Today is a two folded story how tracking down one lead, lead to another. In one of my tales of the hunt I wrote about 1650 Broadway which was on 51th Street and to me it was like a giant record store, but there was also the Brill Building and the Ed Sullivan Building which were also in this loop and they were blocks apart from each other. One day I walked inside of 1650 Broadway reading the directory as if I was looking for someone, this was a regular routine with me, got in the elevator, pressed a floor, got off, as I read the doors one looked interesting as I remembered something it said Tee Pee Music, Teddy Powell. I remember looking at my pocket watch it was 9:20AM, I knocked an elderly gentleman opened the door, he said yes, I told him I was a friend of Hal Webman’s and that I was a collector looking for records, he looked at me and said what type of music you collect I told him Jazz, but I take everything because I can trade with other collectors, he motioned me to come in, there were coffee cups, ashtrays, a hat rack, 2 file cabinets and a huge 2 door locker and a hung hanging light, I felt I had just walked into an old detective’s office from a 1930’s movie, the windows looked as if they had not been cleaned in years.
He asked me my name I said Nick, he asked was I Italian, I said yes, he spoke to me in Italian, I understood a little, I said to him I never heard of an Italian name Powell, he smiled, opening a desk draw pulled out a bottle of Scotch and two cups. He told me he changed his name a long time ago because to be Italian in the old days it was hard being in the music game. He also told me he was a Jazz Big Band musician and played in the 1920’s – 1940’s, he started telling me he played with this band and that band, he was naming this person and that person and after the 3rd drink I was getting high at 10:00 o’clock in the morning, boy what I would do for a record fix!…
I finally told him a fib, that I had to go because I had an appointment uptown and I asked him did he have any records, he told me open that locker door, I opened it three 78’s fell to the floor. There were a lot of 45’s and 78’s he told me take what you can use. I use to carry 4 brown paper bags 2 inside of each. In these bags you could get around 200 – 45 PM records in each, I filled both bags up and asked him how much… He said I have more home, come back when you get a chance and take the rest.. How much I said again, he waved and said for what, it’s all junk… And to me after that day, that was my motto It is all really junk. Over the next 4 or 5 years I would get many 45’s off of Teddy and so many stories and we drink a lot… over lunch many times at one of the local Blarney Stones Bars and god bless his soul he gave me the names of so many people for me to contact. When I got home I use to play every record to see what type of music and if there was any Doo Wops I could trade to a particular dealer in the village Joe Rocco for jazz. Any record that looked interesting I would see if I could track it down. One record by the group The Orioles, What Are You Doing New Years Eve had a sticker, compliments of Hal Schafer, I could not find him in any of the books I had, so I started out with the New York City phone directory. There was around 20 or so people with that name, I finally reached his brother who told me he had passed awhile back, I explained to him about the record and that I was a collector, he told me his brother worked for Jubilee as a promotional man and that he use to work for a record distributor on 10th Avenue, back in those days 10th Avenue was the Mecca of record distributors. I asked him did he have any records, he said yes and that his wife just died and he was meaning to clean up the house, we made an appointment, he live on 25th St around 8th Avenue. When I arrived we chatted for awhile about the music business, he also gave me some names of people that might still have records, I was always eager to have more names as I needed a record fix almost every other day it seemed at that time. He then went to a closet and told me could I take them out as he had a bad back, there were 4 boxes, I took them and put them on the table. The first three boxes were 78 RPM records mostly blues records on Chess and there were some Clefs, some early R & B groups, one in particular The Mello Moods which only came out on a 78 and I got a great jazz trade for this record. The last box thinking there were more 78’s turned out to be 10 inch Jazz albums – My mouth dropped the covers were so beautiful Jimmy Raney, Zoot Sims, Phil Woods and some others. I had never seen these and never knew they existed on The New Jazz label, altogether there was around 9 of them. Well I wish I had a time machine and could go back and track again it was a lot of fun…