The Rarest Vintage Vinyl LP Records You've Never Seen

Vinyl long playing records have long been serving up something very, very, special.

This Big Salami Johnson release, Ham in the Can, features classic neo-modern-post-classic gumshoe-novel style graphics by the renowned supermarket flyer artist Sylvester 'Sketch' McDoodle.

And the resurgence of interest in vinyl in today's always-on right now digital age testifies to this. People relate to the imperfection of them, I suppose, as an antidote to the auto-tuned sterility of modern recordings.

Whether it's the welcoming low pitched rumble when the needle hits the groove, the occasional pop of dust or click of a scratch, listening to the warm sounds of music coming from vinyl is akin to staring into the flickering random flames of the tribal fire.

With James Brown dancing around it, I suppose, if you are extremely lucky.
Unlike digital recordings in today's fast cut short attention span world, music on long playing records were consumed, quite often, in concentrated 20 minute chunks - roughly the length of a side.

You'd carefully slip the disc out of its paper cover, put it on the turntable, spin it up, and then grab the LP cover and head back to the couch, armchair, or maybe the floor.

Listening to the music, you'd stare at the album cover, trying to glean every bit of meaning that you could from the artwork, and the lyrics or liner notes. There was no other way to get anything more information out of the experience, short of a few music magazines, and books of course. There was no internet to look up what other albums the side musicians played on, or maybe even what the singer or sax player looked like.

The classic Royal Flusher Records logo always meant the best in slap-dash quality.

It was magic then and it's magic now, and it's no wonder that people are building new collections of old vinyl, searching for those gems, maybe paying quite a premium for rare disks, those from a production run with some aberration or mistake on the cover, or more likely, records that had very limited distribution, in spite of the incredible flash bang impact of the music hidden on those sultry hip-wagging grooves.

No serious vinyl collection will ever be complete without some of these stand-out hand-crafted releases from the boutique label Royal Flusher Records. If you should be so lucky as to come across one of these rareties in the local junk store or in a barn full of vintage cars that haven't seen the light of day since 1957... grab them at any cost.

"How we miss Lonnie and his incredible 'blow-out-the-spit-valve' energy. Sometimes he would play so hard that his ears would puff out away from his head like big pink dirigibles. He had class... he had chops... and he had balls. There was nobody cooler than Lonnie Lo - why, sometimes, he'd play FACING the audience instead of blowing into the back of the stage or into the floor, which was the custom by all trumpet players at the time." - Royal Flusher on Lonnie Lo's seminal Royal Flusher Records release, Lo Blows.

"Taco Bueno put out a couple of incredible fusion albums with us. Exactly what styles Taco's record was a fusion of, I never quite figured out, but it sounded pretty gear to me. The Pepperettes were a delight to have around the studio - you never knew what crazy demand they'd come up with next - like matching panties in four different pastel colors. When Hot Groovy Jalapeno Pants comes on, I crank it up!" - Royal Flusher

It wasn't long, but it was fun, and as Dick Waxz used to say, "You gets what you can stan'".

"...a great disc we put out on Royal Flusher Records in the 60s by the incredible Dick Waxz on sax. He'd paired up with Raoul Alberta, the innovative Brasilian toy piano player. Alberta had settled in Calgary and fallen in love with its gentle sophistication, giving up his native last name of Silva and adopting the name of the province that had swept him and his tiny piano off their respective feet. 

Putting Waxz on sax in the studio with Alberta on toy piano was like mixing oil and water and getting mixed oil and water - and we called the smoky, sultry tinkling that resulted Nada Bowla. 

When we released it, this iconic album (which also featured the vocal stylings of Flavio 'Lunchbox' Cajo de Almuerzo on its signature track "The Girlfriends in Impalas") kicked off the legendary Nada Bowla musical style that reigned the world's airwaves for those 9 incredible days in 1961." - Royal Flusher.

Flusher himself put out an LP of deep, dark, cloying, smoky, sultry, torch songs which featured his now standard, classic, deep, dark, cloying, but only somewhat sultry torch song "May the Chips Fall Where They May", and the lesser known but equally vocal "When You Do the Nada Bowla (Does Your Trick Knee Fall for Me?)".

I'm not sure why Big 'Salami' Johnson gets two nicknames. You could call him Big. Or you could call him 'Salami'. Or you could call him Big 'Salami'. But you dasn't has to call him Johnson. - Royal Flusher

The once washed-up Big 'Salami' Johnson was thrust back into the spotlight with this release of cover to cover non-stop jams, Ham in the Can.

"...one of our best-selling blues releases from the 50s on Royal Flusher Records -  Ham in the Can by the amazing, tubular, Big 'Salami' Johnson. The boogie shuffle sounds of Call Me Big Salami floated up from the misty delta, and crackled out of the speakers, filling my room...

The chorus came around and I sang along, "Well, you can call me Big 'Salami' - I'll uncoil a round! Call me Big 'Salami' - I'm ninety-niiiiine cents a pound!" - Royal Flusher