“In 1966 I was a seventh grader at Southern California Military Academy. Recently uprooted from the mid-west, I was living the lonely existence of a latch-key kid in a two room house when someone turned me on to KGFJ AM1230, ‘The Voice of the Black Community.’ This was like a window into an unknown galaxy! James Brown! What is that? My life was transformed forever”
“It wasn’t long before I discovered the local black record store, a little hole-in-the-wall called Jesse’s Records on Gaffey Street in San Pedro. The owner was a tall skinny old black man with a big tumor on his neck. Who knows what he thought of this little white kid in military school khakis asking for 45s by The Meters, or Barbara Acklin, or Ike and Tina Turner?
See, I’d get on the bus in the morning with my portable radio, (a really cool one) pressed to my ear and hear all the new songs. Seemed like James Brown had a new single out every week; “Popcorn,” “Mother Popcorn,” “Let a Man Come In and do the Popcorn.”
After school I’d head right down to Jesse’s Records with my 69 cents cradled in my sweaty palm. Then home to throw it on the turntable and play it over and over ’til Mom came home between her day job and her night job.
For a long time those circles of black vinyl with their magic labels—King, Tamla, Motown, Jobete, Stax—were my best friends in the whole world.”
—John Smith
Bag Town, the latest release from Nu Shooz is in stores now.
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