Crate Diggers: Stefan Scott of Stoodio 53
“There was always music around me growing up, and it was on the folkier end of things. There was some ‘60s pop and some Beatles but there was a lot of folk music in the house. I think that, to a certain extent, folk music is soul music in that it really is tapping into something that is common and deeply felt. Soul draws on folk music itself, it draws on the blues, on country and particularly on the gospel end of things to give it its sound. It always feels honest; it feels more entrenched than other things. There’s something to be said about music being appropriate for a time and a place.”
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“Now I mostly stick to late-‘50s R&B, soul, a little funk and some rocksteady ska from the ‘60s. I keep mostly that era to kind of simplify my own life. I did a night at the Independent for a while called “Pow,” which was essentially a mod night. I’d play some ‘60s soul and some pop from Don Covay and Otis Redding to The Rascals and early Bowie. I’d also do some glam and pub rock and punk, and then the mod revival and the two-tone mod revival thing.”
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Johnny Cliff – The Harder They Come
“My all time favorite record ever is the Harder They Come movie soundtrack, which is something my parents had growing up—the movie was constantly playing in Cambridge. I remember playing the record on my parents’ stereo, my brother and I reenacting elements of the movie. It really got a lot of America more familiar with reggae in the very early ‘70s. It’s just full of great stuff—Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, the Maytals. “
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“I have two copies here, I’ve got another framed one in the house. It was the kind of thing where I’d talk about it with a friend and then give it away. I’ve probably given away thousands of dollars of records to friends just because I’ll have a duplicate. You can make money from selling records, but it’s more fun to make it a shared experience. It’s about exposing something to everyone that you enjoy, that theoretically everyone should enjoy.”
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The Joytones – Jimbo-Jango
“I had a pile of records that’s was essentially stuff I really wasn’t sure of, and it got stacked in the corner. I was going through the pile to get rid of things, and I gave away probably about 150 records. I checked it out this record—by the Joytones, a doo-wop band—and found that it’s worth a considerable amount of money.”
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Andre Williams – Soul Groove
“Andre Williams’ stuff is pretty rare; he’s got all kinds of silly R&B and funky tracks. It’s the kind of record that you don’t expect to find, and then you find it at a flea market in great shape. It appreciate it when I don’t have to go out and spend a million dollars on a record; I think the most I’ve ever spent on a record is twenty bucks.”
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“One of those cool things about records is that they can sit in someone’s basement and have their own little story. A lot of times you’ll see someone’s name and address on various records. It makes you think about some woman in Methuen or some other part of the country going out and buying the record. That’s something the cool thing about collecting—there’s some connection to history.”
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The Trojans – ‘Ala-Ska
“This is something I got on honeymoon. The Trojans are a post two-tone, ‘80s ska band. A guy from this record is a big ‘60s soul reggae producer in Europe now—it’s silly and kind of poppy.”
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Blowfly – Blowfly on TV
“Blowfly on TV is a raunchy record. It played off the idea that a lot of black music was considered race music. It wasn’t until the soul thing exploded after rock and roll that you had the gradual acceptance. There was a subset of really dirty music that was going around the circuit. Blowfly is still around today. This is an example of a record that’s worth a pretty decent amount of money, and I found it in the trash on Beacon Street. A lot of it is just silly back and forth with the audience, and dirty covers of everything from Sesame Street to Batman to Tom Jones.”
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“There has to be a payoff where you’re going to be able to go out and be willing to play it out in public. I’ve had records broken, beer spilled on them and stuff. I think it’s easy to get a little more uptight when it becomes a holy relic or something. It should be something you can engage in with an audience, even if it’s just with yourself.”
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Don Covay and the Goodtimers – Mercy, Mercy
“The Rolling Stones based a lot of their music off Don Covay and his band the Goodtimers. This was their big hit, Mercy Mercy, and the guitarist was Jimmy Hendrix before he was anybody.”
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Al Erik – Put Your Mini Skirt On
“This is by Al Erik, a French a singer, and there’s not a lot known about him. It was sort of a novelty record when I found it, and it’s basically like French-pop-soul. It’s kind of in the Marvelous label style, part of the mini skirt craze.“
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Ben Branch & the Operation Breadbasket Orchestra & Choir – The Last Request
“This is a timely record I play every year, again it’s one of my parents’ albums. It was done by MLK’s go-to band for services as he was going around giving speeches and sermons and so forth. This album was released right after he was killed. It’s a really good mellow, building, soulful record—it’s essentially hymns. I like to play it every year on his anniversary; I try to always have something a little more spiritual thrown in for that time.”
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“There was always music around me growing up, and it was on the folkier end of things. There was some ‘60s pop and some Beatles but there was a lot of folk music in the house. I think that, to a certain extent, folk music is soul music in that it really is tapping into something that is common and deeply felt. Soul draws on folk music itself, it draws on the blues, on country and particularly on the gospel end of things to give it its sound. It always feels honest; it feels more entrenched than other things. There’s something to be said about music being appropriate for a time and a place.”
Photo by Sara Skolnick
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