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I began collecting records when
I was only nine years old. In 1949.
Only yesterday.
What prompted me to buy my own records was when Aunt Ruthie
married in May of that year. She was 31. Aunt Ruthie and my
Aunt Dorothy lived with my parents and me in our old two-story
frame house in Berwyn, Illinois seven miles southwest of downtown
Chicago ("The Loop"). We all figured Aunt Ruthie would
remain an old maid for the rest of her life.
She was a freckled-faced woman with beautiful red hair flowing
half way down her back. Aunt Ruth began working when she turned
15 in 1933 as a telephone operator for Illinois Bell. She chipped
in with household expenses but saved a good portion of every
paycheck. Aunt Ruth also bought two or three 78's every payday.
She was always frugal.
For years, she dated a man named Jimmy who worked at the water
pumping station down the street. They went out once a week to
go dancing or to the movies. Whenever my dad saw Jimmy, he always
nudged Jimmy to pop the question to Aunt Ruth. "If you
don't, Jimmy, someone else will," my dad warned him many,
many times.
Finally, someone else did.
Jimmy became history in 1947 when a 22-year-old man named Don
rented a room across the alley from us. Don looked like Robert
Mitchum. A World War Two Navy veteran who served on a submarine
in the Atlantic, Don worked as a truck driver for the Berwyn
Lumber Company a block from our home. When Don began dating
Aunt Ruthie, he swept her off her feet. She fell for him head
over heels. They married in May 1949. Aunt Ruthie took her terrific
RCA Victor radio-phonograph console with her -- and the dozens
and dozens of albums of 78s she had collected since the late
1930s.
Then my dad suggested something that changed my life: "Why
don't you start your own record collection? You make enough
money from cutting lawns, shoveling snow, and washing cars to
buy a few records each week?" He cinched it by offering
to buy me a portable 78 rpm record player.
In the early 1950s, I bought quite a few 78's. For my eighth
grade graduation in 1954, my parents gave me a three-speed portable
Webcor record player. Now I could play 45's and LP's, too!
The timing was perfect. Fresh on the heels of the 1954 box-office
smash "The Glenn Miller Story," RCA Victor issued
their first Glenn Miller Limited Edition album, a five-record
LP set. I paid $24.95 a for it at Kral's Music Store in neighboring
Cicero, where I took guitar lessons once a week. Incidentally,
their son, Roy Kral, and his wife, Jackie, became the famous
singing duo, Jackie and Roy.
I had been a babe in swaddling clothes when I first heard Glenn
Miller and His Orchestra with Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, and
the Modernaires. Big bands ruled the airwaves when my parents
tucked me in at night. In the early evening, Aunt Ruthie played
Miller's records on her first phonograph, a portable she bought
in the late 1930's. Glenn Miller was one of her favorites and,
as I grew older, he became one of mine.
Over the years, like many Miller fans, I have loved the Modernaires.
In my book, they rank with the best vocal groups of our time:
the Hi-Lo's, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and the Manhattan
Transfer.
Years later, in the late 1970's and early 1980's, I hosted my
own big band radio show, "The Saturday Swing Shift,"
on WBEZ-FM, Chicago. Around 1980, I bought a new album by the
Modernaires called "A Tribute to Glenn Miller." It
was Paula Kelly, Jr.'s record debut. It remains one of my favorite
albums. It contains a wonderful version of "The Way We
Were." I sometimes used their recording to open "The
Saturday Swing Shift."
In the early 1950's, Aunt Ruthie
pesuaded Uncle Don to work for the Post Office so he would have
civil service benefits. She was always very concerned about
saving money for a rainy day and for their retirement. They
bought their first home in 1951. They visited Aunt Gen and her
family in Santa Barbara in 1956, and while they were there,
Uncle Don applied for a transfer to the Post Office in Santa
Barbara. His transfer was approved in 1957. He lived with Aunt
Gen and her husband until Aunt Ruth came out in 1958 after spending
months trying to get the right price for their home. They bought
a brand new home on the western edge of Santa Barbara just north
of Highway 101 in a new subdivision off San Marcos Pass Road.
They spent the rest of their lives living in Santa Barbara,
making many new friends. Aunt Ruth found a job right away as
the switchboard operator at the Santa Barbara Board of Education.
She worked there full-time until the late 1980's, then part-time
for a few years after that. She enjoyed pensions from both Illinois
Bell and the Board of Education.
Sadly, Uncle
Don came down with a rare form of leukemia and died in 1986,
when he was only 60. Aunt Ruthie was devastated. She never recovered
from his passing. They had a good marriage and a good life together.
Aunt Ruthie kept all of Donald's clothes in their bedroom closet
and in a closet in their den. She couldn't part with his clothes
or anything else of his.
Aunt Ruth passed away on Nov. 20th, 1997. They never had any
children, so they spoiled their nephews and nieces and their
children!
After Aunt Ruth's funeral, Uncle Bob, her brother, asked me
if there was anything of hers that I wanted.
"There are only two things,"
I said. "I'd like all of her 78's albums and those old
copies of Life magazine in the chartreuse hassock in the den."
The albums were on the top shelf of her hall closet. They hadn't
been played since the early 1950s, when Aunt Ruthie and Uncle
Don bought a large radio and three-speed phonograph console.
From then on, they bought LP's. Uncle Bob and I packed the 78's
and LP's carefully in some boxes and placed them in the trunk
of my car. Aunt Ruthie's 78's have given me countless hours
of enjoyment ever since. So have the old Life magazines. Perhaps
the most famous one is the issue published right after JFK's
assassination. Their LP's numbered about 100. I selected about
two dozen and gave the rest to the Culver City Senior Center
to give away to their members. The records found new homes within
two hours!
George Simon wrote that Glenn
Miller once said, "Without music, life would be a mistake."
Mine certainly would have been a mistake without music. My life
has been so enjoyable, in part, because of the wonderful music
I have enjoyed since I was that babe in swaddling clothes so
many years ago.
I'll be forever grateful to Aunt Ruthie for introducing me to
the big bands, to Glenn Miller, and to the Modernaires.
Only yesterday.
George Spink
Los Angeles
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