It was about 8 feet long, 3 feet wide and deep, with a hinged door that opened on top. I never thought it looked much like a casket until my father, wit that he was, peered inside one day and remarked, “He looks just like himself.”
But rather than a corpse, what reposed inside was a state-of-the-art stereo system: automatic record changer, AM-FM radio, single-cartridge 8-track player and speakers on the sides, hidden behind heavy burgundy cloth and the requisite Mediterranean dark wooden spindles.
Oh, it was a thing of beauty — one of millions, I’m sure, that dominated the living rooms of America back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Ours was a Packard Bell — remember that name? — boasting real wood, walnut, I believe.
Heavier than the dickens, it squatted inside the three houses we lived in from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. Its record player gave us everyone from the Broadway cast of “Hair,” to Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor. Meanwhile, its 8-track player whistled out the tunes of just about every spaghetti western out there at the time. The good, the bad and the ugly, indeed.
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Sometime in the early ‘90s we bought a new stereo system and tower speakers surrounding our new 36-inch television – all taking up residence in the family room.
Our Packard Bell in the living room became little more than a wooden dinosaur, outdated as the orange shag carpeting it once sat on.
Still, we kept it around until we sold the house we had lived in for 23 years. Gave it to our daughter, who kept it until she, too, moved. What became of it, neither of us remembers today.
What brings all this up is that while noodling around on the Internet I noticed that quite a little market has sprung up in the buying and selling of old stereo cabinets. Prices range from a couple of hundred bucks to more than $2,000. Egads. Some have been modernized with new equipment — no 8-track component, I assume. Others boast intact, and still-working, systems.
Also making a comeback are phonograph record players. While some appear vintage in nature, most are brand new, playing all three speeds: 33, 45, and 78. I still remember my parents’ old 78 records, spinning through everything from Nat King Cole to “Peter and the Wolf,” narrated by Sterling Holloway. Used to scare the dickens out of me every time my mother played it.
I got my revenge a few years later on my own little portable phonograph, wailing out Bill Haley and Chuck Berry tunes.
I have no idea what happened to all those old 45 records after I left home for marriage, but I do know what happened to Simon and Garfunkel and the rest of the lot after our last move five years ago. We sold them all. For a pittance.
Hey, who knew vinyl was back? Yep, years after tape cassettes, 8-track cartridges, CD players and then digital recordings swept the land, old-fashioned records are back. Therein, of course, lies the need for turntables on which to spin them — some starting at less than $100.
Meanwhile, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bookends” first-issue LP is going for $28 and change online. Just the cover alone of these lads, so young, so pretty, makes it worth it. On the other hand, “Hair,” the original Broadway recording, can be had for a couple of bucks.
Vinyl isn’t only limited to nostalgia. Adele’s ”Hello” has sold more than 100,000 records. Sure, it’s a pittance in overall sales, but enough to make me consider dusting off my old record player from the 1990s.
As for that “musical coffin” from the ‘60s, nostalgia can keep it.
Bonnie Henry’s column runs every other Sunday. Contact her at Bonniehenryaz@gmail.com.
