Puffin' That Stuff

notes from Andy Cohen

So, I came to Memphis in 1972, to play a weeklong gig in this bar that was just about to open, and they weren’t finished with the interior décor. I was hanging around for another week with the owners and different people I met, and just for yucks I helped this really great guitar player, Gimmer Nicholson, clean out the basement of his aunt’s boarding house that he’d inherited. Wotthehell, maybe one of the boarders left something interesting. Yup. An old tail-twister Victrola with some records in the boot. Most of them were shot, cracked, unplayable, but there was one, looked like it was made at the Greyhound station up on Fourth, aluminum core with lacquer over it. Cost you a buck to make it back in the forties. These records are good for maybe five or six plays. This one already had a bunch. We got one play out of it. I swear. I don’t know who the guy was, but he could pick his **** off.