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. There were over a hundred high-resolution black & white photos set for the interior of the book, including both rare records and famous and not-so-famous recording artists. [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. John has been tracking down 78s no matter where they may be, no matter how many other collectors assure him that copies of certain records no longer exist. I’ve [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. But I believe that I met him years earlier at a swap meet in California. [Continue reading]