What’s the fine when a record album that’s 44 years overdue is returned to a Connecticut library?
Somebody must have really loved Roger Williams’ album “With These Hands.” Borrowed from the Rockville Public Library in 1978, the album was returned on Monday.
Library director Jennifer Johnston-Marius said the record was found by the son of the Rockville resident who borrowed the album 44 years ago.
“We’ve had items returned a few years late, especially when people are moving,” Johnston-Marius said. “But never anything this old.”
The library is not divulging the “With These Hands” borrower’s identity. (Not everyone wants to be outed as a Roger Williams fan.)
“He had been going through an old record collection and said, ‘Oh wow, this isn’t ours,’ Johnston-Marius said of the dutiful son. “We couldn’t believe he brought it back. He was prepared to pay a fine.”
No fine was levied for the late return. For one thing, there are no longer any other vinyl albums at the Rockville library. Like a lot of libraries, Rockville dispensed with its LP record collection in the early ‘90s, when cassette tapes and then CDs became the dominant formats for recorded music. In recent years, vinyl LPs have made a comeback, but not at libraries, which now offer digital music services.
The song “With These Hands” was a hit for Eddie Fisher in 1953 and was later recorded by everyone from Tom Jones to Guy Lombardo to The Temptations to Jerry Lewis. Roger Williams’ instrumental solo piano version was released in 1959. Among the 11 other tracks on the “With These Hands” album: the movie themes from “Gigi” and “An Affair to Remember”; “Bess, You Is My Woman” from the opera “Porgy and Bess”; and “The Syncopated Clock,” which at the time of the album’s release would’ve been recognized as the theme of the CBS’s “Late Show” movie screenings.
Roger Williams records aren’t hard to come by, often clogging the bins at thrift shops. That would have been as true in 1978 as it is now. Williams had over three dozen albums on the charts between 1955 and 1972. The pianist, who late in life became known for his 12-hour marathon piano performances, died in 2011. In the late ‘70s, at the time the leisurely Rockville listener was grooving to “With These Hands,” Williams had recently released a greatest-hits compilation and would soon release a Christmas album.
Some of the hot records of 1978, when the Williams LP was checked out, were Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Patti Smith Group’s “Easter,” The Rolling Stones’ “Some Girls,” the debut albums from Van Halen, Devo and The Cars and the second albums from an assortment of punk and new wave acts including The Clash, Elvis Costello and Talking Heads.
Does the return of “With These Hands” to the library mean that someone with a library card and a working turntable at home can check out the disk? Sadly, no.
“It’s not in the greatest of shape,” Johnston-Marius said. “And it is not currently in our catalog,” which still consisted of paper cards when the record was checked out. The record was not in the library’s inventory when the catalog changed to a computerized system decades ago.
Yet Rockville Public Library doesn’t plan to let “With These Hands” slip through its hands again.
“We’re keeping it as a memento,” Johnston-Marius said. “We’ve found some other things around the library and we’re thinking of doing a display ‘from the good old days.’”
In the present day, Rockville Public Library is returning to a busy schedule that resembles pre-COVID normalcy, with teen programs, story times, chess club and, for gardeners, a seed library.
What would a 44-year-overdue seed look like? An oak tree?
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
