With apologies to Bull Moose Jackson, this month we’re taking a dive into the vaults (or more on point, the IKEA KALLAX shelves) while Rudy takes out his Big Ten Inch…Records.
Today’s vinyl releases are typically the 12-inch LPs we’ve purchased for decades, with some 7-inch singles strewn into the mix. 10-inch records for the past 40 or so years were more of a novelty than anything else, but early in the history of long-playing records, LPs were primarily 10 inches until the larger 12-inch LPs became available a few years later.
Cherry picking some from my collection, the selections below are roughly from three eras. The first are recent reissues, which are reproductions of the 10-inch LPs as they were originally released. The second group are from the days of new wave, punk, and other rock/pop music that was outside the mainstream, often packaged in unique formats to grab the attention of record buyers. The third group are from those early days of 10-inch LPs which, in many cases, held four songs per side. And as a bonus, the final item in this list is not even on vinyl! (Someone find me a cactus needle…)
Recent 10-Inch Grooves
The Cal Tjader Trio (self-titled, Fantasy F 3-9)
This reissue is a 10 inch replica of Cal Tjader’s first album release on Fantasy Records. This reissue sounds quite good but the translucent orange vinyl can be a little noisy in spots. Being Tjader’s record debut for Fantasy under his own name, we hear him alternating between vibraphone, drums, and bongos, and he is already locking into the Latin jazz style he would begin making famous in just a couple years’ time. These songs were recorded on two dates in 1951 – the four songs on Side A of the reissue feature Vince Guaraldi on piano. Songs on this record were originally released on 78 RPM shellac and green vinyl 45 RPM singles on Fantasy’s Galaxy sub-label in 1952, and the 10-inch LPs in 1953 were released on black, red, green, and blue vinyl.
Fans of digital releases should note that this 10-incher appears on the Extremes CD, which places Tjader’s first and last Fantasy recordings (Breathe Easy) on the disc as a two-fer.
Frank Sinatra: Songs for Young Lovers (Capitol Records 602547095442)
Capitol Records reissued this Frank Sinatra label debut album as a 10-inch LP in 2015, returning it to its originally released format. This reissue sounds fairly good compared to other versions I’ve heard, although it did take me two copies to get one that wasn’t pressed on noisy vinyl. “My Funny Valentine,” “A Foggy Day,” “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Violets for Your Furs” are among the songs on this 10-incher.
1980s and 1990s 10-Inch Grooves
Oingo Boingo EP (I.R.S. Records SP-70400)
Before Oingo Boingo’s album debut Only a Lad on A&M, I.R.S. Records released this four-song EP in 1980. They had previously recorded an album for Richard Eflman’s film production Forbidden Zone, billed as the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, led by Richard’s brother Danny Elfman. (This early lineup made an appearance on The Gong Show as a musical/theatrical act.) More of a cult act (especially in Los Angeles), they didn’t break into the charts like their contemporaries. But their songs were quirky, fun, and often tweaked various groups in society…and how many new wave bands have you ever heard with a horn section? Elfman usually wrote most of the band’s material, but this EP includes their offbeat cover of Willie Dixon’s “Violent Love.” “Only a Lad” and “Ain’t This the Life” are two essential early Oingo Boingo cuts here.
Klark Kent EP (Kryptone/I.R.S. Records SP 70600)
Only Stewart Copeland knew the true identity of the mysterious Klark Kent, who released this 10-inch on Kryptone Records in 1980, an imprint on Miles Copeland’s I.R.S. label.
My copy of this record is a silver/maroon label 10-inch reissue in an oddly-glued 12-inch jacket. The original release was a 10-inch record pressed on green transparent vinyl with the white/rainbow label, in a 12-inch die-cut jacket; I still have one of these on my wish list.
As we all knew, Klark Kent was a pseudonym for Stewart Copeland, who used the name to release songs outside of The Police. The occasionally quirky or eccentric lyrics make this entertaining, and the sound is familiar to those who owned the first two Police albums. Other than this 8-song EP, none of his other tracks were collected in one place until the 1995 CD Kollected Works and, in 2023, a self-titled 2-LP Klark Kent compilation was released.
The Continentals: Fizz! Pop! Modern Rock (Epic Nu Disk 3E 36452)
Epic Records’ Nu Disk series was a short-lived run of 10-inch records of punk/power pop/new wave-leaning music, featuring such artists as Cheap Trick, The Clash, Gary Glitter, Shakin’ Stevens, and a few others. The Continentals were a power pop band whose only major label release was this four-song EP.
