Your First honest LP Purchase

At what age did you purchase your first LP?

  • What's an LP?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I think my parents used to have some of those things

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 33 1/3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don't recall (probably during high school)

    Votes: 3 10.7%
  • 14

    Votes: 5 17.9%
  • 13

    Votes: 2 7.1%
  • 12

    Votes: 4 14.3%
  • 11

    Votes: 3 10.7%
  • 10

    Votes: 7 25.0%
  • 9

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 8

    Votes: 2 7.1%
  • 7

    Votes: 2 7.1%
  • I pushed my wagon to Woolworth's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • My first purchase was "curbside" from a baby carriage

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Telepathically requested during mom's third trimester

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    28
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JOv2

Well-Known Member
This should be fun...I got the idea from something LP Jim mentioned a few weeks back.

So here's the deal, select the age at which you purchased your first music LP -- where you alone engineered the whole thing: Deciding which LP you wanted, securing transportation (as needed) to a retailer, and paying for the album (with your parents' help, as necessary), etc.

(This should be a solo affair. Therefore, impulsively bugging your dad to buy a record at J.C. Penny's -- while shopping with your family -- doesn't count; nor do purchases of "children's records" or non-musical LPs.)

Oh yeah, and share with us your recollection.
 
Age: 10 (5th/6th grade summer)

LP: Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass / South Of The Border

Details: Earlier in the year, while visiting my uncle, I had asked if I could borrow a number of LPs I found while digging through his collection -- one of which was a TjB LP titled, Sounds Like. My parents already had Whipped Cream & Other Delights, !!Going Places!!, and What Now My Love, so I was excited to find this new title. At the time I had no knowledge of other TjB releases beyond the earliest LPs. I decided I wanted to buy South Of The Border -- and asked my dad. We drove to the record store and ordered the LP as it was not in stock. I was excited as a kid on Christmas eve when two weeks later the store called.
 
I received "Pais Tropical" and "Love Music" for my 10th birthday, and after that started hunting for other Sergio records. Probably "Vintage '74" is the first one I actually purchased....
 
I was about 14 years old...1965. That would have been about 8th grade, and I somehow managed to purchase some Beatles albums. I don't even remember where I got the money - probably from Christmas or birthday gifts, because I sure didn't have a job, but albums back then were only about $4.00.

Hard Day's Night, Help, Beatles For Sale, Meet The Beatles..I think I had all those...

I had "discovered" the radio a couple years earlier, and I was getting into music then in a big way...and along came the British Invasion in 1964...so I was ready for anything.
 
If USED/Garage Sale Records count then it was Simon & Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water... --I was about TEN...!

Otherwise, in the Poll, I checked off "Fourteen", and my first NEW purchase was Madonna's First, back in 1984...!

(And for each of those two, I started off just buying '45's, as I did for many other Artists before advancing to "LP Stage"...)



Dave
 
I chose "10" in the poll, although I could have been 9 - not sure. My first LP purchase was the TJB's GOING PLACES, which I bought for my Mom for Mother's Day. I don't know if she ever played the record herself or not...but I sure played the heck out of it!

The first record I bought strictly for myself was the TJB's WHAT NOW MY LOVE.

I didn't really trust "rock & roll" in the early days...I thought the Beatles and the rest were really bad for people until the early '70s when I finally got into pop music. So, the first single (45) I owned was America's A HORSE WITH NO NAME, and the first "rock" record I bought was CIRCLES by the New Seekers.

All of these were purchased from the V-Store Trading Post here in town, which is sadly going out of business soon. (They got out of the record business sometime in the '70s, which is when my day job's music department got started.)
 
I picked "I don't recall" because, although it wasn't during high school, I was around 19 when I first bought it. I was about half a year out of high school at that point.
 
Fun question!

Didn't see any need to buy records for a long time since my father had a big collection of classical, and odds and ends like Dinah Shore and Burl Ives to play on his Heath Kit mono hi-fi. I remember the fun I had watching him solder together those kits.

