{"id":836,"date":"2010-08-23T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/onlyyork\/2010\/08\/23\/when-vinyl-was-king-rememberin\/"},"modified":"2010-08-23T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T12:00:00","slug":"when-vinyl-was-king-rememberin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/onlyyork\/when-vinyl-was-king-rememberin\/","title":{"rendered":"When vinyl was king: Remembering Record Club of America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Note from Joan: My wonderful my husband, who we all know <a href=\"\/onlyyork\/2010\/01\/crazy-things-the-conciliootto\/\">loves books<\/a> <a href=\"\/onlyyork\/2010\/07\/how-to-tell-ants-from-termites\/\">and ephemera<\/a>, found something cool and, rather than me stealing it to write about, I asked him to expound. Enjoy!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I stumbled across a neat piece of ephemera earlier this summer inside on an old book &#8212; a four-page advertisement\/catalog for <strong>Record Club of America<\/strong> from the early 1970s.<\/p>\n<p>Record Club of America was based in Manchester Township. And, in fact, the building is still sitting there, unused and possibly full of old vinyl albums.<\/p>\n<p>The 1970s advertisement features hip albums of the time, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Don_McLean\">Don McLean&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_Pie_(album)\">American Pie<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sonny_%26_Cher\">Sonny &amp; Cher&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/All_I_Ever_Need_Is_You_(album)\">All I Ever Need Is You<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/David_Cassidy\">David Cassidy&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cherish_(album)\">Cherish<\/a>&#8221; (fess up if you were &#8212; or still are &#8212; in love with David Cassidy)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_5th_Dimension\">The 5th Dimension&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reflections_(The_5th_Dimension_album)\">Reflections<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neil_Diamond\">Neil Diamond&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tap_Root_Manuscript\">Tap Root Manuscript<\/a>&#8220;<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mountain_(band)\">Mountain&#8217;s<\/a> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flowers_of_Evil_(album)\">Flowers of Evil<\/a>&#8221; <\/li>\n<li>And many more&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI&#8217;m no expert on the history of Record Club of America, but I&#8217;m sure there are plenty of former employees (and sons and daughters of former employees) out there who can pass along history and stories about this notable York County business.<\/p>\n<p>A few more tidbits:<\/p>\n<p>1. According to the advertisement, Record Club of America was &#8220;a record and tape club with no &#8216;obligations&#8217; &#8212; only benefits! &#8230; Ordinary record and tape clubs make you choose from a few labels &#8212; usually their own! They make you buy up to 12 records or tapes a year &#8212; usually at list price &#8212; to fulfill your obligation. &#8230; We&#8217;re the largest all-label record and tape club in the world. &#8230; Discounts are GUARANTEED AS HIGH AS 79% OFF! &#8230; You get best sellers for as low at 99 cents.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>2. The music website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bsnpubs.com\/\">Both Sides Now Publications<\/a> featured an interesting discussion of Record Club of America in its <a href=\"http:\/\/bsnpubs.websitetoolbox.com\/post?id=87267\">forums<\/a> a few years ago. A poster named FredPovey wrote, in part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Record Club of America was based in York, Pa., and operated from the late &#8217;60s to mid &#8217;70s. It was basically a discount mail-order record retailer &#8212; it wasn&#8217;t affiliated with any label, but offered everything that was in the (late, lamented) Schwann Record Catalog. If you &#8220;joined,&#8221; you got circulars in the mail every few weeks, but there were no monthly selections or cards to send back.<\/p>\n<p>Through the end of the &#8217;60s they were great. Albums that listed for $4.98 usually sold for $2.99 and often for $2.49 or even $1.99. You&#8217;d sometimes see prices like that on a few sale items at Sears or Woolworth&#8217;s, but this was on a much broader range of albums. The shipping and handling fees were very cheap, especially compared to the regular record clubs. At first, these were the exact same pressings you&#8217;d find in record stores.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;Manufactured by Record Club of America&#8221; apparently is what led to their downfall. After achieving a certain amount of success, the company started cutting deals with the big labels to buy these custom pressings so they could get better wholesale prices. The &#8220;Manufactured by &#8230;&#8221; indicated that the records weren&#8217;t returnable to the record label, which lowered the label&#8217;s cost (in those days, regular pressings were 100% returnable if they didn&#8217;t sell &#8212; big cost to the label). They&#8217;d also forgo the shrink wrap and maybe use cheaper vinyl to shave the cost some more. But, if the records didn&#8217;t sell, Record Club of America was stuck with them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s plenty more discussion about Record Club of America in that <a href=\"http:\/\/bsnpubs.websitetoolbox.com\/post?id=87267\">forum<\/a>, if you want to go check it out. (Of course, don&#8217;t take everything on there as 100 percent verified or reliable.)<\/p>\n<p>Be sure to post your memories and thoughts about RCA in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note from Joan: My wonderful my husband, who we all know loves books and ephemera, found something cool and, rather than me stealing it to write about, I asked him to expound. Enjoy! I stumbled across a neat piece of ephemera earlier this summer inside on an old book &#8212;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-memories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>When vinyl was king: Remembering Record Club of America - Only in York County<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/yorkblog.com\/onlyyork\/when-vinyl-was-king-rememberin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When vinyl was king: Remembering Record Club of America - Only in York County\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Note from Joan: My wonderful my husband, who we all know loves books and ephemera, found something cool and, rather than me stealing it to write about, I asked him to expound. 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