Bunny Sigler - Follow Your Heart /Can You Dig It

Friday soul finds us with a fantastic double-sided 45, tucked inside one of those glorious Cameo sleeves. For a record geek like me, those sleeves are pure eye candy, and when you pair one with a white label promo, it's basically vinyl cheesecake.

I run across Bunny Sigler records surprisingly often, which is odd when you consider he was never a massive crossover star. His biggest Billboard pop hit only reached #28, although he did crack the R&B Top 10 with a #8 hit. Most of his 45s, however, seemed to simply exist, quietly occupying record bins while the world chased the next big thing.

This one is the real mystery. I have a hard time understanding how it didn't even dent the R&B charts. It's got all the ingredients: a great groove, a strong vocal, hooks in the right places, and enough soul to fill a church basement on a Saturday night. Yet somehow it went absolutely nowhere. The music business has always been part talent, part timing, and part throwing darts while blindfolded.

Still, Bunny had what many musicians would gladly take over a brief moment of superstardom: a long, productive career. He kept working, creating, and contributing long after the spotlight moved on. Honestly, that's probably what I aspire to myself. Give me a productive work life, a few things I'm proud of, and enough good records to keep me occupied.

Of course, if the lottery wants to step in and dramatically accelerate that retirement plan, I can assure you my feelings would remain completely unhurt. In fact, I'd be willing to make that sacrifice for the greater good.

Lorraine Ellison - I Dig You Baby/Don't Let It Go To Your Head

Sweet girl-group sounds from Lorraine Ellison, riding those slick Lou Courtney production grooves. Somewhere on my shelf there's probably a red-label Mercury copy too. And yes, I can hear the chorus already: "Of course he has one." Did I bother to look for it before posting this? No. No, I did not.

This one bubbled under the Billboard Hot 100 at #103 the year I was born, which feels like one of those strange little cosmic footnotes record collectors live for. Lorraine's career was already fading into history as mine was just beginning. Even stranger, she passed away the year I graduated high school. The record sat quietly between those two milestones, waiting for me to find it decades later.

That's one of the things I love about old 45s. They're tiny time machines. A song misses the charts, disappears into cutout bins and forgotten jukeboxes, and fifty years later some guy is standing in a thrift store holding it up like he's discovered buried treasure.

The Boomtown Rats - She's So Modern/Lying Again

I was never a huge Boomtown Rats fan back in the day, but I've noticed that as my hair gets grayer, my appreciation for them gets a little stronger. Funny how that works. Those early Rats records are packed with hooks, the kind that sneak into your brain and refuse to leave.

About five years ago, I was crate digging at a guy's warehouse. Records aren't even his main business. He sells them on the side and occasionally throws open the warehouse doors for brave souls willing to dig. The place is absurd. Mountains of records. Boxes stacked on shelves, piled on floors, tucked into corners that probably haven't seen daylight since the Reagan administration.

Near his desk sat a bunch of album boxes marked "$3 Each." I usually ignore them because they're a complete free-for-all. No organization, no logic, no mercy. For reasons I still can't explain, I started flipping through them. Suddenly I was staring at a run of modern alternative-rock promo LPs in beautiful condition. Then I spotted A Tonic for the Troops by the Boomtown Rats. At that point, the casual flipping stopped and the emergency extraction operation began. Those records were tucked under my arm so fast they probably experienced time dilation.

I've got a handful of Boomtown Rats 45s that will eventually make their way onto this blog. But that's a story for another day.

For now, it's time for more coffee.

 

The Danes - To Make Me A Man/Lost Love

It may have a little crackle left even after a deep cleaning, but honestly, I knew that before I ever dropped it in the bath. Still, it’s a Tower promo 45, and when a Tower promo shows up, self-control quietly leaves the room and I have to take the gamble.

The Danes didn’t turn out to be the raging soul stomper or fuzzed-out garage burner I was secretly hoping for, but there’s a vibe here that makes it an essential keeper. The A-side, To Make Me a Man, rides a breezy mid-60s folk-pop feel, while the B-side, Lost Love, drifts into a surprisingly doo-wopish flavored heartbreak vibe. Not the wild Tower monster I was hunting, but sometimes the records you keep aren’t the ones that knock you over, they’re the ones that sneak into the room and refuse to leave.

The Animals - The Night

Clean-Up Monday. Yep, this week will probably be a haphazard collection of songs I've recorded recently. As amusing as it is (at least to me), I seem to have mastered a very inefficient system: sometimes I record a song and forget to photograph the 45, and other times I take the photo but never get around to recording the song. You'd think I would learn eventually, but apparently not. When I'm busy trying to multitask, I usually end up proving once again that multitasking is often just an efficient way to do several things incompletely at the same time.

