Featured Conversation: Talking With Rich Wilhelm

Published on Apr 1, 2025

IHTOV: Would you like to introduce yourself?

RW: My name is Rich Wilhelm. I’m a writer and editor, and I live in Royersford, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, with my wife Donna and I’ve been collecting records for about 50 years. I’d say actively, I do not remember a time in my life when I did not have records. I had 45s and a little tiny collection of albums when I was very, very young that had been passed on to me. And I’ve been playing records, collecting records, the whole time. I’m also a cemetery tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, and yeah, and record collecting has played into that as well, because one of the people that that’s on every one of my tours is an opera singer who died in 1921, his name was David Bispham, and he actually recorded some songs in the very, very early 20th century. And I have some 78s that he made in 1906 so they’re the oldest records in my collection.

IHTOV: That’s pretty cool.

RW: I can’t haul a Victrola up to his grave site, but I transferred them to CDs, and I play his music at his grave site during tours. I have a music themed tour. He’s on every tour that I do. He was a fascinating guy. He was famous at the time, and nobody knows him anymore, but I’m trying to spread the word.

IHTOV: Carrying on his legacy.

RW: Exactly, yeah.

IHTOV: So how did you get into records? Did someone influence you when you were young?

RW: Yeah, I mentioned the 45s had. I seriously do not remember a time in my life when I did not have records. I have some 45s, and I still have most of them that were passed on to me from aunts of mine who grew out of them, or my grandmother was cleaning out their rooms and took their 45s and gave them to me. I have original 45s of, “I Wish it Would Rain” by the Temptations and “Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, of course. And that is my all time favorite song, and it has something to do with having had this 45 since just a few years after he died in late 1967. I had toy record players that I would play them on, but gradually I would keep upping my record player game, as it were, so. So I had the 45s, and then my parents, they liked music. They had a record collection that had about 100 records in it, and that was really, really influential on me. My dad liked Bob Dylan a lot. My mom liked Willie Nelson, Jim Croce, and albums like Maria Muldaur’s album with “Midnight at the Oasis” on it.

IHTOV: My mother had that as well. I clearly remember the cover.

RW: The cover is iconic. And so, I grew up with the music that my parents liked, and the funny thing is they had about 100 records, and my record collection now is, like, probably 30 times that, but it was totally influenced by my parents having records around the house and playing records around the house. So that’s pretty much where my influences come from, I think. And then as I got older, I began to find things on my own. But it really started with that.

IHTOV: What’s the most treasured album in your collection?

RW: That’s a really good question. I know someone else has just written about this for your website, but I have my original copy of Captain Fantastic and Brown Dirt Cowboy, the Elton John album, which was released the week of my 10th birthday. One of the aunts that had passed down the 45s to me, gave it to me for my 10th birthday. I’ve been the sole owner of that album since that particular copy, since the week of its release, and now that’s coming up on its 50th anniversary. That’s the time where the records that I had sort of became a collection. So, I’d say that that’s probably my most treasured album.

IHTOV: Do you have a white whale record, like something you’re looking for that you haven’t been able to find?

RW: I eventually did find it. But when I was about 13 years old, Chuck Mangione had his big hit with “Feels So Good,” I kind of fell under the spell of Chuck Mangione, which people kind of laugh at that because he’s kind of like this spiritual godfather to Kenny G or whatever, but, but I like “Feels So Good.” A couple years later, he made a live album. It was for a benefit for earthquake victims, and he had some serious jazz artists on it, and one of them was Dizzy Gillespie. And I had that live album at the time. It was called Tarantella, and I remember I had it, and I loved it, and it really introduced me to serious jazz, because there’s an entire side of Dizzy Gillespie playing three of his classic songs. You know how it goes over the years, you get rid of records, you trade them away, or whatever. And I traded that one away, and turns out it was never released on CD for whatever reason. It really was my introduction to jazz, and eventually I kind of wanted to have it again. And for years I couldn’t find it. Eventually I did, but it took a long time for me to find it.

