You say you don’t believe time tunnels exist?
Try stepping through the faded door of Jerry’s Record Exchange, a cluttered shop on East Colfax Avenue.
Stuffed with 10,000 vintage vinyl albums, this Capitol Hill staple will transport you to the decade and genre of your choice. Guaranteed.
Bins are packed: Jazz pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines. Bluesman Muddy Waters. Guitar wizards from Duane Eddy to Jimi Hendrix. Banjo king Earl Scruggs. Comedian Lenny Bruce. Poet Allen Ginsberg reciting “Howl.”
All captured on wax.
For a certain type of musical purist, black vinyl remains the gold standard of sound.
“Analog recording still sounds better than digital,” said Stephen Bruner, the shop’s general manager. “It captures the full spectrum of sound in a way that CDs and iPods don’t. It’s the best way to capture the true sound of an instrument.”
At 55, Bruner has salt-and-pepper hair and a laid-back manner, except when it comes to shoplifters. The jazz section’s wall bears a scorching message he penned to the thief who pilfered some Lester Young albums.
Business at the 33-year-old store is especially brisk in summer, thanks in part to vinyl-smitten tourists who make pilgrimages to the shop.
“Record collecting has gotten big internationally,” Bruner said. “We get customers from the British Isles and Asia. A couple of weeks ago we had two guys visiting from São Paulo, Brazil.”
What makes the shop fun is the oddball way albums abut each other. A used record store is a Sargasso Sea of musical tastes. Everything winds up in the swirl.
At Jerry’s, avant-garde rocker Frank Zappa’s albums sit right across the aisle from Doris Day’s. On one memorable troll through the new-arrivals bin, I found James Brown’s “Motherlode” next to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s “This Is My Country: The World’s Great Songs of Patriotism and Brotherhood.” Priceless.
At lunchtime Tuesday, Mike Holt picked through the records, seeking vintage guitar instrumentals. He checked out a Ventures album but decided against it.
Then his eyes bugged out.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Dick Dale and His Del-Tones’ ‘Surfers’ Choice.’ Awesome.”
I got to thinking about the first album I ever listened to: Marty Robbins’ classic “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.” My dad bought it in 1960 soon after we got the RCA console, which for a while was the second-nicest piece of furniture in the house after the dining table.
The songs enthralled me, swell tales of cowboys getting shot, stampeded and strung up. So help me, one song was called “They’re Hanging Me Tonight.”
I walked to the store’s country section and pawed among the “R’s”. Then I saw it. A pink record sleeve with Robbins clad in gunfighter black, reaching for the .45 strapped to his hip. I slipped out the record and studied the classic red-and-black Columbia label.
Sure enough, the songs were all there: “Big Iron,” “Running Gun,” “Utah Carol,” “El Paso.”
I was 7 years old again, wearing out the hi-fi’s tonearm.
Lost in time, if only for a minute.
William Porter writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-1977 or wporter@denverpost.com.
