A New Life for Old Records

Thrift store record albums love to be repurposed. Trust me on this.

Of course, the best way to repurpose an old record is to find a turntable and play it again. Anytime I play a record for the first time, I wonder how long it’s been since this record has spun on a turntable. I’d imagine in many cases, we’re talking decades.

But there are other ways to repurpose records as well. My favorite way to do this is to turn their sleeves into notebook covers. Here is one iconic example:

Whipped Cream and Other Delights!

I want to stress that I am not the originator of the album cover notebook idea; I do not know who first thought of this. I do know that several years ago, Donna and I walked into a gift shop at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History and found an entire revolving display of notebooks made out of record covers. We loved them immediately and walked out with three of them: an old easy listening record, Loverboy’s Get Lucky, and David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘Em and Smile.

Fast forward to late last year: my mom told me that she and my sister Lisa were making calendars to give to people who have generously supported our American Cancer Society Relay for Life team over the years. Suddenly, a creative path was made clear to me. I surfed the ’Net for instructions and within a week after the conversation with Mom, I was making album cover notebooks. Now, in something I never would have predicted I’d do, I’ve got an Etsy shop (www.etsy.com/shop/JnCsDad217?ref=pr_shop) where all of the notebooks seen in this column are available for sale.

The pursuit of potential notebook covers sent Donna and me on a tour of our local thrift shops just after New Year’s and has rekindled what was already a strong interest in thrift shopping. It’s particularly great to be able to rescue old album covers that no longer contain a record–these would surely languish on thrift shop floors, and maybe someday in landfills, for years.

To return to my theme of last week, I find each aspect of this new hobby of mine to be a lot of fun. I obviously like visiting thrift shops, near and far, in search of cool records. But I also enjoy the process of putting the notebooks together, in part because it involves trying to figure out which section of each cover (front and back) would make for the snazziest-looking note book cover. It also requires me to work with my hands, which isn’t something I do so much in my other creative endeavors. I also find assembling the notebooks to be a relaxing experience, my crafty equivalent to listening to a really great Henry Mancini album (more on ”Hank” next week, by the way).

Something else that I like about this project is being able to match up album cover notebooks for specific uses. For example, here are two notebooks that would make great dream journals:

Dream Time--Wayne King and His Orchestra

Dreamland Special--Vaughn Monroe and His Orchestra

There are also many albums that would lend themselves nicely to travel journals/scrapbooks:

Love from London--101 Strings

Music from Around the World

Finally, here is one that would be perfect for the first draft of that romance novel you’ve been dying to write:

Music for Two People Alone-Melachrino Orchestra

These are just a few ideas. Decades worth of notebook-crafting inspiration can be found at your local thrift shop. I welcome you to visit my Etsy shop, but I’ll be happy as well if you decide to investigate tracking down records and creating your own notebooks. After all, it’s a big world with lots of thrift shops and I can’t rescue every cool album cover that’s out there!

Here’s a quick playlist of tunes from the albums shown above. Most suitable for travel, dreaming and romance, or combination thereof. But probably best to not listen to this mix while driving, as even the Herb Alpert tunes might not be able to counteract the snoozy vibe of most of the rest of the tunes:

“A Taste of Honey”-Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass

“Aloha Oe”-Alfred Newman and His Orchestra with the Ken Darby Singers

“Drifting and Dreaming”-Vaughn Monroe and His Orchestra

“Two Sleepy People”-The Melachrino Orchestra

“Dreamy Melody”-Wayne King and His Orchestra

“A Foggy Day in London”-101 Strings

“Love Potion No. 9″-Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass

“Hold ‘em Joe”-Beacham Coakley’s Emerald Beach Hotel Orchestra, featuring Vincent Martin

“Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland”-Vaughn Monroe and His Orchestra

“Embraceable You”-Melachrino Orchestra

“Star Dust”-Wayne King and His Orchestra

“Auld Lang Syne”-101 Strings

Rich Wilhelm is a writer/editor, as well as an amateur photographer/videographer and a lifelong record collector. Rich is a veteran blogger whose thoughts on a wide variety of topics can be found at The Dichotomy of the Dog (http://marimbadog.livejournal.com), and he is the author of the forthcoming Surreal Record Hop—Seven Years as a Cool and Strange Music Correspondent. Rich lives with his wife Donna, his sons Jimmy and Chris, and their dog Jolie, in Phoenixville, Pa.