IHTOV: What’s the weirdest record you own? Could be a novelty record or just something strange?

RW: Yeah, I have a lot.I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but for about six or seven years, there was a magazine called Cool and Strange Music, and I wrote for that magazine. From the initial issue, this guy, Dana Countryman, published it. He put something out on the internet saying he was looking for writers. This is the early AOL days of the internet. And so I got in on the ground level, and I wrote about a lot of unusual music. I, of course, grew up with Dr Demento and the Golden Throats compilation of TV stars singing songs. So I have Telly Savalas albums, and  William Shatner’s Transformed Man album would be a white whale. It’s probably way out of my price range to get an original copy of that, but that’s where he’s singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

IHTOV: Is that the one with “Common People” on it?

RW: No that’s actually the one that Ben Folds produced, and that’s actually legitimately, and I struggle because people don’t believe me when I say it, that’s a great album. I mean, a legitimately good album. Ben Folds was great for William Shatner because he actually, he actually set him up with musical settings that worked for him and “Common People" is on it with that great Joe Jackson cameo. Yeah, when he comes in, it’s just like, wow. So anyway, about 30 years ago, right before the organization I worked for moved from one location to the next to another. And one day I walked out to go to my car, and I had to walk on the loading dock, and somebody was getting  rid of a bunch of old training records, corporate training records. So I picked them up. I took them. Nobody else wanted them. And one of them was called The Disciplinary Interview, and executives would listen to it and learn how to role play, you know, telling your employees that they need to, like, step up their game or whatever. And this one had this imaginary conversation between a boss named Mel and his employee named Tilly. So it’s a whole conversation between Mel and Tilly and back in the time when you could burn CDs, I actually made a CD where I juxtaposed the conversation between Mel and Tilly with a bunch of songs to make, sort of like a rock opera out of it, which is long gone, unfortunately, but it’s a hilarious album. It’s from the mid 1960s and it’s, you know, it’s all politically incorrect in a lot of ways, but it’s really, really unintentionally, very funny. So that’s a weird one too.

IHTOV: Do you still do a lot of record shopping?

RW: Yeah, I do. And both my sons. We bought them record players a while back for Christmas, and they both collect records. I would say that their collections are probably quite different from each other’s, but there’s still a number of places that I go to in the area down here in Philadelphia. In fact, just yesterday, my son Chris and I went out record shopping and I brought some stuff back. So yeah, I’m still pretty active with it. 

IHTOV: What’s your favorite Philly record store?

RW: There’s a few, a lot of them. And again, this was one of your other interviews. Mentioned a bunch of the record stores, like Third Street Jazz and a lot of the classic record stores from the years that I was in college, 80s and 90s. A lot of them are gone, but there are still some good ones. I have a friend named Shawn who runs a record store called Forever Changes, which is in Phoenixville, which is where I used to live, down the road from here. Forever Changes is one of two black owned record stores in Pennsylvania, and Shawn’s father was a record store owner. He owned King James Records, which was a chain of three record stores in the West Philadelphia area. And so Shawn himself had always wanted to do this as well, and so he opened his record store several years ago, and he’s very, very well versed in jazz. He’s got a lot of classic jazz, modern jazz, but also rock and alternative. And it’s a great record store. It’s a great place to hang out. So that’s one, but there’s several in the area. And I know it’s a kind of an answer that everybody has but Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton. I love the store I was at yesterday called Shady Dog Records. That’s in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, and then there’s one in Ephrata, which is out by Lancaster, called Record Connection. So there’s still a lot of good record stores around here, and each one has its own personality, which I think is great.

 IHTOV:  What one record in your collection would you be most eager to share with new friends?

