Denise McCann

 Artist: Denise McCann

LP: Tattoo Man

Song: "Tattoo Man"

[ listen ]

Heading north from Lima, I stopped for a while in the college town of Bowling Green, where I encountered a brief tornado warning that I wasn't sure what to do about, as well as a neat-looking record store that unfortunately didn't stock any used records, only new ones. Later that afternoon I pulled into the northern Ohio city of Toledo, which straddles the Maumee River at the western end of Lake Erie.

 [ Toledo, OH — skyline from east bank of Maumee River ]

After driving around for awhile, I came upon the Lorraine Motor Hotel, which was built in 1925 and doesn't have air conditioning or fans, and in the lobby of which I paid the sensible rate of $33 for a room for the night. I got room #509, which I saw as a good sign since it's the area code in my hometown of Yakima, Washington.

Before grabbing some dinner at Tony Packo's Cafe, which features a "Hot Dog Bun Museum" (I ended up seated next to the buns of Larry King and Patti LaBelle)...

...I had time for an hour or two of shopping, so I went to RamaLama Records on West Central Avenue. The store's owner was helpful and nice, even recommending other stores I should visit while in town. I found some neat stuff at RamaLama Records, including this 1978 disco rock LP from Canadian-American singer Denise McCann. The title track features the lyrics "Tattoo Man—get your needle out of my skin," which might be the best sexual euphemism ever set to music. I also admire Denise for not featuring a stereotypical tattoo man on the cover of her record, but choosing a skinny, chain-smoking, tattooless Japanese guy instead. He's much more my type as well. Unfortunately, Denise's record labels kept going out of business just as she was about to release her LPs, so she's not as well known nowadays as she ought to be. You can read all about her life and career on Wikipedia here.

 [ RamaLama Records — Toledo, OH ]

The Doctor Exx Band

Artist: The Doctor Exx Band

LP: Superman and Other Disco Hits

Song: "Theme From Superman"

[ listen ]

After camping overnight at the Indian Lake State Park Campground, I drove into the city of Lima (pronounced, I soon learned, like "lime-uh" and not like you're in the capitol of Peru) to find some breakfast.

[ Lima, OH — plus high school runners ]

After that, I had hoped to visit the Allen County Museum, which features an exhibit of things that people in the area had accidentally swallowed (a collection evidently assembled by two local doctors). Unfortunately, the museum didn't open until 1pm, so I looked on Yelp and found a record store instead. The owner of Groamy CDs and Tapes, Groamy, gave me a warm welcome and showed me to the store's expansive basement, where I found piles and piles of records ready to be sorted through. I found some neat stuff, and Groamy assembled a listening station for me upstairs so I could hear some of the records I wasn't familiar with. My only complaint is that Groamy did a search on the internet for all the records I wanted to buy to make sure I didn't have anything that was exceedingly rare (none of the records had prices on them). Not only did this add about two hours to my Lima visit, but I also wasn't able to score any incredible deals the way you sometimes can at other used record stores. I can't complain too much though, since Groamy offered records to me for around $10 that were selling for about $25 online, and he also threw in a neat old ______________ single for free! (I'll fill that in later, I can't remember the guy's name.) There was, however, one neat record by a female vocalist from the 1950s that was going for upwards of $65 on the web. I had to put that one back, since I was only prepared to pay $5 or $6 bucks for it. I made a point of immediately forgetting the name of the record and the singer so that I didn't somehow manage to talk myself into buying an $80 copy online when I got home. This "Superman and Other Disco Hits" LP I found at Groamy's isn't very rare (you can get a sealed copy for just a dollar here), but you'll have to agree, it is pretty awesome.

[ Groamy CDs & Tapes: the basement record room ]

[ Groamy CDs & Tapes: blurry Groamy w/ computer and signed Joan Jett poster ]

[ Groamy CDs & Tapes — Lima, OH ]

Liquid Gold

Artist: Liquid Gold

LP: Liquid Gold

Song: "Secret Love"

[ listen ]

Heading north from Cincinnati, I made my way to Xenia, the largest town in the USA that beings with the letter 'X.' Unfortunately, Mother Nature does not like the letter 'X' and has plagued the town with more than its fair share of tornadoes—like the famous F-5 one on April 3, 1974 that did this, this, and this and killed 33 Xenianians, and another in the year 2000 that did this to someone's home. After buying some sunscreen at K-Mart and bidding Xenia a fond farewell (it's practically my name spelled backwards!), I arrived in Dayton at around noon on Sunday...

