I finally decided to check out UHF, a record store on Washington ave. in Royal Oak, Michigan. They had a pretty good selection with a mixture of new and used records. They also had a lot of free records near the front of the store. After looking through bins that featured Surf, Instrumental and various 50's and 60's lps, I made my way to the Jazz section at the rear of the store. Behind the Jazz section was a desk with a girl and a guy who worked at the store. The guy was looking at some lps. He was fat with salt and pepper hair. I asked him where Mickey Baker would be filed. His response was,
"Mickey Baker?" He said it very slowly and sounded it out in a way that seemed like he thought that I had just escaped from an insane asylum and was probably just making up silly names. I verified that, yes Mickey Baker was the artist I was asking about. He had already searched for and found him on Wikipedia. "It says here that he is a Jazz guitar player, so he would be in Jazz. I have never priced a record by him." He quoted some rather high completed Ebay auctions of Mickey's lps and then went on to tell me about supply and demand before returning to looking at lps.
I wouldn't expect my local florist. butcher or mechanic to know the name Mickey Baker, but ultra hip, fat assed salt and pepper haired record store guy? I began thinking of how much fun it would be to actually play out the part of the insane asylum escapee asking him about all sorts of silly names that of course he wouldn't know of. "Where would I find Guiseppe Bogdonovich?" I would explain that he was an albino multi-instrumentalist from Italy. "Do you have any Erastus H. Sipperley singles on the King label? He was a great sackbut player from Ohio". I would stop in every day for a week always wearing different outfits so he wouldn't recognize me. "Where would I find Lefty McPeterson? He played guitar laying down and was born in a circus tent just outside Glascow, Scotland. He was very influential for people like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Brian May. Wait a minute, you don't know who Brian May is?"
