RECORD MAKER

[ WRITTEN BY JK MURPHY ]

Ifyouever owned a copy of “Best of the Doobie Brothers” vinyl record, it just may have been one of mine.

It was the summer of 1978. I was home from college and making music. Literally, making music. Sixteen hundred albums per day –the quota for my eight-hour shift.

My father was an engineer at RCA (formerly the Radio Corporation of America) and he pulled some strings to get me a job on the factory floor of the Indianapolis record-pressing plant. It was a great summer job that paid three times what I’d made the previous summer working “maintenance” (grass-cutting and weed-pulling) at an apartment complex. And it was the one and only time I was a “union man.” Employees in the record plant were bona fide, card-carrying members of the I.B.E.W. (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers).

My record-producing training consisted of 20 minutes of instructions from my supervisor and another 10 minutes of her watching me run the presses. Once satisfied, she turned me loose.

The process was simple and repetitive. Each worker operated two presses that opened and closed, up and down. Step 1 was to affix the paper record labels to the metal templates. A-side went on the upper template. The B-side went lower. A vinyl dispenser resembling a soft-serve ice cream machine would squirt out a melted vinyl “biscuit.” Plop the warm, black biscuit on top of the B side label. Closing the press required both hands pushing levers simultane- ously – a safety precaution to keep hands from being smashed in the press. At this point, the worker turns and repeats the process on the second press.

While loading the second press, the first press would close and mash the biscuit to form the record. Excess vinyl oozed out beyond the record templates. A blade would then rise and rotate, slicing off the excess vinyl. The press would open and the finished record would be pulled from the press by hand and placed on a spindle. Every 30 minutes or so, a supervisor would come by, remove the full spindle and replace it with an empty one. I never saw where those records went nor did I ever see the finished, packaged product.

I was making the Doobie Brothers album on one press and Kristy and Jimmy McNichol’s debut (and only) album on the other. After a couple of days I started reaching my daily quota –1600 albums … all summer long and I worked one of three shifts. I couldn’t imagine the McNichols ever selling all those albums. I never doubted the Doobies did. For a brief period, maybe a couple of days, I was moved from LPs to 45s. Same process, smaller machines. But then back to the Doobies and McNichols.

I was making the Doobie Brothers album on one press and Kristy and Jimmy McNichol’s debut (and only) album on the other.

I remember the plant being loud and hot. No air conditioning in those days and with each work station heating a pot of vinyl on top of the warm Indiana summers, it made for a high-temp environment. On particularly warm days, supervisors distributed mandatory salt tablets to prevent workers from dehydrating.

Because the job offered good money and steady work, most of my coworkers were “lifers” – longterm and loyal employees. As a temporary summer employee, I was an outlier and my nickname quickly became “college boy” among the factory crowd. I never was sure if that was a term of endearment or derision.

Once clocked in, you remained at your press. The only mobile worker was the floor sweeper, who would chat with each worker as he broomed the aisles. Floor sweeper was the coveted job others aspired to for the freedom of movement it offered.

Ten-minute breaks in morning and afternoon and 20 minutes for lunch, as I recall, were spent in a common area equipped with picnic benches on the factory floor that doubled as tables for lunch and cards (euchre was the game of choice). On one break, the floor sweeper sat down across from me. “Hey, college boy, if you’re going to work in a record plant, you need to know the answer to this question: What’s the average number of grooves on an LP?” he asked.

My blank stare gave him my answer. I had no idea.

“Come back tomorrow with the answer, college boy.”

That night I scrutinized some of my albums. It was impossible to count the grooves, even with a magnifying glass. In the end, I estimated how many grooves were in the first inch of the record from the outer edge and multiplied by six, the distance from the edge to the label. I don’t recall the number I came up with, but I went to work the next day prepared to answer the question.

“Well, college boy. What’s the answer?” floor sweeper queried.

After I gave him my answer, let’s say it was 682, he was ready with this response. “Hah, college boy, you ain’t so smart. There’s only ONE groove … it just keeps going round and round and round.”

Replaced by tape and CDs, vinyl sales plummeted in the 1980s and RCA’s record-stamping plant on East 30th Street in Indianapolis –at one time the largest in the world – closed in 1988, 10 years after I spent my summer there. Seven hundred workers – including the floor sweepers – were out of work.

That summer job gave me a new appreciation for a college education when I returned to Indiana University in the fall. I’d learned two things: an education would keep me from a career where floor sweeper was the position aspired to.

And each side of a record has one groove.