Every year the Jersey City-based independent music station WFMU holds an enormous record fair in New York City, where music lovers can buy and sell vinyl, CDs, music DVDs and other music memorabilia. The fair is just one of two main ways WFMU stays on the air (the other being listener contributions from an annual fundraiser marathon), which now boasts the running count of 55 years, making it the longest-running freeform radio station in the United States.
WFMU has always remained stringent on primarily being funded in these two ways. The radio station has always been adamantly against underwriting or corporate sponsorships. According to WFMU’s website, the station receives ‘some support from foundations and government grants, as long as they do not contain conditions that determine [its] programming content or restrict [its] independence.’ WFMU’s allegiance to its own independence, in addition to the music it plays, has won them many loyal and passionate listeners over the years; the station’s fanbase and reputation continues to blossom.
WFMU’s record fair was held last month at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan. I went with the intention of only buying a couple CDs and no records, yet I somehow possessed the unconscious foresight to bring my big bag. I happily glided through the rows and rows of music vendors with a pacifist mindset, conceding my space with a regal ‘After you’ gesture anytime some long-bearded, Patchouli-scented man got a little too elbowy. In a goldmine such as the WFMU record fair, I knew that I didn’t need to thumb through every single bin, nor was that even mildly possible.
After picking up two CDs, Somewhere Else by Sun Ra and The Best of the Wailers, I was ready to call it a day and go forth into the night, but I decided to thumb through a lonely trio of record bins by the corner marked ‘$5 each’. I still wasn’t going to buy a record, I told myself. The vendor greeted me and said, somewhat desperately, ‘I’m trying to get down to two bins by the end of the day. If you find five records you like, you get them for 3 a piece.’
In my head I said this: I know what you’re trying to do, sir, and it’s not going to work on this frugal gentleman you see before you. But somehow that sentiment translated out of my mouth as ‘Challenge accepted.’
An hour later I showed my friend the five records I bought. The first was The Amazing Timi Yuro, whose music I had been trying to find ever since I heard her powerful rendition of the ballad, ‘Hurt’, on a compilation record of tearjerker songs (which I listen to every Valentine’s Day). I also bought an Elvis Presley hits collection covering the years of 1960 to 1962; this disk goes nicely with my other Elvis records, one of which is a 1977 live recording called Elvis in Concert, which incidentally features the King’s own rendition of ‘Hurt’. (I still can’t choose between Yuro’s version or Presley’s.)
The third record I bought was by a contemporary of Elvis, giving the King a run for his money in the category of showman; his name is Richard Wayne Penniman, more commonly known and referred to as Little Richard. Right Now! was recorded in one night and released in 1973. Unlike his snappy hits like ‘Lucille’ and ‘Tutti Frutti’ (which Elvis also covered), the songs that make up this record are longer, a touch slowed down in some spots, with more room for instrumentation; all that, along with the one-night recording process, makes Right Now! sound more like a live album, with Little Richard’s effervescent energy coming through on each track.
The fourth record I bought is an actual live album as well as an ‘unofficial release’ from the jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Rollins, whose milestone Saxophone Colossus is one of my favourite jazz albums, was recorded in performance in New York in 1977, and the result was an LP released in Italy in 1980 called Island Lady. The unknowns of how it found its way from Italy to a $5 bin at the WFMU record fair in New York City 33 years later make up an example of why I find music hunting so intriguing and why I enjoy doing it.
Rounding out the five records is another album no longer available in its original form, a compilation called Super Hits made up of Marvin Gaye’s best Motown tracks from the years 1962 to 1969. What makes this record great, according to my friend, is that it ‘trims the fat’ off Gaye’s early output. And to think, I bought it mostly for the cover art.