RW: Hmm, okay, that’s a, that’s a really good question.  I write reviews for the Pop Matters website, so I always like to evangelize about records, like new records that I’ve heard, One that I really liked from last year, was from the band Nada Surf who back in the 90s, They had the song “Popular”, which was popular, but then I kind of rediscovered them a few years ago, and they made a newalbum, and I’ve seen them now a couple times in recent years. They made an album last year called Moon Mirror that I love.eah, yeah. It’s a great collection of songs and the main guy, Matthew Caws, he and I are sort of close in age. I think I’m a few years older than him, but I found that the songs on this album really resonated with me right now at the age that I’m at, and so I appreciate that. I really liked that. So that’s one that I really like letting people know about.

IHTOV: Name the top three albums you own that could describe you or your vibe.

RW: Okay, that’s a good one. I would probably put Murmur by R.E.M. at the top of that list. Murmur that was released the week of my high school senior prom. The release of that album is far more significant than my senior prom, although I didn’t know about it, I didn’t get into them until, like, a few months later. They opened for The Police at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, and I was there, and R.E.M. was the very first opening act. They came on at noon, and I was there, and I saw them, and I was like, there’s something to this. And then I started college two weeks later, so I was like the prototypical real college kid. So that one would be right up at the top. I know there’s so many different things like I, definitely was like a new wave kid at the time. So there might be a Devo album in there that could describe me. But I also love 60s soul and Stax and Motown. And, you know, we just went up to the Apollo Theater last week just to see it, and I took my copy of Live at the Apollo with me, the James Brown album.

IHTOV: Have you ever bought a record just for the artwork?

RW: Yes, I bought a couple that I can think of right off the top of my head. I bought Joe Jackson’s Night and Day album. Now had known his previous stuff. I knew, obviously, “Is She Really Going Out With Him.” I might have even had one or two of the albums that he had previously put out, but the moment I saw that Night and Day cover, that very stark white and blue and blue and and white, and that very sophisticated line drawing of him, I fell in love with it, and that was even before I had heard “Stepping Out.” It was probably already out as a single, but I just loved the cover. And then when I brought it home and opened it up, and that gatefold sleeve of them in the studio, the band with him in the studio, on the inside, I love that, too. And then if you look real close, you see on the stand there on the table is the Marvin Gaye album Super Hits, where he’s dressed as Superman. And I saw that on the photo inside the Joe Jackson album. And I was like, wow, that’s a great album cover.. So that’s one. And then just yesterday, when my son and I were out at Shady Dog. They had an album, an early album by the Marvelettes, called Playboy, and it’s just a fantastic album cover, too. So yeah, I and of course, I had heard of the Marvelettes, but I had not heard that album. But as soon as I saw the cover, I was like, I just love this. So album cover art is definitely something that resonates with me a lot.

IHTOV:  How has your record collection and appreciation for vinyl evolved over the years?

 RW: I think I’ve always appreciated it. I have a decent chunk of my life as memories associated with records  which I think is such a great thing about your website, because, turns out, lots of people have memories associated with records. In November, I bought a new turntable, and I got a decent set of speakers, and lately, I have really grown to appreciate the concept of just sitting and listening and just being focused on that, and not doing anything else, and and getting up at the halfway point and flipping the record over, more so than ever. I think I appreciate that. And I love music more now than I ever have.

IHTOV: So spring is here. What’s your spring album?

RW: The one that’s popping into my head is “Parallel Lines” by Blondie. I think, yeah, it’s one that’s one of my favorites too. And I love the B52’s maybe, you know something like that, yeah, something fun.

IHTOV: One last question. What’s the last record you played?

RW: Let’s see, last night we played another album that I had gotten at the store yesterday, The Best of Sam and Dave, which we love. We love Stax records around here. I also played half of that Marvelettes album. So I got to get back to that. 

Rich Wilhelm is a writer and record collector who lives in Royersford, Pennsylvania. Rich is the news editor for the communications department at ASTM International. He has written extensively for Cool and Strange Music Magazine, PopMatters, and his own website, The Dichotomy of the Dog. Rich is also a certified volunteer tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rich can be found on social media at Bluesky (@rfwilhelm.bsky.social)

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