Boston promo 45 for Don’t Look Back

At the end of my junior year in college, my folks moved to a townhouse in Bloomington, MN. The nearby strip mall had three (woo,hoo!) record dealers. The Red Owl Family Center had the cheapest current 45s, and G.C. Murphy had a more more limited but slightly cheaper selection of oldies than at Musicland, where I'd special order the obscure new singles. That was a great summer!

Edited by Yah Shure

Yah Shure wrote: Bloomington, MN. The nearby strip mall had three (woo,hoo!) record dealers.

Small world - I live in Richfield, MN, about 100 feet from Bloomington. As you might have guessed, things have changed a bit. The only record/CD dealer in Bloomington is Discland, and that probably wasn't around back then. There was a small place in a strip mall in Bloomington called Aardvark Records until about 6 or 7 years ago, but they moved way across town and I haven't been back since.

Gary wrote: ...our local general store sold 45's by Almor Playtime. They would have their own Top 40 list and in the early 80's they would never sell any Motown songs for some reason or another. Sometimes some very obscure stuff got put in positions #35-#40, but you could by most of the hits there. I recall bying Bill Burnette's "Oh Susan" which they seemed to want to promote and they listed it at #21....In Ben Franklin stores, the 45's were shrinked wrapped in cardboard about 1 foot tall...

To explain stores having "their own Top 40 list", there was a method to the madness. My local Macy's had that arrangement. Back then, big dept. store retailers would want to carry current 45s/LPs, but didn't want to go to all the time/effort to research/order the "hot sellers." So, they'd hire a regional record distribution company to run the whole thing for them. Certain distriutors had closer/better relationships with certain other record labels, than they did with others. To me, it was always quite obvious what labels had the best "relationships"; as Gary pointed out, the lower reaches of these "distributor charts" were always overstuffed with current "non-hits" from these labels (like Bill Burnette), guaranteeing they would be "available for purchase at retail", often despite absolutely NO radio airplay/national chart action whatsoever! (I remember Roulette always having a mega-strong presence on these Macy's lists, for example.) It was always a big deal to labels to get their 45s stocked in stores, no matter what. For example, Gary took a chance, and ended up buying that Bill Burnette 45, probably without ever even hearing it first! If the song didn't appear on their bogus "chart", that never would've happened.) On the other hand, other labels would be either totally or mostly ignored (like Motown, for example, as Gary earlier cited), even if massive current hits appeared on these labels. It was ALL about business/profit/relationships. The distributors' only fear was that if TOO many customers contacted store management, saying, "Hey, I can't find my favorite song, "______" (on Motown, let's say.) "I wanna buy it!" The distributors couldn't have it obviously appear that they weren't doing their job fairly, by "fixing the chart/ballot box", so they would eventually HAVE to stock these "hostile label" huge hits, but only to avoid the risk of getting "canned" by the retailer, and only if the song was an absolute SMASH. They'd chart JUST enough of these "hostile" label hits to maintain their "gig" at the store. This was why ALL big distributors did their own "charts", and all with many dubious songs on there; it was the primary way for them to manipulate the situation to their own profit benefit. If they'd used a local station's chart, they couldn't "help their label friends, and punish their label enemies", so it was almost never done that way, within these "distributor-run, big-retail record departments." Same thing with the 12" cardboard, shrink-wrapped 45s. That was another major distributor's way of stocking 45s to big department stores (my local Bradlees did it this way). They still offered a printed "chart" of their own doing, but they had "X" amount of "pegboard slots" available for current 45s, and they would have 25 copies of each song "hung up", for easy viewing, using a single hole on top of the cardboard. Because this setup was so easy to eyeball, looking at their "charts" wasn't as essential here. Same deal, though - some of the bigger hits were totally missing, while some "mega-stiffs", that I'd never heard of, were ALWAYS showing up on the pegboard, being offered up for purchase from the "favored labels". Obviously, these "favored labels" would vary, from one distributor to the next. These many buying options were key for many of us as kids, because we obviously couldn't get around as easily back then, didn't have a lot of money, and were pretty dependant on "wherever/whenever Mom and/or Dad were going to the local (fill in the blank) department store." What helped me a lot was the fact that one of our larger, local, Mom-and-Pop music chains would "run" the record departments of other small, Mom-And-Pop local businesses, who wanted to increase their store traffic by having a small music department. Same setup as the big distibutors had with big retailers, but on a MUCH smaller scale. For example, I knew that my local "City TV" store, which was right next to the place where I had my first, part-time job, had this arrangement. This helped me GREATLY, back in the early 70's, to buy my "survey debut songs" in a timely fashion. Lucky for me, they even stocked copies of our local station's surveys, and they had ALL of its Top 30 songs in stock, with none of that "big distributor, selective charting" garbage. My other "main 45 buying source" was my local drug store/pharmacy. They had the exact same set-up as that "City TV" did, again, kept current by my local Mom and Pop music chain, and again, using local station's surveys. However, they kept their 45s under lock and key, in a display with a clear plastic top, and you had to go to the counter and ask the clerk to "open/remove" the wanted 45s for you. (And I always thought I had an honest face!) The use of a local radio station chart, vs. "their own chart" was always how I could separate the "good" 45 selection places from the "iffy" 45 selection places. Thanks for all the great memories, guys!   

