MAGNET’s Mitch Myers vaguely recalls his college record-store job and claims it was a different time.
I have a confession. When I was a young man I worked at a record store in the college town of Carbondale, Ill., around 1980 and 1981. I figured out what era I worked there based on the records I recall us selling at the time. We had a big store and catered to a wide range of folks at Southern Illinois University. One thing was for sure, we always sold a ton of funk and soul LPs, including new releases by Parliament, Rick James and the like. I hazily remember going through boxes and boxes of Stevie Wonder’s Hotter Than July and Michael Henderson’s Wide Receiver. You get the idea.
A few blocks down the strip there was a Wuxtry outlet that sold used albums and other collectables, but right across the street from us was Plaza Records. Plaza was a smaller store that had a cool staff and seemed more organized than we were. I found out many years later that my dear friend and Sirius jazz broadcaster Mark Ruffin had worked there around that time. Mark was from Chicago like me—but he was from the west side, I was a north sider all the way, and we never once met the entire time we were living down in Carbondale. Parallel lines? That’s one way of putting it.
As for me being a clerk at Side One Records, I can only imagine that I was mildly insufferable then since I am mildly insufferable now. I do remember the night we were hanging at Hangar 9 to see some live music when the (amazing) bassist Angus Thomas stopped the show and emotionally announced that John Lennon had been shot and killed in New York City. At work the next day, I spent all morning on the phone frantically overordering Lennon’s new record Double Fantasy from every distributer we could think of, hustling to meet the demand for product that was already intense. This did not leave me with a very good feeling I can tell you.
Then there was that time Springsteen walked into our store during his tour promoting The River, and I waited on him. We were all about the Boss back then, and by the time of the Carbondale show, we had already seen him twice in nearby St. Louis and two more times up in Chicago. I remember he gamely autographed our big promotional River poster and winced at our bootleg Springsteen buttons displayed on the back counter. I can even tell you nerds which two cassette tapes Bruce purchased from us that day. He picked up copies of the Band’s Northern Lights, Southern Cross and Sandinista! by the Clash.
One time I most definitely remember is when this very attractive woman came into our store. She was a shade older than I, and her blondish hair was feathered, not unlike the Farrah Fawcett look that had once been popular. This gal was looking for the Laura Nyro album Gonna Take A Miracle, which had been released a decade earlier on Columbia Records. I was already fond of this LP and Laura Nyro and was thusly impressed with this person’s interests and taste.
What grabbed me was that her musical quest wasn’t a new release, nor was she looking for the back catalogue of blond sun-kissed California/Canadian Joni Mitchell. She was seeking the dark opposite: Laura Nyro, the Bronx-born songstress with Eastern European Jewish and Italian roots. Of course, we didn’t have the record in stock, but I said I could special order it for her and have it in a week. She readily agreed, and I was personally thrilled. I even got her name.
Gonna Take A Miracle came out in 1971 at the tail-end of a creative burst that saw a young Nyro release four splendid, increasingly personal albums. Miracle was different, however. Credited to Laura Nyro and LaBelle, it was a complete back-to-the-roots recording of old cover tunes—vintage Motown, girl-group and R&B standards—produced by Philly Soul legends Gamble & Huff with Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash singing backup. It was the artist’s reclamation of an innocence that she’d been losing to her career and to the music business for five long, ambivalent years.
I confess that I projected the romantic celebration and passionate abandon of Gonna Take A Miracle onto my beautiful new customer. So, I asked around and learned that she was dating one of the guitarists in Vision, the local rock band that had gotten popular after shifting over to a new-wave sound. I also heard that she had a job as a social worker at Marion State Prison, which was a good 30 miles from town. I must admit I imagined what a distraction she may have caused some of the inmates, as I could barely hold my own concentration simply talking to her over our sales counter.
Much like the great Jimmy Webb, Laura Nyro wrote big hits for other artists in the ’60s and ’70s and was able to keep making her own records as a result. And much like Webb, her own recordings, however worthwhile, have remained an acquired taste. Nyro made five more solid studio albums after Gonna Take A Miracle, but her magic era was kind of over, and things were never really the same. Such is life.
Oh yeah, the copy of that record I special ordered for the lovely lady came in right away. The only problem was that she picked it up from the store on my day off, and I never saw her again.
