In a senseless act, legendary saxophonist King Curtis, born Curtis Ousley, is stabbed to death in front of his New York City brownstone on Friday August 13, 1971, during one of New York City’s nastiest heat waves.  King Curtis was carrying an air conditioner into his apartment at 50 West 86th St. when he got into a scuffle with a group of men standing on the stoop doing drugs. He asked them to move, but during the subsequent argument one of them, Juan Montanez, pulled out a six-inch dagger and stabbed Curtis in the heart.

The attack was witnessed by Aretha Franklin and Sam Moore who were meeting Curtis to discuss a recording session he was to produce. Curtis was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, but was dead on arrival. Four days later the funeral was held, Jesse Jackson performed the service. Curtis' band, The Kingpins, played an hour long version of 'Soul Serenade' and Aretha sang the spiritual 'Never Grow Old.' Here are some of the hits he played sax on:

Hang up My Rock and Roll Shoes - CHUCK WILLIS - (highest charting) #24
The Stroll - DIAMONDS - #4-
What Am I Living For - CHUCK WILLIS - #9
Yakety Yak - COASTERS - #1
Along Came Jones - COASTERS - #9
Charlie Brown - COASTERS - #2
I Cried a Tear - LAVERN BAKER - #6
Little Egypt - COASTERS - #23
Tossin’ and Turnin’ - BOBBY LEWIS - #1
Peppermint twist - JOEY DEE  - #1
Respect - ARETHA FRANKLIN - #1
I Heard It Through The Grapevine - GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS - #2

Some of King Curtis’s solo singles:

Soul Twist - #17
Memphis Soul Stew - #33
Ode to Billy Joe - #28

But one great earth shaking event did happen on this day, though it would go unnoticed for years and years, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton records the original version of  "Hound Dog" in 1952.

Charles Saatchi, with his brother, founded the international advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, but Charles' greater fame is as an art collector who has dominated the contemporary art market in Britain since the early 1980s. In fact, the the 1999 retrospective, “Young British Artists: The Saatchi Decade,” uses his name to define an entire contemporary art scene. Yeah, it would be cool to convince him to “invest” in our arty 7 inch record boxes and help us poor old ‘45 Room’ employees with our kid’s college funds, but word on the boulevard is he’s a recluse. In my book that’s just a fancy word for record geek. And that is a compliment.

Here we are, once again with more examples of the fine artwork rendered on the sides of our used 7 inch record boxes. Some of these formerly plain/primitive white boxes are on the Amoeba Hollywood floor available for your perusal; others are, for now, hidden away in what we call The 45 Room, or to those with less enthusiasm for the little record with the big hole 'that used 7 inch pricing room.'

However, romantics everywhere simply whisper in hushed tones: “vinyl Shangri-la!”

The question I’m often asked: “Hey, Whitmore, if the 45 room is actually a Shangri-la, a heaven on earth so to speak, is there an afterlife, like a 7 inch heaven? And if there is a 7 inch heaven, is there a 7 inch god?”

I always answer with a glint in my eye and a friendly smile on my face, “You know, I’m not sure, but I’d like to think there is one somewhere out there in the dark.”

Hopefully you’ll enjoy this further examination of Amoeba’s own home grown outsider art. And just like there is always another used gem of a record coming on down the pike, there’s always some new artwork gunning its engine, ready to lay some rubber down in Amoeba Hollywood.

The great Amoeba Hollywood enigma that is  “The 45 Room.”  Some simply refer to this veiled   room as the “used 7 inch pricing room,” but for others:
“Vinyl Shangri-la.”

Does it really exist, and if so, where? What goes on in there? Who are they?

Questions abound yet few answers come into the light under ampoule fluorescente compacte.

Enquiries try to penetrate this mysterious place of secret societies revolving/evolving from a tiny room, hidden from public view, but to no avail.

There are so many myths. Startling tales and conspiracy theories abound, sounding not unlike the outlandish yarns associated with Area 51, Skull and Bones, the Bohemian Club or the Maury/Vashon Island incident of 1947 (look that puppy up!!) ….

One 45 room rumor has a ceremony involving a stack of power-pop 45’s sacrificed at the feet of a giant forty-foot statue of Murry Wilson (aka Daddy Beach Boys). Can this be true?

Well, let’s look inside this long misunderstood milieu (a den of vinyl antiquity, if you please) and analyze The 45 Room culture. Western anthropologists argue culture is “human nature” and that all people, even record store employees, have a capacity to classify experiences and encode classifications symbolically. Let’s start with an appreciation of their art and how The 45 Room decorates primitive white cardboard boxes, used to display 7 inch records, in an attempt to define a multitude of music genres’ hysteron proteron.

Yesterday, August 4, Lee Hazlewood passed away from renal cancer at the age of 78 in his home in Las Vegas. Born Barton Lee Hazlewood in Mannford, Oklahoma in 1929, he was a music legend and viewed as one of the more iconoclastic figures of 20th-century pop. Just his baritone voice alone made him sound like a cantankerous, hard living son of a bitch. I suspect he was.

Hazlewood was mostly known for his work from the 1950s through the 1970s, he composed such masterpieces as “These Boots Are Made For Walking,”  “Some Velvet Morning,”  “Sand,”  “The Fool,”  “Summer Wine,”  “Houston” and “Trouble Is A Lonesome Town.” He built a reputation as a solo artist, producer, and label owner. In the 1950s he produced Duane Eddy developing the whole ‘twangy’ guitar sound. The single “Rebel Rouser,” co-written by both Eddy and Hazlewood, became a huge international hit in 1958.  As far as being in the public eye, 1965 was his breakthrough year when he teamed up with Nancy Sinatra for a string of hit singles and an album “Nancy and Lee.”  A few years later his own LHI label, released what is widely considered the first country-rock record, the International Submarine Band featuring Gram Parsons. Over the next couple of decades he produced a series of beautifully odd solo albums that were mostly unheard of in America until Sonic Youth reissued them in the 1990s. His final release, “Cake Or Death” (Ever), was released earlier this year.