How about albums reissued as a set of two 10-inch LPs? A&M released both Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! and the second Police album Reggatta de Blanc in the 2-record, 10-inch format. Bonus points if your copy of the 10-inch Look Sharp! still includes the lapel button! These releases also had custom labels.
Blue Flame Ford: Truly (Capitol Records Y 7243 8 58375)
And from the dollar bin, a 10-inch EP by the post-grunge band Truly, which features founding members of Soundgarden and Screaming Trees. I can’t remember a single note of this record – did I ever play it? But it was a 10-incher, and on an unusual blue/yellow pressing…I couldn’t just leave it there! (If you zoom in, the price tag is from the late, great record store Car City Classics. They used to price vinyl to where the sales tax would round the sale up to an even number. 94 cents plus our 6% sales tax worked out to a dollar. This was a dangerous store to work a half mile away from!)
Early 10-inch Grooves
Shorty Rogers: Cool and Crazy (RCA Victor LPM-3138)
My only regret is that my copy of this record is a little worse for wear. Otherwise, being a fan of West Coast jazz, I was seeking out RCA records by Shorty Rogers and learned this 1953 LP was one of his earliest titles for the label. RCA also released this as a 2-disc 45 RPM EP set, hedging their bets on which would be the more popular format.
Thankfully these eight tracks have appeared on various CDs, so I can at least hear them without a sea of noise.
Moondog: Moondog and His Friends (Epic LG 1002)
This 1953 record is a good, if expensive, place to start exploring Moondog’s music. Sadly, the digital versions out there are digitized from this old record as well, and they do not sound good. All the odd time signatures, the musical rounds, two suites for strings on the B-side, the quirky lyrics, and his hand-built instruments are featured on this record. I got this nearly 25 years ago, finding it on eBay for between $70 – $80 when the going price was usually $150. And this was a really nice, clean copy. I grew up listening to this, via my mother’s rather abused copy serving that purpose for decades.
Perez Prado: El Rey del Mambo (RCA Victor MKL-3029, Mexico)
Mom was the Spanish aficionado in the house, and she either found this record on a trip to Mexico (more likely), or found an adventurous store locally that would have sold imports like this one. While we had Prado’s Mambo Mania on LP (which had the smash hit “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”), this one really struck a nerve with me, as (unknown to me at the time) these were all the early, original versions of Prado’s songs. And yes, “Mambo #5” is the same song that Lou Bega sampled, albeit from the rearranged version found on Big Hits by Prado. I only have this ancient copy; replacing it with a clean one could be a bit pricey. But I did buy a set of Prado CDs on the label Tumbao Cuban Classics which has all of these songs, and dozens more, from those early years.
Shellac 10-inch Grooves
Richard Maltby and Orchestra: “St. Louis Blues Mambo” b/w “Beloved, Be True” (“X” Records X-0042)
This is one of the few dozen 78s we had in the house. These were records my dad purchased in the 1940s and early 1950s. This record is musically nothing all that noteworthy, other than being a typical cash-in on the mambo craze back in the mid 1950s. But I still have fond memories of playing it and yeah, it’s catchy!
I’ll feature more 78s in a future article but for now, this one has been in the back of my mind for a while as I’ve been sorting through boxes of records in storage.
“X” was a short-lived label owned by RCA, founded in 1953. When RCA announced the yet-to-be-named new label, Billboard used the name “X” and the name stuck. But not for long. In 1956, RCA adopted the name Vik for the label, and it would last two more years before it flamed out, its artists either leaving for other labels or transferring their contracts to RCA Victor.
A quote from Wikipedia:
“Journalist and executive Bob Rolontz, who had been responsible for another RCA Victor subsidiary, Groove Records, and was then put in charge of Vik, later said: "The Vik label was probably the worst collection of talent in the world... There was no way we could pull Vik out of that hole. And after about a year, the RCA people decided to discontinue Vik."
78 RPM shellac records were most commonly available as 10-inch discs, although 12-inch was a popular size for “extended” material like classical music and spoken word recordings. I remember growing up around both sizes. My grandmother, in fact, had hundreds of 10- and 12-inch 78s, most of them in albums in their front closet, as she was a big fan of classical music. Imagine how tedious it would be to play through an entire symphony on records that at most could hold about five minutes per side! 10-inch 78s could manage about 3½ minutes per side.
That’s a wrap on this month’s 10-inch edition of The Vinyl Beat. We’ll be back to a normal size next month!
Header image: pictured at top are a handful of 10-inch records of Latin American music that my mother owned. Like the Perez Prado 10-incher, she may have gotten these in Mexico, or from a local music store that would have stocked this music. I haven’t yet gotten a chance to clean them up and listen to what’s on them.
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