WHRO giving away one of the state’s largest music collections: more than 20,000 albums and CDs
Barry Graham stared down the loaded cart as if it were his enemy, its wheels weighed down by a mountain of cardboard boxes.
The WHRO folk producer called for a box cutter as he heaved one box onto a table in a radio station conference room.
“Gosh these things are heavy,” he said. “No one get a hernia.”
He cut into the box. Dust poofed a musky smell. A treasure was revealed: a tight row of more than 100 old vinyl albums.
Over the decades, WHRO has accumulated one of the largest known music collections in the state, perhaps on the East Coast, with more than 20,000 albums and CDs in its vast storage room. But the music it plays now is digitally archived.
To make a newsroom for its 10 journalists, WHRO is giving away all the hard copies of music on Saturday. Security has been hired.
“It’s going to be a mad house,” said Bert Schmidt, president and CEO of WHRO Public Media.
The first thousand people who signed up can walk away with 50 albums or CDs. The spots were gone in four days.
Last week, rows lined tables in the room: jazz, classical, easy listening, soundtracks, show tunes, blues, 1970s folk, 1980s pop and hidden pearls of rock ‘n’ roll.
“We have a long way to go,” Graham said with an apprehensive gaze at the still-sealed dozens of boxes.
One box near the entrance held a stack of Duke Ellington. Next to it sat a trove of Thelonious Monk classics, and Charles Mingus’ “New Tijuana Moods,” “Mingus At the Bohemia” and “Something Like a Bird.”
Five vinyl discs shared a single dust jacket: “The Unforgettable Glenn Miller: 70 of his greatest Original Recordings.”
“Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!” read the front of “The Cannonball Adderley Quintet” album.
Tucked in a center column was a pristine copy of Joni Mitchell’s “Clouds” waiting to be found, the cover an image of a watercolor of the singer holding a red lily. A hodgepodge of cassettes encasing perhaps a mile of spooled tape was tossed in a white bin on the floor.
It took hours just to move the collection out of storage and into the teleconference center.
“Can you imagine how long it would take to have our staff go through it all and value it?” Schmidt asked. “It was either this or throw it in the dumpster.”
On one table, Don McLean gave a big thumbs up — his finger painted red, white and blue — on the front of his “American Pie.” It looked like Barbra Streisand was asking “What About Today?” with her lips slightly parted on an album’s cover. A couple of feet away, Johnny Mathis beamed on the front of his self-titled release.
The music of Bessie Smith was everywhere. Radio staff circulated rumors about Led Zeppelin being sprinkled here and there.
“There are definitely some gems in here,” Graham said. “They just need to be found.”
Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8139, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com
