Rev. Otis McMillan and The Exciting Quadralaires- Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus/On A Mission For The King/I'm So Thankful/Gospel Ship/Christ Is The Rock

I stayed up way too late last night watching the end of the Georgia-Alabama game, so needless to say I'm moving at about the speed of a 16 RPM record (as if I have ever seen one) trying to play on a 45 RPM turntable. Thankfully, I gave myself an extra 30 minutes of sleep this morning. With rain in the forecast, Cooper was spared his usual walk, and I was spared the guilt that comes with being the human half of that arrangement.

As I sit here with my second cup of coffee, listening to the rain drumming on a roof that will be replaced in just over a week, it feels like the perfect morning for an old gospel record. Some things wear out with age, while others seem to grow richer, deeper, and more meaningful with every passing year. Today's record definitely falls into that second category. 

I've decided this week is going to lean heavily into indie and alternative sounds. Today's selection certainly qualifies. It's a rare gospel LP from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and since it wasn't released on a major label, I'm happily claiming it for the indie camp. Labels may matter to the industry, but great music answers to a higher authority.

This record found its way into my collection the same way many of my favorite discoveries do: through a combination of patience, persistence, and what I can only describe as divine crate-digging intervention.

A few years ago, I met a non record collector who had purchased at an auction the inventory from a radio station in Smithfield, North Carolina. The LPs were almost entirely white and Black gospel records, weird audio sound and commercial ditty lps, with a little country sprinkled in for seasoning. The 6,000 or so 45s were about 99% country and white gospel. When I first saw the collection, the owner wanted a mountain of cash for it. Not just any mountain, either. We are talking Titanic-size money, the kind of money that had me pricing the collection with my wallet while he was pricing it with his imagination.

I looked through the 45s, bought a few things I liked, and gently suggested that his expectations might be floating in the same waters as the Titanic. We parted on friendly terms.

A few months later, the phone rang.

Suddenly, that Titanic had hit the iceberg.

He offered me the entire collection for 99% less than his original asking price. He wanted it gone, and I was more than willing to help him accomplish that mission. So home it came.

Only later, while digging through the albums, did I discover some absolute gospel gems that I had completely overlooked during my first visit. Funny how that works. Sometimes the treasures are hidden in plain sight, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves. There may be a sermon in there somewhere.

So settle in and enjoy 18-plus minutes from Rev. Otis McMillan and The Exciting Quadralaires, an extraordinarily obscure North Carolina jewel that, through a little patience and perhaps a touch of providence, eventually found its way into my collection 

 

The Poor Little Rich Kids - She's The Best Girl In Town / Stop-Quit It

Happy Saturday! Today I'm spelunking through the deep abyss of the collection, shining a flashlight into corners that even Discogs seems to have forgotten. Up from the darkness come The Poor Little Rich Kids, who appear to be a true one-off mystery. My admittedly limited detective work turned up almost nothing, which is fitting because history seems to have treated them with the same enthusiasm as a telemarketer calling during dinner.

To be fair, I can understand why this one never climbed the charts. It isn't bad so much as it is hopelessly outgunned. Released in December 1966, She's The Best Girl In Town b/w Stop-Quit It arrived just in time to be steamrolled by one of the most ridiculously stacked periods in pop music history. Imagine walking into the ring armed with that single while facing in late 1966 Good Vibrations, I'm a Believer, Mellow Yellow, For What It's Worth, Friday on My Mind, and Pretty Ballerina or in January 1967 Happy Together, There's A Kind Of Hush, I Think We're Alone Now, Ruby Tuesday- WOW! That's less a chart battle and more a musical version of being dropped into the Colosseum with a butter knife.

And so the Poor Little Rich Kids earned a place in pop history's witness protection program. They arrived, released a record, disappeared, and left collectors like me wondering if they actually existed or were simply a shared hallucination among teenagers who spent too much time near transistor radios. Ultimately, the Poor Little Rich Kids became exactly what their name unintentionally predicted: poor, little, and largely unknown.

 

Detroit Jr. - Call My Job / The Way I Feel

Preparing for this morning’s post, I was surprised to see yesterday’s post rack up 270 views. Let’s just say that’s an enormous jump from my usual numbers, and I’m a little perplexed. Normally, a doo-wop-ish 45 doesn’t exactly set the internet on fire.

So now I’m curious. Was it a happy accident? Did I stumble into something people want more of? Or were some of you wondering if you’d accidentally clicked on the wrong record collector? Reach out and let me know. If you enjoyed it, I can certainly dig deeper into that lane. If it wasn’t what you were expecting, I’d like to hear that too.

Today’s post has me thinking about something else entirely: taking a day off. A genuine day off. I’m planning to take at least one Friday off sometime in the next month. Maybe even two if I’m feeling particularly rebellious.

I’d love to hit the road and meet up with a record-collecting buddy in Florence, South Carolina. We’ve been talking about getting together for a while, but there’s one problem: I don’t really have anything significant to trade him at the moment. He’s looking for some Deon Jackson records, and I know I have a few duplicates somewhere. The challenge is that those duplicates are currently scattered across what can only be described as the known universe of record boxes.

Maybe this weekend I’ll gather all my Deon Jackson records into one place, see what duplicates turn up, and, naturally, record a few of them for a future Friday Soul Day. After all, every great record-collecting expedition starts with a simple plan and ends three hours later with boxes everywhere and absolutely no idea how you got there.

