Number One with a bullet

I used to work in the Record Business. Not those things that businesses eventually put in white cardboard boxes with neat black block magic marker headings. Nope, not the yellow and pink grease marked pieces of flimsy that decay away in a storage space because the newer gentler IRS, your grouchy CPA and some august legislature want you to keep for just the amount of years that moisture and rodents can turn that pulpy mass into a cheesy mold. Nay, I say, t’was the Phonograph Recording business. BCD! Not too many years after I had managed to loose my college education and my way all at the same time. Where the hell was Virgil?

The building stood and stands in what has come to be known as The Lower Hill District. I think it now displays kitchen and bathroom tile. A sad replacement if you ask me.

In that brick with boarded window three storied building there were four or more separate businesses, mostly owned by the same guy. Partnerships were rife and companies created at the drop of a phonograph needle on unscratched vinyl. One business was a one-stop shop. Mostly it served the tristate juke box operators. Each stack of 45 RPM records had a pile of red and white juke box cards with perforated labels that would tab neatly into the chrome steel holders on the the Wurlitzer and Bally machines. Another was called a rack jobber. 45 and 33 RPM phono records were delivered and stocked at your local emporium. And last there were a couple or three record distributors. Here was my bailiwick. First floor among the boxes of singles and shelves full of LP's. Stock, receive and ship is what I did. I was and am pretty good at it although if you've had the dubious distinction of looking at my basement living quarters and library, you could come away with some doubt.

In the basement was a room for the salesmen. These guys had the glamorous jobs of going to the DJ's in town and getting them to play hits from the Labels that we represented. Just for the record (this time the moldy kind), payola, now back in vogue in another guise, was deemed unethical and illegal in those days when I worked in that rather energetic and corrupt business. I am not as old as Dick Clark.

My world revolved around numbers. Joe send 25 of Gordy 3365 and 50 of Motown 11567, 60 of Tamla 67765 and 10 of Atlantic 4890. I thought I would never forget those numbers, but the years have dimmed them for me. I can no longer tell label or number or what is on the flip side of Baby Love by the Supremes. There was a time when I knew them all. Used them everyday. I am not even sure if the above listed numbers are even close in sequence or appearance. I am now plagued, another industry new familiar designations, with GFE1C or KALB-0150-TAC (Sporlan TXV and Copeland Compressor respectively)

The fourth type of business was that of artist’s representatives and agents. The owners of the distributorships, one-stops and rack jobbers also managed many of Pittsburgh’s rock and roll talent. I was therefore by association part of the scene! A lowly part to be sure, but the top DJ’s knew my name, at least my first name. None other than, the “Bossman”, Porky Chedwick used to come in and say "Hey, my man, the body!" point at me and then walk downstairs to sales. No, I have no idea!

At the side door, by the loading dock, you would find, for most of the day an old black guy who answered to the name Mose. I don’t know if Mose was his name or if we just called him that. Mose was, blunt, to the point, a wino. He dressed in shabby clothes, had a wiry gray beard, wore the kind of a hat you sometimes see on a horse in an old movie and was truly skunked most of the time. He was, despite his shortcomings, a very pleasant fellow. Lived on the streets and in the various charity houses of the Hill.

Old Mose taught me a lesson one spring morning.

He appeared before us with new clothes and new shining shoes. He really couldn’t communicate how he had come by them. About an hour later I was receiving some new “sounds” and I saw Mose sitting next to the dumpster. Bottle in hand. His new shoes had large cuts in them. What happened to your shoes, Mose?

He spoke in his soft southern drawl like I imagined Robert Johnson or Huddie Ledbetter or Bukka White would have as they pattered between songs. He looked down at the razored slashes, “Well, better that the shoe should hoit, than that I should hoit!”

Follow me down to Mr. Tom Hughes’ town!