My first purchase was HANG ON RAMSEY! by the Ramsey Lewis Trio on Cadet, and I can remember getting the mono LP for about 3 bucks new at an early Kmart in Detroit. Figuring out when took some thought. I'm thinking 9th grade since the cash was actually a reward for my first all A report card, so I was probably about 14. The LP is long worn out and gone, but the reincarnation on CD is still my favorite jazz recording.
 
I was 12, and the album was GOING PLACES! It was early summer in 1967, and I bought it with money I earned from mowing the yard. A few weeks later, I bought my second album, the just-released SOUNDS LIKE...and for my birthday that year, my father bought me WATCH OUT. It was a very musical summer.



Dan
 
My parents had been buying me 45's since I was about 5. Two years later, I engineered the purchase of one of my own. My parents and I (I think my mom was there but I can't recall at the moment) went to the local Waxie Maxie's down the road. We went in, sniffed around for a while, and I left with the soundtrack to "The Muppet Show".

Ed
 
I picked the "probably during high school" option as I was probably about 16 or so.

Up until that point, my parents had purchased a bunch of albums for me - most of the TjB's up to that point, and a few other classical and piano albums (I was taking piano lessons).

One of their purchases was FAMILY PORTRAIT since it had a Herb Alpert track on it. It was a reasonably priced promo item but I was happy to add it to my little collection. As I began to explore the album, I became enamored of the Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 track of "Like A Lover", and thus my first purchase was to become the HERB ALPERT PRESENTS album along in short order with EQUINOX and LOOK AROUND.

Harry
 
For me it was "Blue Midnight" on the old Decca label. I liked Bert Kaempfert's stuff when I was younger and this was one of his best ones. Fred Moch had a nice trumpet sound, very unique.
 
I was listening to 45's since the age of 3 as we had a musical household, but I didn't buy an lp until I was about 13. It was Meet The Beatles in mono, as thats was my record machine was. I took a bus down to either Goldblatt's or Wieboldt's dept. store to purchase it (in Chicago).

I think the second lp I bought was Whipped Cream (also mono), and the third was a hard to find oddity on RCA called The National Football League Marching Songs. A specialty record store found that one for me.
 
rickster said:
For me it was "Blue Midnight" on the old Decca label. I liked Bert Kaempfert's stuff when I was younger and this was one of his best ones. Fred Moch had a nice trumpet sound, very unique.

I remember desperately pestering my parents to find me "Swingin' Safari" as it was used as the theme to the early NBC version of THE MATCH GAME. While watching the show one day, I saw a contestant ask Gene Rayburn (the host) what the theme was. He said it was called "Swingin' Safari" but he didn't mention who the recording was by.

My parents did the best they could, tracking down an album called SWINGIN' SAFARI by Billy Vaughan. It was the right song and a close-enough arrangement that I was satisfied for awhile, but years later, when I learned it was Bert Kaempfert's version, I had to have that one too.

Harry
 
I was in high school when I bought my first LPs (I already had some that I got as gifts), around 1978. Among the first ones I purchased were Billy Joel's THE STRANGER, ABBA's GREATEST HITS VOLUME 2, Toto's first album, Barry Manilow's EVEN NOW, and Supertramp's BREAKFAST IN AMERICA.
 
Murray of Saskatchewan said:
Supertramp's BREAKFAST IN AMERICA


That was what would easily what would'a been MY first NEW LP purchase, if not for my doubts as to whether or not I would like the filler (as what kept me from buying the Long-Play format in the first place, staying in my '45'-"safety zone"...) The way my allowance wouldn't cover ALL the record purchases I was making at the time (mowing our Lawn and doing our Dishes were not my cup o' tea) I guess I would make the transition to anything 12" when I got a real job...!



Dave
 
I was 12... 1972. We had just moved from Encino to Canoga Park, both suburbs in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, and I decided to take my film-making seriously. In those days, amatuer film-making was a "silent affair" -- no sound for any but the wealthiest of amatuers. So to make my visual humor films, schlocky home made monster epics and animated films of clay dinosaurs a little more interesting I decided to play music with them.

I was particularly fond of a tune used on the afternoon movie show on the local MetroMedia station KTTV channel 11 (now LA's Fox outlet) which was hosted by a fellow named Ben Hunter. I asked my mom what song it was. She didn't know, but was pretty sure it was the Tijuana Brass. So I immediately searched my folks' record collection and found Lonely Bull, Whipped Cream, South of the Border and S.R.O. She was wrong about the song, but only slightly -- more later.

