Hard To Handle

Yesterday the wife and myself were on a leisurely ghetto stroll through our neighborhood. We walked through the park, got take-out from the Mexican sandwich place that she likes, and on the way home we passed by a junk shop that neither of us had been in before. One of those places that's so cluttered there is barely enough room to even walk from one end to the other. Furniture stacked on top of other furniture up to the ceiling, random boxes of junk everywhere- some stuff is a hundred years old, and some stuff is from last week. No telling what you'll find. The type of place that if you sneeze in the wrong direction, a mountain of rubble will come tumbling down and bury you. I love junk shops like this... I don't think the place even had a proper name, it just said Used Furniture or something. When we went in, the door to the place literally couldn't swing in all the way because there was a cabinet blocking it. Talk about your fire hazards...

We were in somewhat of a rush because we were on foot and it was getting dark in the ghetto, and our dinner was getting cold, so we only looked around for a few minutes. Immediately i zoomed in on one of those old 45 carrying cases which was jammed full of records. It looked like a bunch of 70s blehh at a quick glance, Barry Manilow, Andy Gibb... awful crap like that. The majority of it is someone's crummy disco collection, but there were a handful of interesting looking things, and all original vintage label stuff. So my wife asked, How much?
The woman running the place spoke pretty limited English, and the wife and myself speak pretty limited Spanish, but she was super nice and told us that she was hoping to get 50 cents a pop for them (There are more than 50 records in the box.) At that point i was ready to put the box down and walk away, but my wife then explained: "My husband usually buys records like this for 25 cents or less each," etc- etc- at that point i was ready to pick out a few titles out and spend a buck or two, The shop owner and my wife spoke back and forth for a minute, then she goes: "We'll give you five bucks for the box," and the nice lady said, in her broken english, how about ten? Then my awesome haggling wife said: "How about eight?" "Ocho. Si." Ocho it is! There was a lot more broken Spanish/English involved on both sides, but that was the basic gist of the transaction.

Turns out 8 bucks was a reasonable price for the box after all, once i got it home and thoroughly inspected it's contents i found a few gems. Once i fired up the turntable, i found quite a few more. We live in a heavily Latino populated neighborhood, so i had a feeling that some of the records in the box would reflect that. I figured on finding one or two cool vintage latino jams that i could share here, and i did, and i plan on sharing them, but there was one record in the box that turned out to be more valuable (sez the internets anyway) than any other 45 i own.

I have a few of those 'World's rarest funk 45s' compilations and knew the Latin Breed version of 'I turned you on' from that. I never thought i'd actually see one of their records though, let alone find one in a box of crummy disco 45s from a dirty old Chicago junk shop, but here i am- the proud owner of one of The Latin Breed's other singles. This one is a smokin version of the Big O's "Hard To Handle" with "Danny Boy" (yes, that Danny Boy) on the flip. The way i figure, the person who used to own this box of records bought it without knowing what it was because it said 'Latin Breed' on the label. Judging by the condition of it, they were disappointed with their purchase and it didn't get a whole lot of play after that, because considering where it came from- it's in very good shape. It also has one of those little number tags on it, which means it spent time in a juke box at some point in it's life... I consulted the interwebs and found completed listings of this one that went for between 200 and 250 bucks! It's finds like this that make it all worthwhile. The vinyl scavengers dream. Finding that rare record for nothing and learning that it's highly collectible and sought after... So, yeah, 8 bucks well spent. I did the math- 8 (dollars)divided by 54 (records total) equals less than seven cents a piece! And that's not even including the cool vintage carrying case.

The lady in the junk shop (Carmen) gave me her number and told me to call before i came back, because she said she's got over 200 more records in her basement that she'd be happy to dig out for me. Who knows what else she's got. She said it's mostly LPs, but considering what she sold me yesterday, i think it's definitely worth checking out. I plan on giving her a call tomorrow, and heading back over.

It's in the neighborhood, and well, you never know what you'll find...


The Latin Breed - Hard To Handle



get it
.

.