The Awesome and Unexpected Musical Gift My Mother Gave Me at 45 RPMs

It has lasted a lifetime

The one and only Chuck Berry (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

I don’t know how old I was when I discovered the case. I know I wasn’t nine yet, since it was well before I heard “Born to Run” the first time in the summer of ’75 and my world changed forever. What was in this case changed me too.

When I was growing up my mom and I lived with my grandparents. There was always music in the house, but it was either classic country (Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline) or Italian crooners (Sinatra, Dean Martin, Connie Francis). The little I knew about rock then came from snippets at friends’ houses. Then I found the case.

I call it a case; it was more like a photo album, but instead of pictures it contained 45s. Not bullets, kids; 45 rpm records. Singles. Round hardened wax with a groove you put a needle on that played music (my kids didn’t believe me the first time I explained how that worked). Inside that case/album was the soundtrack of my mother’s youth, a youth I had no clue existed.

I hauled the case over to our giant console TV with the stereo on one end and the turntable on the other and put on the first record I saw, Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”