I’ve been collecting those records for 50 years at least. So long, old friends! (Jim Motavalli photo) I’ve been collecting these records for about 50 years. As it happened, they offered me a very nice price, but a comparable pittance for my 6,000 CDs. I called my friends at Academy Records on 18th Street in Manhattan, and they came up and surveyed. Noting this trend, I decided it was time to sell my stash of 1,500 LPs. Around my neighborhood on the Lower East Side, there are five LP-only stories, and nary a one that sells CDs. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, Americans are buying LPs again, even as CD sales plunge to the zero point. Perhaps ironically, record stores are coming back as 2017 turns into 2018. I once bought a June Christy record from her, and to be sure that was a purchase she approved. Sure, the music was cheaper that way, but nothing replaced talking to Sally in the store about her favorites-Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington. I didn’t get down to Sally’s Place often enough, and I too started getting addicted to digital downloads. The “record store” is making a surprising comeback. I’m sure not being able to greet her many friends took something out of her-she’d sold records for 57 years! She had closed her store, Sally’s Place (which succeeded her long stint at Klein’s) in 2013-a victim of the digital revolution. I was thought of this episode on learning that Sally White died this week. Despite the fact we were planning to compete with her, Sally held forth all evening on all aspects of dealing with suppliers, getting credit, buying a cash register, handling returns, and was endlessly helpful. We called her, and she came over to talk business. Far from stocking just the hits, Sally made sure that the store was bulging with jazz-including albums from players who lived in the area, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan (and, later, McCoy Tyner and Max Roach). Fortunately, we had a friend, Sally White, then running the record haven at the downtown Westport, Connecticut department store Klein’s. We had a plan-we would pioneer the sale of used records in Connecticut-but beyond that we didn’t have a clue how to set up and stock a store. “When you think about how long I’ve been around,” said White, who was then 84, “how many can say they’ve been around 50, 60 years, doing what they love to do?” (Westport town photo) Sally White gets a plaque from Westport First Selectman Gordon Joseloff in 2013, when her store closed.
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