Anway I found songs on these LPs to go along with my films and they worked out well. Running out of tunes I returned to their collection and found a few other records with the same logo as those Tijuana Brass records -- BMB's For Animals Only and Brasil '6's Equinox. I immediately fell in love with the sound of the Baja Marimba Band. I also had my first inkling that the "A" and the "M" in that logo probably stood for the two guys producing this great music -- "Alpert" & "Moss." Anyway, Brasil '66 on the other hand didn't strike me as "all that." A film maker wants music -- not words -- so I found no filmic use for it. My passion for Sergio and other Brazilian music came much later in life (like my 20s and growing to wheree I now hav an insatiable appetite for the stuff here in Japan where LOTS is readily available at a hefty price. But I digress). So tunes from For Animals Only and the four Tijuana Brass albums played behind many of my 8mm epics (as did some Living Guitars and Living Strings LPs).

At age 12 I got a paper route (and have been working the last 36 years ever since I might add) and decided to expand the collection. My dad took me to a place called Pal's Records (which was also a Mutual Ticket office outlet) and I bought used copies of many of the "then OOP" TJB and BMB albums. I later rode my bike to Wallach's Music city in Topanga Plaza and bought my own first "new" (as opposed to "used") TJB albums --Going Places and Volume II. Pal's and Wallach's became almost weekly pilgrimages for me, sometimes daily on the way home from school!

Interestingly, as I acquired more and more (and expanded my tastes by exploring artists on the sampler SP19000 series) I finally landed BMB's Those Were The Days and found Ben Hunter's theme song: "Big Red." which is still one of my top ten favorite BMB tunes. I used "Big Red" to accompany a my first school film project for a book we read in Mrs. Kaiser's 7th grade English class The Red Car. It was the same concept as those Gulf Oil commercials of the time. Animated race car drivers racing around campus -- with no cars. The actors sat on the ground, hands gripping an imaginary steering wheel, and they'd scoot forward a couple feet at a time where I'd shoot one frame of film. I discovered then that making a film as a school project was both fun for me to do and almost always got me an "A."

--Mr. Bill
 
I don't remember exactly, but I think it was around age 9 or 10 (c. 1981-82). It was The Jan and Dean Anthology Album. I had recently seen the TV movie "Deadman's Curve" (which was a few years old at that point) and became really interested in their music. I bought it with my birthday money and remember thinking I was so "grown up" because it was a two-record set. That just seemed like a really big deal at that age. Not to mention the fact that it included a big booklet with their story and lots of pictures!

Incidentally, it was through that booklet that I first became aware of Herb Alpert. He (and Lou Adler) produced their first hit "Baby Talk" and a bunch of other early tracks for the Dore label. It wasn't until a few years later that I discovered this was a mere footnote in Herb's career. (Jan would later release some post-accident singles on both A&M and Ode in the early '70s. None were hits, however.)
 
I was about 14 & a half, March 1966 to be a little more precise. My folks were purchasing a Philco portable stereo with the flip out speakers and pull down BSR changer. I needed something in stereo to play on it, all my folks had were 78's. My siblings and I had some children's LPs that had been given to us but they were all in mono and were in poor shape. I had to have Whipped Cream and Other Delights because it had A Taste Of Honey. I bought it at the same time my folks bought the stereo at a discount outfit called Govmart which was near Tacoma, WA. I think I paid $3.33 for the stereo version. I was into stereo versions, 45's didn't sound very good to me, so I always bought stereo LP's that contained my favorites that I had heard on the radio. It wasn't too long after that first TJB LP that I had all the rest that were out. Most of my hard earned money from grass cutting, babysitting, putting together the Sunday paper on Fridays for a neighbor that delivered it and what ever I got for my allowance went into buying records.
 
