An advance on news that’ll be in Thursday’s paper.
Time to head to Fayetteville, record geeks. UA English professor Debra Rae Cohen, a former music critic for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, recently sold as many as two thousand records to Spun Records. Many, Spun owner Barry Lewis tells me, were owned by her ex-husband, the late music-critic Robert Palmer. A Little Rock native, Palmer was The New York Times first full-time rock writer and, later, the paper’s chief pop music critic. He played in the pysch-folk band the Insect Trust, wrote the seminal genre study “Deep Blues” and produced the first Junior Kimbrough album.
Lewis said he still has several boxes still left to sort, but early finds include scores of demos and test pressings. Spun Records, 48 E. Township Street in Fayetteville, 479-251-8886.
You can get a sense of some of the early stuff Lewis has culled through on his eBay listing. Demos and test pressing from the likes of Bowie and Woody Guthrie and the Lester Bangs 45 pictured above.