Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

below that lush alky hair, beneath those chipmunk cheeks and the bags under his eyes, those Kennedy genes were there in plentitude.
    »I’ve lacked liquidity, my brother. Led a pauper’s existence. But down’s up again and I’ve come to celebrate.«
    »Here?« he asked, laughing. I was the only customer in the store; there were two lights in the ceiling and forty-seven thousand 78s in bins, files and cases. Hard to have gotten higher, no matter what I dropped.
    »You got a couple of beauties I’ve been wanting to pick up for a long time,« I told him. »Let me get their phone numbers.«
    »Which ones?« he asked, not yet standing. While he wasn’t morbidly obese, he was huskier – let’s be honest, and say a real porker – than his brothers, all of whom were thin as motel blankets. Those mesomorphs couldn’t be happier being seen pounding tennis balls, rigging sails, lifting cars, diving into volcanoes. Even Father Ted showed good form hoisting that loving cup every Sunday. Jim Kennedy must have always been the standout in the bunch.
    »Skip James, ›Devil Got My Woman Blues‹, Blind Tommy Walker, ›Mean Old Blue‹, and Robert Johnson, ›Malted Milk Blues‹.«
    Oh, happy day when you make a store owner as happy as you when you buy something. »You sure you want them?« he asked, smiling. I fluffed the green with a satisfying ruffle. He squeezed between the bins to reach the locked case, opened it and pulled out the prizes, laying them on a shammy he’d draped over his desk. »Labels unfaded. Near mint, each one. They’ll transfer to tape beautifully.«
    »Numbers match up with Godrich?«
    »Every one. And you know you don’t usually find these in packages like this.« While Johnson was in a modern sleeve, and Skip’s original was still plain kraft, the one for Blind Tommy was a full-tilt Paramount Sambo special, bearing the logo THE POPULAR RACE RECORD, and a black-on-brown drawing of a big-lipped house slave whanging on his diddlybo. »Walter, right?« he asked.
    »Right, Jim.« Those Kennedy teeth gleamed like the moon. »Wrap ’em up.«
    As he padded my buys with cotton batting and newspaper I snaked over to take a look at what else was in the case. Several Enrico Carusos; but on a Brazilian label, not Italian or standard Red Victor. A couple of cylinders labelled, by hand, T. Roosevelt Dec 1907; the Emancipation speech maybe. »Old Jimmie Sutton’, by Grayson and Whitter, a sad sight; far as I had known until that moment, mine was the only existing copy. Bud Averill Plays Songs by Stephen Foster, a theremin recording on the Tech-Art label. A flat disc marked Last Surviving 1812 War Veteran; then several that I already owned, Geeshie prominent among them. And –«
    »Jim,« I said, »how much for this one?«
    »Twenty,« he said. »I’ll make it seventy-five total if you want that one, too.«
    »Sold.«
    »Dallas String Band. ›Dallas Rag‹,« he said, reading the label. »14.292 D. Coley Jones, right?«
    »He’s on there,« I said. »Guy I knew had a tape. Magnificent stuff.«
    »Let me tape it before you walk off with it. That all right?« I nodded. Jim stuck a new reel on his player, fed in the leader and tested the wires. »Got it hooked into the speakers I use for the Victrola,« he explained. »Picks it up directly.« He dusted the grooves, fixed the baby blanket on the spinner and then eased the disc down. He used a bamboo needle instead of a steel so even before the first note plucked I knew the condition was near perfect. You’ve probably never heard it, but if you have, »Dallas Rag,« a two-mandolin beauty that drives like a Tennessee moonshiner is about as perfect as there is. Impossible to find, but I always had a working theory that most of the stock was in Warehouse 6, and went up during the 1930 Columbia fire.
    »That’s something,« Jim muttered, his eyes closed as he listened. Nobody listens to old records these days unless they’ve got the heart to hear them.
    »Where’d you turn it up?« I asked.
    »New England,« he said. »Boston. Elderly abolitionist owned this and about two hundred others. Don’t think he listened to a one of them but bought them to show solidarity. Boston used to be a good place to look for race records, but it’s all cleaned up now.« I nodded; I knew. »I’m hoping next year to take a trip down South.«
    »Why?«
    »Think of all the records that must still be down there,« he said, »in drawers and closets. Basements. Barrels out back.