The Runarounds - The Nearest Thing To Heaven/Lover's Lane

I had exactly zero girl group 45s queued up and ready for airtime, so the next logical move was a doo-wop record devoted to girls and romance. Close enough for government work.

I picked this one up in Colorado Springs back in March. It appears to be a one-shot under this group's original name before they rebranded as the Echoes, managed some minor chart action, and escaped complete obscurity for at least a little while.

I've already got several months' worth of blog ideas rattling around in my head. My Colorado digging expedition was productive, but like every good record-hunting trip, it created a larger backlog than it solved with a mountain of unrecorded 45s. Somewhere in my boxes are a growing pile of 45s patiently waiting for their fifteen minutes of internet fame. My weekend assignment is to stop buying records long enough to actually record and write about some of them.

 

Orion The Hunter - So You Ran

I was always captivated by the guitar sounds and vocals from the band Boston. Those first two albums were absolutely massive with a capital M. By the time they finally returned with Third Stage, I was in college (the first time), and my musical tastes had wandered into punk and alternative territory. I bought the album anyway, of course, but it wasn't quite the same timing for me.

In the long wait between Boston albums, though, I found plenty to keep me occupied. Barry Goudreau's solo LP and Orion the Hunter completely grabbed me. Tom Scholz reportedly wasn't too happy about Barry's records being marketed with references to the "Boston sound," and Goudreau was eventually shown the door by Scholz.

But come on, Tom... they kind of did.

The guitars sounded familiar, Brad Delp was involved, and the whole thing carried that soaring, melodic DNA that made Boston great in the first place. Fran Cosmo, who sang on the Goudreau-related releases, would later end up in Boston anyway, which only made the family resemblance harder to deny.

Orion the Hunter's "So You Ran" climbed to #58 on the charts, and I distinctly remember hearing it on the radio for the first time. For a few seconds I honestly thought, "Wait... is this the new Boston single?" The vocals, the guitars, the overall feel... it was close enough to fool me. it was like hearing Boston through a slightly different telescope.

Looking back, maybe Tom Scholz had a point. But as a fan, it felt like Barry Goudreau was making records for Boston fans while Boston was busy not releasing Boston records, and those records felt less like imitators and more like bonus tracks from an alternate Boston universe. And honestly, that's probably why I loved them.

Jimmy Buffett - The Great Filling Station Holdup /Why Don't We Get Drunk

A nice brisk 55 degrees for our walk this morning. Perfect weather for me, Cooper, and anyone whose thermostat is permanently set to "October."

I was rooting around in the undocumented 45 boxes this weekend when I spotted a record and thought, "Well, this could be relevant." With gas prices always finding a way to sneak back into the conversation, I figured it might have something to say about wars, oil, or international chaos. Nope. Apparently the blame had already been reassigned elsewhere. Funny how that works.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that nobody in politics seems eager to accept responsibility for anything. Success is always theirs. Failure belongs to somebody else. If narcissism had a frequent flyer program, some folks would be lifetime platinum members.

And then there's the empathy problem. Regular people are standing at the pump wondering whether filling the tank now requires a small business loan, while the people making speeches seem remarkably insulated from the consequences. I genuinely hate politics because it often feels like the agenda doesn't include you or me, just whoever happens to be sitting at the UN-GROWN-UPS table this week.

Instead of elected officials holding each other accountable, they circle the wagons like an old western. Arrows flying, dust everywhere, and everybody pretending the situation is completely under control. A reporter asks a direct question. Out comes the carefully rehearsed party-line answer. All this while we are actually seeing in real time how things are "really going" and it's a completely different movie than the rehearsed answer. Would someone in the Government please grow a spine already.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are dealing with reality. High gas prices. Stories about people driving off without paying at the pump. Not exactly the "Great Filling Station Hold-Up," although Jimmy Buffett probably would have found a rhyme for it.

That brings us to the B-side, where questionable decision-making graduates from the gas station to the bar stool. Add alcohol, confidence, and a complete lack of foresight, and suddenly everyone becomes the star of a story that begins with, "You won't believe what happened last night..." and ends with somebody explaining things to a judge, a spouse, or both.

Sometimes I think those old 45s aren't collectibles at all. They're historical documents proving that people have been blaming the wrong things and making bad decisions long before social media gave them a bigger audience.

The X-Rays - Out of Control/Chinchilla

"Outttttaaaa Control... Outttttaaaa Control... didddda didddda dowah! The X-Rays are completely out of control on this short, sweet, and ridiculously infectious B-side. The A-Side Chinchilla... cha cha cha... comes wrapped in enough exotica swagger to make your living room feel like a 1960s tiki lounge.

This is the sort of platter that belongs spinning in a swinging bachelor pad while the martinis are cold and the conversation is questionable. Unfortunately, I'm fresh out of bachelor pad, martinis, and bachelor status. My better half would likely greet such ambitions with a well-aimed cast-iron skillet, and frankly, I value my health too much to test the theory.

Besides, keeping one woman happy is a full-time occupation. A side piece sounds like management-level work, and I'm barely qualified for my current position. Those arrangements seem better suited for suave playboys in glossy cocktail magazines than a fellow who spends his spare time chasing obscure 45s. And let's be honest, it would get Out of Control pretty quick once the side piece discovered the featured star of the A-Side song is a rodent. Nothing cools a romance faster than losing a popularity contest to a chinchilla.