| Nothing is more exciting than stepping into an undiscovered thrift store or a garage sale and squatting down to flip through old records. It's a treasure hunt where you'll never know what you'll find. I first started collecting 50's and 60's exotica music quite by accident. I found myself in an old junk store down the street from my house about 7 years ago and stumbled across Other Worlds Other Sounds by Juan Garcia Esquivel while dodging cobwebs and 20 years of grime and dust. I had no idea who Esquivel was or where he came from. The appeal was completely aesthetic. It was an incredibly cool cover, exotic and pleasing to the eye. I had to have it. I walked out of the junk shop with it, paying the old fart $2 after chewing him down a couple of dollars.. I took it home and slapped it on my turntable, not knowing what to expect. Listening to several songs, I couldn't help but think, "This is really weird stuff! I didn't know they made music like this back then." I didn't put it back on my turntable for several more months. At the time, I still thought the cover was really cool but the music too weird for my tastes, yet I could somehow listen to the Sex Pistols, Fugazi, Chrome, Helios Creed, and various New York hardcore [NYHC] bands without batting an eye. Go figure. |
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| My very first "exotica" record find. Esquivel and his Orchestra Other Worlds Other Sounds. Not easy to come by in thrift stores these days thanks to the exotica/swing/lounge scene that exploded a few years ago. As a matter of fact, it's getting harder to find Esquivel anywhere now on vinyl. |
| It wasn't until I moved to Memphis, Tennessee that I became more involved in searching out junk stores and thrift stores looking for those weird covers. I bought a lot of duds but it was a learning process: bombs like Al Hirt, Jesse Crawford (at the organ no less--though what organ they meant I don't want to know), and even more crappy records that have great covers like Morton Gould's Jungle Drums, all having gotten stuck in my shelves until I passed them on to someone else or threw them in a plastic grocery bag and tossed them in the nearest thrift store donation bin.. A misleading title no less! Jungle Drums? On that record? I think not! Its music consists of sleep inducing boring numbers that are about as exciting as anything Lawrence Welk ever put out. But what a cover! Actually, 2 different covers were made of this record but the music is still the same. Boring, boring boring. Tack the cover to the wall and throw the record in the trash. |
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| Perez Prado's Mambo Mania. Wow, whatta cover and whatta mouth! This is the artist from whom Lou Bega (A Little Bit of Mambo) stole his vocal delivery. Prez is known for his signature "Ahhhhha!" shouted in songs to let his band know it's time for a change in the song. One of the premier Latin composers of the 50's. A must have. |
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| Extremely hard to find in any condition, Mel Henke's La Dolce Henke is a sexual innuendo masterpiece with incredible jazz and sound effects and lots of Ooo La La! Supposedly the stereo pressing is more rare than the mono. My friend found this in south Florida at a Goodwill for $1--the stereo pressing no less. Sigh. |
| Mysteries of Record Hunting |
| Collecting Incredibly Strange Music |
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