One electrifying set of childhoodish memory came rushing back to me today as I sat to watch a documentary film celebrating the career of record producer Ahmet Ertegun. The 1969 memory in question was presented to me via an old stand up, spring-motor driven, hand cranked, rosewood cabinet victrola that was stored in my grandfather’s house. I was fifteen years of age and just noticing, frightened by the stillness, how lonely it was in his empty house after his passing. I then happened across the player, and a clumsy black stack of musty shellac discs. It became my secret place of solace, and I hid in the listening, and it became the soundtrack of my life because nobody else wanted it. When you have three other siblings, and no money, you acquire your power where ye may. It was there that I stumbled across one particular 78RPM recording of one Big Joe Turner doing, Shake, Rattle and Roll on Atlantic Records.

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