of a rice guide for some of the world’s rarest records and most passionately collected records: blues and rhythm & blues 45s of the 1950s. It started back in the 1980s when I was with O’Sullivan Woodside, publishers of the “official” line or record collectors price guides. [Continue reading]
WHEN REQUIRED TO POST A PROFILE on the internet, I usually write, “Mystical liberal likes long walks alone at night in the dark in the city in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig.” While this bit of irony works for some readers, others want a little more in terms of personal background information. [Continue reading]
MY BLUES AND R&B BOOK was behind schedule and completing it was getting difficult. My plans included a full-color cover designed by a local artist that used labels from several highly collectable records from the ’50s and really cool typography. [Continue reading]
THERE’S ALCOHOL & JAKE BLUES and there’s really rare records and John Tefteller, who has been collecting those records for a long time. And he doesn’t collect reissues of great old music on great old LPs—he collects original, brittle-to-begin-but-even-brittler-with-age 78 rpm singles. [Continue reading]
I’M GETTING OLDER and a wee bit foggy between the ears, so I don’t recall when John Tefteller and I first met. I’d guess it was at the twice-yearly record convention in Austin, Texas, probably after we’d spoken on the phone. [Continue reading]
A RECORD FEW KNEW ABOUT at the time was the Jets on Gee 1020, Heaven Above Me / Millie Brown. Released in 1956, it was a rarity whispered about by the handful of collectors who knew it was one of the secret gems in the genre. [Continue reading]
WHAT ABOUT COMPETITION? Frankly, there wasn’t much there, and what had come before wasn’t to be feared! The first price guide to take on the field of rhythm & blues—at least that I was aware of—was another O’Sullivan Woodside guide by Jerry Osborne and Bruce Hamilton. [Continue reading]
MY RHYTHM & BLUES BOOK was first conceived in 1986, but a book that combined r&b and blues record didn’t occur to me until the early ’90s. My first and only choice for co-author was the legendary Val Shively: his store, R&B Records, had been a fixture in the Philadelphia area for decades; customers came from all over the world to get lost in the back rooms filled with little records with big holes. [Continue reading]