Edited by jimct

Interesting discussion of both Minneapolis (surprising that so many of us have connections there!) and those old music surveys.

If you'd like to see a nice sample of these surveys from the New York City area from 1978-1986, I've got a few hundred posted here.

Mine are from "Alpha Distribution Corp" from NYC, and they serviced Caldor, Bradlees, Korvettes, Two Guys, and a few other department stores that aren't around anymore. The phrase "Please request by number" still makes me smile!

Paul, I often bought import LPs at Discount Records in Dinkytown, but was always disappointed that no record stores near the "U" carried singles. One day on my way out the door at Discount, I spotted a KDWB 6+30 survey tacked to the wall. After I glanced around and didn't see a stash of them anywhere, I asked the clerk why it was on the wall. "That's for the 45s for the kids." Great. They'd been selling 45s all along! You ordered them by their chart number, and they kept them hidden away behind the counter. Methinks they were years ahead of the labels in not wanting to cannibalize a potential album sale on account of a lowly 45. :)

Was it the Record Collectors Co-op that you think was the "auxilliary shop" near Oarfolk?

There was one real treasure in town: Don Leary's in St. Anthony. Don had been an independent dealer for decades, and he had THE BEST inventory of 45s new and old, and often bought directly from the labels. Don was one of those cranky owners who'd yell at you if you took the 45 out of its sleeve in plain view to inspect it. He'd sell promo copies with "certified gold standard" stickers covering the promo markings on the labels. I didn't care, because 75% of what I'd special order at Musicland would come back stamped "not available," and Leary's was my last hope of finding those singles. In 1973, I was glad to find that he had two stock copies of "Sunshine Ship," a WMMR fave by Arthur, Hurley & Gottlieb on Columbia, so I bought one. The last time I stopped in during his going-out-of-business sale around 1986, I found the other copy still sitting there in the bins, so I bought it, too. I'd spend hours there browsing, unable to focus on much of anything beyond an arms-length for some time after leaving the store.

It was while working at Heilicher Brothers (Musicland's owner) that I discovered why so many of those special orders weren't fulfilled. If the 45 was new and on one of the majors with its own distribution (Columbia, Decca/MCA, Capitol) no matter how obscure the record was, they could almost always get it. WEA was hit and miss (mostly miss.) For the independently-distributed labels that Heilicher's themselves distributed (ABC/Dunhill, Motown, Bell/Arista, UA, etc.) their 45 buyer had to purchase each title from the labels first, and the minimum order requirements pretty much ruled out those single copies special-ordered by some Yah(oo.)