I have often told my kids… in the style of The Godfather… “one day you will come to me and ask, do you have that one song? and I will reply YES, for you I can do this, get my external.”

This time though, the request came from my friend Al. He mentioned a song he was having a hard time finding for a pet project. WHAT?! I jumped on that. I can do it, I can do it! Pick me!

The track was an album from 1981 by Sunnyland Slim entitled “Tired But I Can’t Get Started” from the album called “You And Me”.

My normal route was of course to consider myself the only one in the world that can find anything, Al obviously being underqualified to find a mere song on the big google-box machine. I assumed he hadn’t looked under the big rocks. I quickly learned that this was indeed going to be a challenge. It wasn’t just out there laying around.

I clicked about 50 Google links to the song, only finding info on it, which I also needed, but nowhere to procure it.

1) Not on I-Tunes

2) Not on Spotify

3) Not on Amazon

4) Not on E-bay

5) Found a link to 45 Cat, and avoided signing up and falling down the rabbit hole. This was again just info, but it proved it does exist!     http://www.45cat.com/record/4548us

6) Found 2 blogs that posted full Sunnyland Slim albums at some point in the past, but the links were now dead. Wah wah wah…

6) Discogs! Eureka! I found it listed here, and with 3 people selling !  Woo hoo!

http://www.discogs.com/Sunnyland-Slim-Tired-But-I-Cant-Get-Started-Shake-It-Baby/release/6498206

Wait a second. My Homer Simpson brain kicked in and I thought, I’ll buy the whole album. I checked on Discogs.

http://www.discogs.com/Sunnyland-Slim-Just-You-And-Me/release/4527579

No way dude. This album must be made of spun gold to justify a asking price of $79.95 ! Holy crap. The 45 was only $12 so I went that route. I ordered and it shipped that day from a no doubt happy guy from Georgia.

It arrived today.

It came well packaged and looking super clean. I don’t think it will be a problem getting a nice rip of it.

I took a shot with the 45 held up for a self-portrait project we are doing and the effect of the reflection making a sort of eye for me was too good to pass up. I had to put it on here.

This is serious business.

So it only took a week and a half to get it here. And it will take 5 minutes for me to remember how to do it, and 3:40 to rip it. Completed! Viola. I hope.

Over to the record player to get setup. There is the turntable pad I bought at Strictly Discs.

With 45 adapter and record.

The all important cleaning.

Then remembering how to get the software set up.

and we are a go for Rip!

Once I had both sides ripped, I moved them to a flash drive and over to the new laptop and I cleaned up the needle drop and trail off to complete both songs into MP3 format from vinyl.

Easy peasy.

Oh, by the way, the songs are good. At least it wasn’t all for some horrible crap song that tainted my turntable. Not sure exactly what Al is going to use it for, but that is beside the point. I did it!

Another successful Aural Retentive conversion.

Anyone want to buy a Sunnyland Slim 45?

Actually, not sure I could sell it after all of this. It is now an Aural Retentive artifact. I’ll put it next to my Apple and Frank Zappa 45’s.

Perfect.