Earlier than it burned, Charlie Springer’s home contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, a whole bunch of signed musical posters, and about 100 gold information. The albums alone occupied a complete wall of cabinets within the household room, and one other within the storage. On his desk have been a set of drumsticks from Nirvana and an previous RCA microphone that Prince had given to him at a recording session for Prince. A neon Seashore Boys signal—so far as he is aware of, one in all solely eight remaining on this planet—hung above the eating desk. In his laundry room was a Gibson guitar signed by the Everly Brothers; close to his hearth, a white Stratocaster signed to him by Eric Clapton.
Final month, the night time the Eaton Hearth broke out, Charlie evacuated to his girlfriend’s home. And when he got here again, the remnants of his residence had been bleached by the hearth. The spot within the household room the place the report assortment had been was darkish ash.
I’ve identified Charlie for so long as I can bear in mind. He and my father met due to information. Within the late Eighties, Charlie was at a crowded occasion within the Hollywood Hills when he heard somebody greet my father by his full identify. Charlie whipped round: “You’re Fred Walecki? I’ve been seeing your identify on information.” Dad owned a rock-and-roll-instrument store, and musicians thanked him on their albums for the gear (and emotional assist) he supplied throughout recording periods. Charlie was a nationwide gross sales supervisor at Warner Bros. Data and will rattle off the B-side of any report, so in fact he’d clocked Walecki showing over and over. Rising up, I assumed each track I’d ever heard is also discovered on Charlie’s cabinets; his good friend Jim Wagner, who as soon as ran gross sales, merchandising, and promoting for Warner Bros. Data, referred to as it the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame West.
Charlie’s assortment began when he was 6. He had requested his mom to get him the report “concerning the canine,” and he or she’d introduced again Patti Web page’s “(How A lot Is) That Doggie within the Window?” No, not that one—he needed a forty five of Elvis’s not too long ago launched single, “Hound Canine.” He’d cart it round with him for the following seven many years, throughout a number of states, earlier than inserting it on his shelf in Altadena. At age 8, he mowed lawns and shoveled snow in his hometown exterior Chicago to afford “Candy Little Sixteen,” by Chuck Berry, and “Tequila,” by the Champs; when he was 9, he received Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say.” And when he was 10, he walked into his native report store and located its proprietor, Lenny, sitting on the ground, frazzled, surrounded by piles of information. Each week, Lenny needed to rearrange the information on his wall to mirror the order of the Prime 40 chart made by the native radio station WLS. Charlie provided to assist.
“What is going to it price me?” Lenny requested.
“Two singles per week.” Charlie held on to all of these singles, and the paper surveys from WLS, too.
When he was 12, he purchased his first full albums: Surfin’ Safari, by the Seashore Boys; Bob Dylan’s eponymous debut; and Inexperienced Onions, by Booker T. and the M.G.s. He entered a Wisconsin seminary two years later, hoping to turn out to be a priest. There, he and his pals discovered an inventory of addresses for members of Milwaukee’s Knights of Columbus chapter, and despatched out letters asking for donations—a hi-fi stereo console, a jukebox—to the poor seminarians, who went with out a lot. Radios have been contraband, however Charlie taped one beneath the chair subsequent to his mattress, and at night time, whereas 75 different college students slept round him, he would use an earbud to take heed to WLS. “And I might hear information, and I might go, Oh my God, I gotta get this report. I have to. ” Seminarians might go into city provided that it was strictly needed, so he’d break his glasses, and run between the optometrist and the five-and-dime. That’s how he received a few different Seashore Boys information, the Kinks’ “Bored with Ready for You,” and the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream.”
