March 29, 1975: The big business of bargain LPs

 

New records were a big business in the music-loving ‘70s. And so were old ones. 

March 29, 1975 

How Old Discs End Up in Bargain Bins 

“I KNOW IT’S HERE someplace,” Larry Silver shouts from the top of the ladder, which is somewhere near the ceiling of the mammoth Transcontinent Record Sales warehouse in West Seneca.

          He tosses down a couple Warner-Reprise record boxes, taped tightly shut except for one corner that’s apparently been sliced off with a power saw.

          The boxes are torn open – 25 copies of “Hendrix in the West” and 25 copies of “The History of the Grateful Dead, Vol. 1.”

          “These aren’t it” is the verdict.

          “It’s gotta be here,” Larry vows as he plunges back into the stacks.

          Object of the search is an obscure three-year-old album by Barbara Keith, who wrote Delaney & Bonnie’s hit, “Free the People.”

          It’s long gone from the Warner Bros. catalog, maybe even rare enough to be a collector’s item. Larry’s got at least 50 of them. Somewhere.

          Almost half of this 80,000-square-foot warehouse is stacked to the rafters with records like Barbara Keith’s, the excess baggage of the record industry.

          Some of them were brand new releases only seven months ago. Others may have been around for a decade.

          They’re either discontinued stock or they’re over-runs – like the soundtrack album from the movie, “The Great Gatsby.” Out of an optimistic pressing of half a million, only 20,000 were sold.

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THE RECORD COMPANIES periodically clear them out. The corners of the covers are cut off or have a hole drilled in them so distributors won’t try to send them back for refunds. In the music biz, they’re known as “cut-outs.”

          Rock, jazz, country, classical – they become the stock-in-trade of record department bargain bins. You can get them anywhere from $1.99 apiece down to three for a dollar. Transcontinent sold close to 10 million of them in 17 states last year.

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“BELIEVE IT or not, everything gets sold,” Larry says. “Three years ago, I got a really good price on the Elton John ‘Friends’ album.

          “I had a mountain of it. I thought I’d never get it sold. Now that Elton’s big, everybody wants it. It’s going like crazy.”

          Son of Transcontinent president Lenny Silver, Larry’s 24 and has charge of the company’s budget record operation. He gets as enthusiastic about old records as other people do over new ones.

          “I just made a buy yesterday,” he says. “Longine’s Record Club went out of business and I bought about a million pieces.

          “There’s Jim Croce, the Pointer Sisters, the James Gang, Commander Cody, Three Dog Night. Croce’s never been available as a cut-out before.”

          Larry agrees that better and better records are winding up in the bargain bins. It’s almost like they’re showing up in answer to the needs of these budget-conscious times.

          Larry’s setting out at least four Faces and Rod Stewart albums from 1972-73, War’s “Deliver the Word,” old LaBelle records on Warner Bros., Todd Rundgren’s “Runt,” the live Guess Who, the Kinks’ “Kronikles,” all of the Doors.

          Double and triple record sets like Isaac Hayes’ “Live at the Sahara Tahoe” and the 1969 Isle of Wight rock festival go for $1.99.

          The complete Impulse jazz line is available on bargain tapes and cassettes, as are many recent Motown hits by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Temptations, even though they’re still selling for full price as records.

          One of Larry’s newest ideas for old records is the $1.97 grab bag – a brown paper sack with five albums inside.

* * *

“THERE’S A LITTLE bit of everything in there,” Larry says. “No two are the same.

          “One guy went into Sattler’s and bought 50 of them. One lady bought one and found a Julie London record she’d looked all over the city for.”

          Having grown up in the business (his father used to have him watch “American Bandstand” and copy down what was played), Larry feels that wide-ranging musical knowledge is an invaluable asset in buying for the bargain bins.

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“THAT’S WHY we can pick up something like the Brave Belt albums from Warners,” he says, “and know enough to slap a sticker on them saying: ‘The original Bachman-Turner.’ Now the company’s re-released them.

          “We’ve got a young staff and they’re very aware of music. There’s John Cracchiola, he’s 20 and in charge of tapes, and my cousin Gary, who’s 18. He’s in charge of the LPs. I’m the old man of this outfit.

          “Buffalo’s a really good market for cut-outs,” Larry points out, “and the Buffalo people are really lucky that our main warehouse I here. The Buffalo area gets first shot at everything.

          “We’ve put out things here that never get to stores in other states. Like I’m getting in 762 pieces of ‘The Best of Dave Mason’ and I’m not going to send them someplace else. They’re all staying right here in Buffalo.”

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IN THE PHOTO: From left, Gary Silver, Larry Silver and John Cracchiola.

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FOOTNOTE: This article predates Transcontinent’s expansion from wholesale into retail with the opening of the first in a chain of Record Theatre stores in 1976. That vast warehouse in West Seneca eventually got pared down to the main Record Theatre location at Main Street and Lafayette Avenue in Buffalo, which had a big back room, and a few other buildings nearby.

          The whole operation closed after Lenny Silver died in 2017. Larry, meanwhile, started his own used record and book store a few doors down the street in the 2000s and continues to do sales on the Internet.