The Collectors

How many records are enough? These people probably don’t know | Photos by Jay Paul

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Unheard Of

After accumulating some 6,000 records, this collector seeks new sounds  

When you’re a record collector and you share a home with a person who isn’t, it’s important that everyone knows their place — especially the records. For Jermain “JayQuan” Hartsfield, “it’s a very contained thing,” he says of the part of his Chesterfield home known as the “throwback room,” with shelves of records, compact discs, action figures, musical instruments and more records. The 48-year-old says his wife, Kara, understands.

“She knew when she met me what she was getting into,” he says. “She knew that I was into music, she knew that I had a record collection.”

It’s a collection that has grown since he started with a record by the Archies when he was 8 years old. Since that time, he says he has only parted with a few of the estimated 6,000 records he has accumulated.

“I have 95 percent of the records that I ever purchased,” he says.

Among those are his own recordings as part of the pioneering Richmond-based rap group known as the Too-Def Crew and later as the First Sons. While he still records music, these days he’s making his mark as an expert in the history of his chosen genre. He recently inducted several rap luminaries (Big Daddy Kane, The Sugar Hill Gang, Melle Mel, Biz Markie) into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame and serves as a historian for the organization that supports it. He’s also working on a documentary that looks at the seminal hip-hop record label Sugar Hill Records. As his role in the music industry has evolved, so have his preferences.

“I listen with a different ear now,” he says. “I was looking for loops and drums — now as a more adult person that’s not looking to sample the record, I can enjoy.”

There’s a lot of music to appreciate in a collection that includes rare and classic rock, jazz, and hip-hop. At this point, there’s a particular kind of record he looks for, and he knows them when he sees them.

“Today, because I have so much already, I’m looking for stuff I’ve never heard of,” he says.

Surprisingly, JayQuan wasn’t aware there were so many record stores operating in the city. “Now I’m going to spend more money. I might not have needed to know that,” he says, laughing. —Craig Belcher

The Couple That Collects Together

Their voluminous vinyl collection’s true value is in the joy it brings    

Tracy Wilson has turntables in every room of the Midcentury ranch home that she shares with her husband and fellow discophile Kenneth Close, including a child’s record player with disco lights on their screened porch. On warm evenings, they mix drinks and whir through boxes of 45s. Audiophiles might cringe at the portable’s sound quality, but for Wilson and Close, who hunger for music rather than acquisition, listening satiates.

Wilson and Close play together in Positive No, a band that distills hard-riffing guitar and heartfelt pauses mixed with pop grooves — a sound that defined the indie ‘90s, an era Wilson knows well. A collector since her teens, Wilson owns over 8,000 albums, which cover the walls and fill the record room of their Maymont home, chosen for its lack of windows and radiators, two things that can devastate vinyl.

“My first purchase was a Go-Go’s album in 1982. It was a ritual to take my allowance and buy a new record. After that purchase, an employee gave me a list on the back of a paper bag. I learned about a world outside of Top 40 — alternative music, English New Wave, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees,” says Wilson, who grew up in New Jersey.  

Wilson and Close visit record stores when they travel, spending hours combing through bins. They cull from the 1950s to now, covering primarily punk, rock, soul and funk.

It’s been said that music saves lives, and Wilson has a story to tell. After she was struck by a car in 2011, her medical bills piled up, and unable to work, she turned to her record collection for help.

“I owned the very first Jack White 7-inch [45], pre-White Stripes. A bidding war broke out [on eBay], and the record sold for $1,200. That saved my life. It paid my rent, which superseded any attachment to the record. … I don’t fetishize my collection — its value isn’t dollars.” —Genevelyn Steele

The Pied Piper of Platters

Richmond’s original crate digger still collects    

Richmond native John Wood is surrounded by vinyl and assorted music memorabilia at his Chester home — he even built a separate guest cottage for his 45s. “I guess I have a half million records,” he says. “It’s really hard to say.” Looking for a singular piece of rare psychedelia, some hard-to-find jazz or a scarce Broadway cast album? Chances are, if it’s not here in Chester, it passed through at some point.

The 58-year-old collector, who has worked for years in concert security, most recently at The National, traces the foundation of his massive assemblage to a handful of 45s his mom bought at a church flea market when he was 5 years old. “It was everything from The Beatles to Johnny Cash to Walter Brennan, the actor,” he recalls.

In his teens, Wood began purchasing large collections and dealing discs out of his house. In the early ‘80s, he organized the first Richmond record conventions and helped to sell the initial discs (on consignment) at a scrappy little Carytown curio shop called Plan 9. Later, he set up his wares at the now-departed Super Flea in Midlothian, helping to bring music legends such as Richmond’s Rock-a-Teens and The Jarmels and Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps to perform at the market.

“I’m still more into the old-school music than the newer stuff,” the Santa-bearded Wood says. “But I do have a few current artists that I love. Cults, Delta Rae, Devendra Banhart, to name a few.”

Wood says he’s been in “hibernation” lately, not making his usual appearances at area record shows. But as he speaks, he’s finishing up a sale to a traveling dealer who is setting up at a North Carolina show but is light on stock. “Oh, I have people coming through here almost every day looking at records,” he says. You believe him. —Don Harrison