[ Dayton, OH — downtown ]

...and, after visiting one record store that didn't actually have any records, I found Omega Music, which had records a-plenty. I bought lots of neat old singles that don't have picture sleeves (I'll throw some of those into an upcoming mix) and also picked up this terrific 1979 Liquid Gold album, which features a disco cover of "Secret Love," a hit for Doris Day in 1953. This seemed sorta' appropriate since just two days prior I'd photographed the house where Doris Day was born—remember?—and also since the horrible 1974 tornado that whisked through downtown Xenia did so on Doris Day's 50th birthday. Anyway, the gal working at Omega Music was really sweet and helpful. She even gave me a cool old box to carry my singles in, as well as a bit of a discount, since all the records I bought filled up one of the store's discount punch-cards. If you're ever in Dayton and are looking for good records, I recommend stopping at Omega Music. You should probably wait a month or two though, since I already took all the best ones they had.

[ Omega Music — Dayton, OH ]

Sho-Nuff

Artist: Sho-Nuff

LP: From the Gut to the Butt

Song: "Funkasize You"

[ listen ]

The third and final Cincinnati record store I set foot in was the wonderfully cluttered and eclectic Another Part of the Forest on Main Street in the historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of downtown. The picture I've linked to comes from a terrific set of Cincinnati photos taken in May of 2006 that give a nice feel for the city—you can see the entire set here. There's not much info on Sho-Nuff on the web, but you can read Alex Henderson's review of their 1978 "From the Gut to the Butt" LP on allmusic.com here. I'll say this for the group: they sho-nuff know how to dress!

[ Another Part of the Forest — Cincinnati, OH ]

Los Cuatro Soles

Artist: Los Cuatro Soles

LP: Los Cuatro Soles: Canta Beto Orlando

Song: "Volvamos a Encontrarnos, Vieja Amiga"

[ listen ]

The second record store I visited in Ohio, after getting lost for about 20 minutes and ending up in some gigantic industrial park, was Shake It Records—located a ways north of downtown Cincinnati in the charming Hamilton Avenue district. Since I had a birthday while away in Ohio, my good friend Carrie here in Seattle surprised me by arranging for a Shake It Records gift certificate to be waiting for me when I arrived. I found lots of great used vinyl in the basement of the shop, including this terrific LP by Los Cuatro Soles. (As you can see here, about halfway down the page under the "Beto Orlando" heading, this album may have originally been released by EMI in Argentina in 1971, but the date on my UA Latina USA release is 1973—the same year Beto left his Four Suns behind and went solo). One of the things I like best about Shake It Records is that they know you're not supposed to put an apostrophe before the "s" when advertizing the selling of plural LPs, CDs, and DVDs.

[ Shake It Record's — Cincinnati, OH ]

Olympic Runners

Artist: Olympic Runners

LP: Hot to Trot

Song: "(C'mon) Just a Little Lick"

[ listen ]

Hello! I'm back from my 12-day Ohio road trip, during which I ate in lots of neat little diners, stayed in some cool old hotels/motels/state parks, visited some interesting museums, saw some beautiful cities, towns, and countryside, met lots of friendly Ohioans, and of course I bought lots of records. I visited 18 record stores throughout The Buckeye State, not counting the one in Youngstown that was closed, and I found souvenirs to take home with me at each and every one. My trip started in the beautiful and historic city of Cincinnati...

[ Cincinnati, OH — from Kentucky side of Ohio River ]

...also known as "The Queen City," and not just because it has a relatively large gay population. With its riverfront location making it a popular destination for steamboats in the early part of the 19th century, Cincinnati quickly grew to become the largest inland city in the USA, before railroads took over the country and Chicago really began to boom. On my first full day in Cincinnati I hunted down the house in which singer Doris Day was born in April of 1924, where she lived and played as a tot.