Charlie dropped out of seminary in 1967, on the finish of his junior 12 months. All of these five-and-dime information had been in his prefect’s room, however when he left, the prefect was nowhere to be discovered. So, Charlie received a ladder, wriggled via a transom, and received his assortment, saved in two crates which had beforehand contained oranges. (“Orange crates held albums completely,” he instructed me.) Then he hitchhiked to San Francisco and grew his hair out simply in time for the Summer time of Love. He moved right into a commune of kinds, a 16-unit condominium constructing with the partitions between residences damaged down, and received a job hanging posters for the Fillmore on phone poles across the Bay Space. He’d staple up psychedelic paintings promoting Jefferson Airplane, Sons of Champlin, the Grateful Lifeless, or Sly and the Household Stone. (He nonetheless had about 75 of these posters.) He labored at Tower Data on the aspect however would hand his paycheck again to his boss: The cash all went to information. Anytime one in all his favorites—Morrison, Mitchell, Dylan, the Seashore Boys—launched a brand new album, he’d host a listening occasion for pals. When he moved again to Chicago, his music assortment took up many of the automobile. The report retailer he managed there, Hear Right here, would obtain about 20 new albums on daily basis to play over the loudspeakers. When Charlie heard Bruce Springsteen’s first album (two earlier than Born to Run), he thought it was such a success, he locked the store door. “Till I promote 5 of those information,” he introduced, “no one is getting out of this retailer.”
Subsequent, Charlie labored his manner up at a music-distribution firm, ranging from a gig within the warehouse (picker No. 9). Later, at Warner Bros. Data, he’d work with shops and radio stations to assist artists promote sufficient music to get, after which maintain, their huge break. To promote Takin’ It to the Streets, he drove with the Doobie Brothers so they may signal albums at a Kansas Metropolis report store; to assist Dire Straits get their begin, he lobbied radio stations to play their first single for a few 12 months till it caught on. He was additionally on the shortlist of people that would hear to check pressings of a brand new album for any pops or crackles, earlier than the corporate shipped the ultimate model. Charlie held on to about 1,000 of these uncommon pressings, together with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Prince’s Purple Rain.
He moved to Los Angeles within the ’80s to be Warner’s nationwide gross sales supervisor, and in 1991, he purchased his residence on Skylane Drive, in Altadena. Nestled within the foothills, the realm smelled of the hay for his neighbors’ horses. Alongside the fence was bougainvillea, and in his yard, an impressive native oak that our households would sit beneath collectively. He began inserting hundreds of his albums on these cabinets within the household room, overlooking that tree.
In Charlie’s home, a report was all the time enjoying. He had not too long ago papered the partitions and ceiling of his lavatory with the WLS surveys he began accumulating as a toddler, in his first record-store job. Each report he pulled off the shelf got here with a reminiscence, he instructed me. And if he saved an album or a memento in his home, “it was a great story.”
A gold report from U2, on the wall subsequent to the staircase: “All bands, once they first begin off, they’re new bands, and no one is aware of who they’re, okay? … I went up with U2, on their first album, from Chicago to Madison, they usually performed a gig for about 15 folks, after which we went to eat at an Italian restaurant. I went again to the restaurant a pair years later, and the identical waitress waited on me, and I stated, ‘Wow, I bear in mind I used to be in right here with U2.’ And she or he goes, ‘These guys have been U2?’ I used to be like, ‘They have been U2 then they usually’re U2 now.’”
Within the kitchen, a poster of Jimi Hendrix putting an influence chord on the Monterey Pop Competition: “Seal places his first report out, and I’ve simply turn out to be a vice chairman at Warner Bros. And I am going to my very first VP lunch, and I announce, ‘Hey, this new Seal report goes to go gold.’ The senior VP of finance says, ‘You shouldn’t say that. Why would you make that type of expectation?’ And I’m like, ‘As a result of I do know with each corpuscle in my physique it’s gonna go gold’ … So we make a $1 gents’s guess. About six weeks later, it’s gold.” On the subsequent lunch, he requested the finance govt to signal his greenback invoice. Simply then, Mo Ostin, the pinnacle of the label, walked in and heard about their wager. “Mo stated, ‘So Charlie, is there one thing across the constructing that you just all the time preferred?’ I used to be like, ‘Effectively, that Jim Marshall poster of Hendrix.’ And he goes, ‘It’s yours.’”
*Illustration sources: RCA / Michael Ochs Archive / Getty; Stoughton Printing / Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Instances / Getty; Warner Brothers / Alamy; Solar Data / Alamy
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