![](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/s_image1245228985-86738.jpg\")
While in college, Long Beach State to be specific, I continued to collect 45rpm rock and roll records unabated. Every Independence and New Year\u2019s Day, local Thrifty Drugstores would set up racks full of out-of-print 45s\u2026 ten for a dollar. I\u2019d get the address of every store in Long Beach and visit each one, buy what looked interesting and wait for the next sale.<\/p>\n
What I didn\u2019t know was while I was blanketing the Long Beach Thrifty Drugstores, a Torrance record store clerk named Bob Hite and his buddy Claude McKee were doing the same thing in their town. But they went one further. They located the distributor\u2019s name on the record rack and contacted the source, getting in the warehouse and buying the records before they were shipped.<\/p>\n
I later learned this when I met Hite \u2013 better known as leader of the blues-rock band Canned Heat, which got a giant kick-start at Woodstock \u2013 and McKee at the record swap in West L.A., the predecessor to the famed Capitol Tower record meet in Hollywood. <\/p>\n
Hite had a major collection of pre-war blues 78s and McKee also acquired these super-rarities. But Hite liked 45s too. When his label, Liberty, picked up the historic Imperial and Aladdin labels, he went through the vaults and carted off everything he could, creating the Legendary Masters reissue series in the process. Another man with major collector chops, Barry Hansen, later known as Dr. Demento, also showed up at these record shows every month.<\/p>\n
While Canned Heat toured, members Hite and guitar player Henry Vestine would aggressively seek out rare blues and country 78s at out of the way locales. Sadly, several members of the band got heavily into drugs. Lead singer Al Wilson died early of an overdose and Hite\u2019s collection went to the winds \u2013 or equally aggressive record collectors (same thing) \u2013 in his search for the next high. It wasn\u2019t unusual to get midnight phone calls \u2013 \u201cMeet me at the alley behind Hamburger Henry\u2019s, I\u2019ve got records, I need cash.\u201d Tempting, but I never went. Others did. <\/p>\n
And other collectors were heavily into drugs, but maybe in the 70s and 80s, that was the way to be. Most are dead now.<\/p>\n
I had a job, which required me to be in the field where, during dull moments, I could constantly scour thrift and used shops from Compton to Lynwood, from Carson to Orange County to grab all the vinyl I could find.<\/p>\n
In Compton, I met Gary Peterson, a friend to this day. He was standing in the back room of the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop sifting through used 45s. His secret was the product he sold on his route: Bowie Pies. What thrift store clerk is going to refuse delicious pies \u2013 his only request, let me be the first to see the 45s. I only had my winning personality, but in both cases, we each had our ins. <\/p>\n
In the very early 1970s, I\u2019d visit the library to find books on phonograph records from which I could glean information about the records I loved so much. Should I have been surprised to learn most of the books on records were about classical, opera and if I was lucky, jazz? Nothing serious had been published on the field of rock & roll \u2013 rhythm & blues record collecting. My fruitless search for collecting literature provided me a simple idea. If there\u2019s no book out there on the subject, why not write it? Stupid idea; so I plowed ahead. <\/p>\n
After submitting a manuscript to the L.A. Times<\/em> magazine called “New West” \u2013 they almost bought it, but they went under before they could \u2013 I sold the manuscript to Macmillan. It was titled \u201cThose Oldies But Goodies\u201d and got a good review in Rolling Stone<\/em>. The timing was impeccable. Old rock and roll was experiencing a big rebound in 1972, the year KRTH-FM debuted and Dr. Demento was more popular than ever. The release of \u201cAmerican Graffiti\u201d in 1973 just amped up the scene.<\/p>\n The good news was \u201cThose Oldies But Goodies\u201d sold about 20,000 copies\u2026the bad news was the low, low cover price\u2026 low price, low royalties. My editor left Macmillan and I wound up where he wound up, at Chilton, which was the perfect publisher for car repair manuals, not so great for books on record collecting, so my two follow-up works didn\u2019t sell nearly as well as the first.<\/p>\n \u201cThose Oldies But Goodies\u201d revealed that old 45s could be worth a lot, but very compared to today\u2019s prices. $100 was a lot. Some collectors didn\u2019t like me publishing their secret information. Once, a dealer who sold out of a house built on the back of a pick-up truck was in the same line I was at a record show and pointed to me \u2013 \u201cThere\u2019s the guy who wrote the book!\u201d he exploded. \u201cGet him!\u201d Well, maybe it was a little less harsh, but it seemed doom-provoking to me. He\u2019s now in Austin, Texas, and I\u2019m still here.<\/p>\n In 1973, a Press-Telegram<\/em> reporter named Denise Kusel heard about my activities from the first book I had published, so she contacted me about doing an article on record collecting. It appeared in papers all over America and I got many calls about collections for sale, many of which I bought. Which is all prelude to me contacting the new management at KLON and changing my life forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steve Propes remembers a time when one dollar bought you ten records, rock ‘n roll was on the rise and Steve himself was a best-selling author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":70292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}