Pics of the collection are available, just email me.

Former Chicagoland DJ in clubs, mobiles and radio. Not your standard fair.
Obviously the heart of the collection is representative of my personal taste with the remainder used for professional purposes (radio, clubs and mobiles).

Personal taste:
Being a lifelong Chicagoan now at the age of 54 I was weaned on the best media influences of the day. With a transistor radio practically glued to my ear, growing up I was heavily influenced by the best radio stations in the age where Top-40 ruled the airwaves (’65-’85), namely AM 890 WLS and AM 100 Super ‘CFL’ (WCFL). Not to mention the best dance shows of the day, American Bandstand, Soul Train, Lloyd Thaxton, Kiddie-A-Go-Go, Where The Action Is and Casey Kasem’s ‘American Top-40’.

The 45’s:
It is those influences mentioned above that have set the tone for the 45 collection. Predominately pop music of the 60’s - ‘80’s. This is when 45’s cost about 50-80 cents!
In addition, I worked at radio stations that received promo 45’s that didn’t necessarily fit the format of the station and therefore I would add them to my collection. Nice promos too. Some colored vinyl, fold out sleeves, etc… PLENTY of picture sleeves!!!!!

At one station, I confiscated a lot of their library (albums as well as 45’s) before they ‘went dark’. No, they didn’t change formats to R&B or hip-hop! When a station ‘goes dark’ it means it’s no longer on the air and thus not transmitting a signal. In other words, they’re out of business.
Some of the radio station 45’s have an X over the vinyl on the B-side where the music director marked them so that the DJ wouldn’t make the mistake of playing the wrong side/song. The X was made with a grease pencil and can be cleaned off with rubbing alcohol.

Albums:

In my teens and early adulthood I was still influenced by radio though the bands had changed from AM to FM which was just coming into its own. The 70’s launched not only FM radio but also the radio format known as AOR which stands for Album Oriented Radio. This is where AM radio would play ‘the hits’ off a given album but FM would play the ‘deeper cuts’. This is what is reflective in the bulk of the ‘regular’ albums in the collection. Back then it would have been called Rock (not Heavy Metal) music. Today it is what’s deemed ‘Classic Rock’.

Additional Albums:

Soundtracks are self explanatory.

SFX (Sound Effects) – Available on Album and CD formats. These are both consumer and broadcast only libraries.

Greatest Hits - not to be confused with compilation albums. Each individual album contains ‘the hits’ by each given artist. These albums run the gamut due to my use of them for my mobile DJ business (weddings, anniversaries, etc…) where you would have to appeal to broad age range. So in addition to the hits of ABBA, Nazareth and Uriah Heep you will also find Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald…but those ‘contemporary’ artists are few and far between even though they are some great hit compilations due to being produced by Time-Life who offered the absolute BEST in audio fidelity by re-mastering the master tapes.

Comedy & Spoken Word – Influenced in part by the late great Eddie Schwartz who was an overnight DJ here in Chicago who would occasionally dip into his comedy album collection.
So while you’ll find the typical Carlin, Cosby and Cheech & Chong albums here, you’ll also come across Nichols & May, Bill Dana, Stan Freberg and yes the insane great one Jonathan Winters.

The Spoken Word portion includes Bloopers, documentaries and instructional albums to name but a few.

Children’s – In my radio DJ days I would use what are called ‘drops’. These are little snippets from various sources (mostly records) that the DJ would use to act as a sidekick. For example, I would do a bit on the air and at the conclusion of it you would hear a snippet off of a Bugs Bunny album with Bugs saying something like, “Eh doc, that was terrible!” These little snippets are called ‘drops’ and aren’t used much by DJ’s these days. Locally here in Chicago you’ll still hear them get used by Svengoolie…”BERWYN?”

Children’s records were a great source for drops and some of these are HIGHLY collectable. Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera, Captain Kangaroo, Bozo, etc…

Compilations – These are broken down into 2 categories. The one is just your basic, straight ahead compilation of various artists singing their hits (and sometimes NON-hits) of the day. They are in order according to the era.
Also as I don’t really have much in the way of Country & Western albums (as they were known in the day), I do have some really nice C&W compilations.
The second Compilation category I have reserved for…

K-Tel Hell: K-tel Hell was a radio bit I would do on the air by playing a song from a K-Tel album and even gave