Outpost Record Shop

It all began in the bars. My father owned a bar, my grandmother owned a bar, my uncle owned a bar…I grew up in a bar. Bars with pinball machines, video arcade games, and a jukebox. The jukebox was my first real exposure to vinyl records. When I was 7 or 8 or 9 I found a box of old records in the backroom of the bar, a box of 45’s. There must have been 100 of them. Every week the vending company would send someone to collect the money from the machines. Every week they would bring 3-4 new 45’s to put on the jukebox and they would leave the ones that they removed with my dad. I asked if I could have them, and the rest is history. I don’t remember any of the records that were in that box except one. I’m sure that in the early 70’s there must have been some Motown, Pop Rock, Carpenters, Elton, a few leftover 60’s hits, and and who knows what else. For years to come, I would get 3-4 new records every week when they switched them out in the jukebox.

The one record stood out was because it was one that I recognized. First of all, the label wasn’t a familiar RCA, MCA, Motown, or Columbia. It was a Sunflower Label, which I’d never seen before. Side A didn’t seem to belong with Side B. I knew Side A since I was a kid in elementary school…”John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith”. I had to play it since they made us learn it in music class…I think every school in the 70’s taught this song. The thing I couldn’t understand was why it was on a jukebox in a bar. Who in their right mind would play this song in public? Then I turned it over and played the flip side, now it made sense….”Chicka Boom (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It?)” Even then, as a kid, I wanted to find that “Chick in a black bikini”

So I have this record to thank for this addiction. This is what got me started sometime in the early 70’s. I was always getting more records off of the jukebox from the bar. I started going into record stores to buy a new or used record to add to my collection, whenever I had enough money. I don’t have the original copy of this record that I first found years ago…but I have a few copies, and will always have this 45 on my Jukebox. Do you remember your first record?

Take a listen….Don’t Ya Jes’ Love it?