[78-L] Jackson death

soundthink at aol.com soundthink at aol.com
Thu Jun 25 16:09:28 PDT 2009


I was working at KLOS, the number one radio station in town the day Elvis died. I was running the board for J.J. Jackson, the DJ on the air at the time. All of a sudden, J.J. yelled over the talkback, "Elvis died. GET ME AN ELVIS RECORD." I ran down the hall to the library, and found no Elvis record at all. Not even on a compilation. No reissues, Nothing. The #1 station in town. After my shift was over, I drove down to the Tower Records on Sunset and the bins had been decimated. Nothing left. But this is crazy.

I work for Alfred Publishing and we own the print rights to Michael Jackson's songbooks. Sales have been sluggish of late, but we're preparing to reprint everything because the tidal wave will hit any moment.

Guess this is turning out to be Jackson's best career move in years.

Cary Ginell


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com>
To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Thu, Jun 25, 2009 4:01 pm
Subject: Re: [78-L] Jackson death





-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [78-L] Jackson death
From: soundthink at aol.com
Date: Thu, June 25, 2009 6:39 pm
To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com

If you want to see morbid frenzy, check out the Michael Jackson auction
items on eBay. It's like 1977 all over again, when Elvis died.
Everything with his name on it is selling. Crazy, nutty, insane prices. 

Cary Ginell

Leah had just asked me if this would boost the sales of his records when
your posting came in.  The morning after Elvis died (if he really died)
I went down to Rose Records in Chicago and saw a feeding frenzy.  There
was one woman in particular holding at least 35 LPs and pulling out
more.  After she paid over $150, a Chicago Tribune reporter interviewed
her.  After that I went up to the reporter and explained that these
people thought that his records would no longer be available, but that
it would be the exact opposite, that RCA would reissue the LPs they had
already deleted.  And they did, but then re-deleted them and put most of
the stuff onto Camden.  Then I went up to Sounds Good Records where Rich
Markow worked.  A delivery had just come in, and there was a box or two
of the Moody Blue LP -- in BLACK pressings.  RCA had originally
announced that the blue pressings were a limited edition, and the fact
that I saw boxes delivered the morning after he died with black
pressings that had been manufactured before his death proved that the
legend that the black pressings were RCA's mourning tribute was not
true.  What RCA did was resume pressing blue copies.  Thus the black
ones are the rare ones.  No, I did not get a black pressing when they
were sitting in front of me in quantity, I then wanted a blue one, not
knowing that the blue ones would be pressed again.  I did finally get a
mint black copy at the Lexington flea market for $5 a few years ago.  

Mike (no, i don't have a copy of thriller) Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  
(but I do have a copy of Weird Al's "Worse" to place next to a copy of
"Bad")

"The Insider" just had a promo and opened th
e show with "Is Michael
Jackson dead?"  The show is fed in the early afternoon, which was before
there was news, so this would have been a scoop if he was alive now and
died later.


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