While I was in the neighborhood I stopped by Everybody's Records and CDs, where I found lots of great stuff, including this 1977 LP by British funk band Olympic Runners. You can read about them here. It was nearly 100° in Cincinnati during my visit, so I had to keep moving all the records I found back and forth between the cool, air-conditioned inside of my rental car while driving, and the relatively cool darkness of the trunk while the car was parked. Buying records on a summer road trip can become quite complicated!

[ Everybody's Records and CDs — Cincinnati, OH ]

[ Olympic Runners' "Hot to Trot" LP, back and front covers combined ]

Eavesdroppings

Overheard when: 11:26am on Saturday, July 30, 2011
Overheard where: Anchor Grill at 438 West Pike Street in Covington, KY [map]
Overheard who: a spunky, no-nonsense middle-aged waitress who wears glasses, discussing recent events with a sweet elderly lady with bright orange hair who was sitting at the counter a few seats away from me.
Overheard what: 
No-nonsense waitress: "Rachel came in here cryin' again this morning... everything keeps going wrong with the wedding. This time she was cryin' 'cause last night someone broke into the church and stole the powder out of the air conditioner, so now they're getting married this afternoon in 98° heat in a church with no air conditioning. It's just been one thing after another with this wedding."
Orange-haired lady at counter: "I might start to worry that it was all a bad omen."
No-nonsense waitress: "Well I can't say that 'cause my church burned down after we sent out our invitations. We had to change churches!"

Warren Barker and His Orchestra

 Artist: Warren Barker and His Orchestra

LP: William Holden Presents a Musical Touch of Far Away Places

Song: "Junk City Hong Kong"

[ listen ]

Here are some exotic sounds from the Orient, courtesy of orchestra leader Warren Barker, actor William Holden, and producer Bill Stewart. The song "Junk City Hong Kong" should conjure up images of a city filled with this kind of junk, of course, rather than this kind or even this kind, and it features lots of unusual instruments that were dragged up out of Bill Holden's basement. He found some of them while making the film LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING, which features Holden as a war correspondent stationed in China who falls in love with a beautiful-but-practical "Eurasian" nurse, played by Jennifer Jones. Incidentally, I just watched the film last week, and it's a real four-hankie sudser—sort of an ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS set in Hong Kong. As for Warren Barker, he was born in Oakland, California in 1923, studied at UCLA, then worked in film and television for many years. He's the genius behind that little tinkling xylophone sound whenever Samantha wiggles her nose to work some magical mischief on "Bewitched," and he also wrote the "I'm a Little Bit Country, I'm a Little Bit Rock-n-Roll" theme song for "The Donny & Marie Show." You can read more about Warren Barker on the Space Age Pop website here, and read William Holden's notes for Barker's 1959 "Far Away Places" LP below. And speaking of far away places, I'll be galavanting around Ohio for the next few weeks, visiting a bunch of charmingly rusty old cities while gathering up the Buckeye State's most thrilling, unusual, and reasonably-priced records along the way. I'll be back in mid-August to share all the wonderful things I've found.

[ Warren Barker: April 16, 1923 — August 3, 2006 ]

Duke Jordan

Artist: Duke Jordan

LP: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Song: "Jazz Vendor"

[ listen ]

Before there was this movie adaptation, this one, and of course this one too, French filmmaker Roger Vadim scandalized all of France (not an easy thing to do) with his 1959 film version of the shocking 1782 novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Choderlos de Laclos. According to Wikipedia,  "it is the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two rivals (and ex-lovers) who use sex as a weapon to humiliate and degrade others, all the while enjoying their cruel games. According to the liner notes on the back of this LP, it seems there may have been some confusion as to who actually wrote the music for Vadim's film, with jazz pianist Duke Jordan receiving due credit in 1962, three years after the movie was released. You can read more about Duke Jordan on Wikipedia here, and find the informative notes from his 1960 "Flight to Jordan" LP on the Hard Bop website here.

[ Irving Sidney "Duke" Jordan: April 1, 1922 — August 8, 2006 ]