A background story: Time: the late 1960's Place: Warwick, Rhode Island. My dad used to get bags of ten 45rpm records (remember those?) for $1.00 at a local flea market. All sorts of stuff in there. I grew up learning about all kinds of music and didn't realize what genres were until years later. All I knew was whether I liked the song or not. From there I used to track down the artists I liked in order to find more of their music, hoping it was as good. This led to lifetime pursuit of musical excellence. Some of the items in my collection are quite obscure, most are marginally known (if not popular), and some are the usual household names. I'd buy up the whole catalog of some artists just to get deep album cuts that weren't available any other way. This is decades before the advent of YouTube/Spotify/ all the rest... (Some of those LPs went straight to the cutout bin and you could get them with a little hole or slice out of the cover for a buck or less. That's not why they called it the cutout bin. Cutout meant it was not a hot seller and they were stuck with lots of unsold inventory, so the record label cut it out of their catalog. Remaining specimens had the covers marred so they could be discounted and not returned for full price.) This type of musical education through exposure to rare and diverse recordings is a blessing for which I'm eternally grateful. Being able to access phrasing or an unusual beat from an unknown (to anyone but you) source from sixty years ago is priceless. With the universal access today via the web, there is no excuse for not exploring what's out there musically. Come, Watson, the game's afoot!