When I discovered rock and roll at about nine or ten years old, there was no turning back. I spent countless hours with a little transistor radio pressed against my ear, listening to an oldies station late into the evening. Every song seemed to open a door to another world. I loved hearing the British Invasion bands, garage rock, and all those records that sounded exciting, rebellious, and larger than life to a kid growing up in the 1970s. When Eric Burdon and the Animals came on, I paid attention. There was something about Burdon's voice that sounded tougher and more authentic than most of what I was hearing elsewhere on the dial.

Once rock music got its hooks into me, it never let go. While other kids were probably paying closer attention to more practical pursuits, I was already becoming a record geek without realizing it. Those hours spent listening to the radio eventually led to buying records, collecting records, and many years later spending way too much time hunting for obscure 45s. Looking back, that little transistor radio may have been one of the most important purchases my family ever made.

Fast-forward to 1983, the year I graduated from high school, and I remember seeing the video for "The Night" and hearing it on the radio. The song reached #48 on the Billboard charts and became the Animals' final hit. Listening to it today, I can hear just how slick and polished the production is. Compared to their raw, bluesy roots, it feels like a band making a deliberate play for a modern rock audience. 

Whether that was the right move is open to debate, but it's an interesting snapshot of a legendary group adapting to a very different musical landscape. Even if it lacks some of the grit that made me fall in love with the Animals in the first place, it's still a record I enjoy revisiting. Maybe that's because every time I hear it, I'm reminded of that kid sitting beside a transistor radio, discovering rock and roll one song at a time

The Templearies- He Spoke/What Will Heaven Have In Store For Me

Yep, back to familiar Sunday territory thanks to the Peacock label and this wonderful one-off 45. It sounds like the Templeaires strutted into the studio carrying fire, cut a record possessed by conviction, and then walked out wrapped in the Holy Spirit, the gospel equivalent of a garage-band 45. A group appears from nowhere, cuts a transcendent record, and then vanishes so completely it's as if the session itself was the entire mission never to be heard from again.

That mystery is one of the things that keeps drawing me back to gospel 45s. Why did some groups manage to survive for decades while others left behind a single glorious flash before disappearing into the fog of history? Some built careers, some built legacies, and some only left a witness.

Maybe that's part of the lesson. In gospel music, success isn't always measured by longevity. Sometimes a group is called to sing one song, press one record, touch a few hearts, and move on. Decades later, collectors like us stumble across that testimony in a dusty crate and wonder what became of them.

The Templeaires may have vanished from the scene, but the spirit they captured in those grooves is still very much alive. Not a bad epitaph for a one-off 45.

Neil Griffin & The Music Men - Brown Bag/What Can I Do

I picked this one up earlier this summer. The label probably doesn't mean much to most people, but when I see a 45 like this, it jumps out at me like a glow-in-the-dark voodoo doll in a dark alley.

First, there's the sheer plainness of the label. That's usually my cue to go into full detective mode and do two things: check where it was recorded and check the label number.

In this case, Step 2 immediately set off my Regional Record Geek Alarm. It was recorded at Arthur Smith Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina. And if you've followed my collecting habits for more than five minutes, you know I always grab records recorded there.

Then there's the label number: 6-6491. That led me down the rabbit hole of believing it was pressed by Kay Bank in Minneapolis most likely after they expanded and opened a pressing plant in Charlotte. Of course, Kay Bank numbering can be about as predictable of where it was pressed as a squirrel on espresso, so there's always room for debate.

Now, not everything recorded at Arthur Smith wound up on a North Carolina label. For example, the Swingin' Medallions' "Double Shot" was recorded there but first appeared on a South Carolina label. So I'll admit I'm being a little North Carolina-centric here.

And let's be honest, looking at these regional releases can sometimes make us forget just how many heavy hitters passed through Arthur Smith's doors. James Brown recorded "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" there, for starters. The catch is that many of those major releases never bothered to advertise the recording location on the label.

As for this 45 on ABC, I think we can all agree this isn't that ABC Paramount. According to the cogs of Dis detectives, it was a regional North Carolina label.

So there you have it, boys and girls: me enthusiastically overanalyzing a random 45 on a Saturday morning. And this was all after just one cup of coffee.

Imagine the conclusions I would've reached after two. I might've started drawing charts and connecting label numbers with red yarn. 😆