The Monkees: Headquarters. (Mom had bought Whipped Cream & Other Delights and the first Monkees LP for me)

---Michael Hagerty
 
Here's the very FIRST Record Album which I can actually give more Intricate Details about...:

It's Janet Jackson's Control, bought in 1986 shortly after it came out... Even with CD's becoming the latest listening format on the market, record stores were still intent on stocking vinyl and with "What Have You Done For Me Lately?" getting such myriad radio play I just had to go out and buy this one--right down to me crusing in my 1975 Mark IV (Bought for $750 from a Tradin' Times Ad) to the mall which is now an outdoor shopping strip...

What a suprise this album was... I loved "The Pleasure Principle", "You Can Be Mine" and especially the song where Janet gives such accurate details on separation and the need to be apart, hopefully temporary "as the guy is still trying to tease her, making his play as she whispers out "Stop!, Stop!"...") --that song being "Funny How Time Flies When You're Having Fun"... I really enjoy it, and it's a great LP to once in a while go back to...

Even with competition coming from Prince and Janet's own brother Michael, this album was still a hit, edging them out so artistically and more than twenty-years later, it's still a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, which really stood the test of times!!!!



Dave
 
I can't recall exactly, but I remember buying two A&M albums probably at the ripe old age of 7 or 8, $5 burning a hole in my pocket at the time. One was the Sandpipers' Guantanamera, and against my parents' wishes, the TJB's Greatest Hits. (Why would I want to buy music we already owned??) Bought both from E.J. Korvette's on separate trips. I had a lot more albums over the years bought as gifts, so I never really bought too many.

At one point when I was in my mid teens, I decided that, with one album purchase (Dan Hartman's "Instant Replay" album, which was new at the time), that I was going to start taking care of them, putting them away all the time, not touching the grooves, playing only on good equipment, etc., and that started my "adult" LP collection.

This actually started out (circa 1978) as 12" singles I'd buy for $2.99 and $3.99 at the local Harmony House store...the Hartman LP had a song played on the radio that was never released as a single, so it was a bigger purchase on my lawn-mowing budget. Used to ride up to Harmony House at least once a week on my bike, and more often than not, come home with a familiar brown paper bag with record inside.

Surprisingly a lot of those 12" singles are now rare items that can fetch a few hundred dollars in some instances.

Never was a buyer of 45s. I'll only buy one now if it has a rare mix or B-side.
 
Encino Bill said:
I was 12... 1972. We had just moved from Encino to Canoga Park, both suburbs in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley...I was particularly fond of a tune used on the afternoon movie show on the local MetroMedia station KTTV channel 11 (now LA's Fox outlet) which was hosted by a fellow named Ben Hunter...I finally landed BMB's Those Were The Days and found Ben Hunter's theme song: "Big Red." which is still one of my top ten favorite BMB tunes.

I grew up outside Santa Barbara and additionally recall how KTTV played a lot of BMB and TjB during their running of the local weather temperatures (usually over sea-side footage) during their nightly newscasts. Similarly, I recall, in reverse circumstance, how when I first heard Big Red on a recently acquired LP, how familiar the tune was...I knew it was from my childhood, but just could never place it...now Mr Bill nails it for me (thanks! another mystery solved!). On a side note, I also remember one year they (or KTLA) televised the little Santa Clause Lane Parade and Herb was riding on the A&M float -- he had a moustache so it might have been around the Masekala era.
 
1st LP" Elton John: captain Fantastic
1st 45: Billy Joel: Piano Man

(My father did the Herb collecting...that's how I was indoctrinated)
 
My very first LP was "Main Event Live" by Herb Alpert & Hugh Masekela. Fortunately for me, it was in the cut-outs for $2.99 at Sears in Daytona Beach, FL.
This was the summer of '82, and Herb was enjoying mild comeback success with solo albums.
I grew up listening to Mom's "Whipped Cream" and "Going Places" copies, and I wanted "Rise", "Beyond", "Magic Man" AND "Fandango" ALL on LP. But those albums were $8.69 EACH at Camelot Music, in the same mall as Sears. At 13, I was limited on funds, but I managed to scrape up the three bucks for "Main Event", and this was something different. Soon I started collecting everything Alpert, and I found ways of earning more money for the albums I wanted. And I bought every Alpert LP I could get my hands on! I wonder how many other kids out there were staying OUT of trouble by sitting for hours, with headphones on, in front of a phonograph...?
Tony
 
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