I knew Richard Hayman for a short period of time. I met him when his wife responded to an ad I placed looking to buy record collections. I came to his apartment on Fifth Avenue in the 70’s. A beautiful sprawling apartment with a terrace overlooking the Avenue that he must have bought in the sixties. There was a grand piano in the living room. The walls were covered with his personal music memorabilia, awards, photos, gold records and book shelves wall to wall. In cabinets, closets and storage areas, he had thousands of lps. Finally, we was ready to let them go he said. This was the well kept collection of someone who had spent 50 years in the music business making records and working in A&R for the major labels.

I spent many days coming back to go through the collection lp by lp. Each visit was mostly me sitting on my hands and knees flipping records and pulling the cream of the crop. We had many friendly conversations about his life and music. Even though he was successful for selling millions of mostly easy listening records, his tenure at Mercury records among other labels gave him opportunities to work with many of the biggest names in sixties music. As rock wasn’t his taste many of the rock and psych records had never been played and I sold them to collectors. I found many great covers, lots of great jazz and vocalist lps too that I still have.

(30 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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