Most awsome Gerry, that's the way to add real value to your layout; adding historical elements honoring family, Not only is it a great way memorialize your father it makes it more interesting for our posterity if they deside to maintain our collections after we've moved on.

Hats off to Marty too. He's had quite a year and I appreciate his continued contributions in the hooby.

Thanks for sharing, very nice!

Mom graduated with Wilt in '53 from Overbrook.  I was at haverford and city line yesterday.

Great addition to both layouts, thank you for the story.

I was was a student at Drexel in the late fifties.

As a member of the ROTC [mandatory] rode the 69th street EL with my M1 to the parade grounds.

Try that today

Very nice tribute Gerry to your father. This will bring back many memories for both you & Marty. I spent a fair share of my time in record stores in NYC in the 50's & 60's buying up 45 RPM's. (Still have them) The good old days in NYC, playing stickball, riding the subway, playing 45's & running Lionel trains.

 

Next time your up this way please stop in.

Great story Gerry! As you have seen on my layout.I have a tribute to my brother who passed some years ago. Always brings back good memories for me. Thanks for sharing.

Wonderful story and building. Way to go Marty.

Hey Mike, your comment certainly brings back some memories. Chet Walker was a regular customer at the store. He was a forward on the 76ers, and one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet. From time to time he would bring in Wilt and Luke Jackson. The store was laid out so that we put empty LP folders in bins about 2 feet deep arranged by artist. There was an aisle behind it for salespeople and then the stock was on shelves behind that. Wilt would lean forward over the displayed LP's, and just reach to the stock and take out whatever he wanted to look at. Believe me, a regular size person couldn't even begin to do that. I am alive today because I NEVER told him he couldn't do that. Actually, he was a nice guy too. I don't follow bb anymore, largely because of player arrogance. Also, the game has changed.

 

Captain John, love to visit you on the next trip. It was great seeing you the last time.

 

Gerry

This is a wonderful inspiration to do likewise. Thanks for sharing your childhood. Marty, the store is well done. Is it a card stock building?

Bobby, it's an MTH building. The top part isn't really that light a color, but because of the flash and my lousy photography it came out that way. It was the Kaestner building originally. It is actually a reasonably good depiction of those types of buildings except that they were row buildings (abutted each other) with no side windows.

 

Gerry

I lived at 5255 Chesnut street in west Philly until I was about 13 and remember going in to your store many times especially with my older brother. We mostly bought 45's because they were cheaper. 

 

It was a wonderful time to grow up and how great is  it that 2 people I admire we're connected to a store that I was in allot. And now Gerry and Bill after all these years are great friends, who would of thought after all these years later.

Gerry....very nice story that you have shared.  A great idea too!  Sure would like to see pictures of the area on your layout where the new building will go...

 

Thanks,

Alan

That is pretty cool.  Are you Franchising Empire Records   I would like to open one at the NJ HiRailers

Gerry;

Nice story.  I'm sure that the completed building will give you the "warm fuzzies."

Yardlet6;

Your comment reminded me of the times I spent at "Oldies" record stores buying those oldies on the Collectibles label.

Ben;

Didn't Jimmy Durante have a patented remark that would describe you?  - "Everybody wants to get into the act."

Gerry,

 

My bands first record was actually.....a record (dating myself)

 

Boy has the industry changed!

 

Dave

Very cool story and a great Idea. Nice job Gerry and Marty.

Very nice story Gerry. This is a wonderful tribute to your Dad and will be  a great addition to your railroad.

What a nice story, and great idea.

Ha Cha Cha Cha Cha!!!!!!!!

Umbriago!  

Jimmy Durante!

Ben, I will franchise Empire Records. One is definitely on order for the HiRailers. I am honored.

 

Yardlet6, once PRRBill wakes up, he can tell you much more about Jerry Greene. They really weren’t our competition so I didn’t pay much attention to them. They were Oldies and we were jazz & R&B. In the back of the store we had the “cheap” LP’s which included the Lost Nite label. They were stocked by a “jobber” who replenished the inventory. Our “jobber” was Lee Andrews from Lee Andrews and the Hearts. Being a pop star is a slippery slope.

 

Dave, I hope to meet you this year. I’ll be coming to the Lionel Open house and hanging with Marty, Dotty and Carl.

 

Alan, pictures are a way off.

 

Gerry

Gerry,

 

What a beautiful story, I remember we talked about your record store on the way to Marty's house. That's a very nice rendition of the record store!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks for sharing, Alex

I appreciate this very much Gerry. I am honored to have this building and will put it on my layout.   I lived with my aunt and uncle in Hatboro in the 50s and early 60s until I went in the Navy.  We spent a lot of time in Philly.  Every week we would take the Reading MU cars from Hatboro to the Reading Terminal and shortly end up at 30th Street Station watching GG-1 locomotives.  I am building a Philly scene.  I have always loved the city of Philadelphia and the people of Pennsylvania. 

 

 

 

 

Great Story, Thanks.

Hey Gerry, what a great tribute to your Dad. Thanks for sharing the story. Same for you Marty - greatly enjoyed learning your history with the city of Brotherly Love. Any chance you took pictures on one of those trips seeing the GG1's?

 

What a great addition to two already amazing layouts. Very cool guys.

 

Paul

Gerry really outdid himself with this one and deep, appreciative thanks go to Marty along with Gerry.  I was too young to work in the store when Gerry started his Drexel co-op time there but once I got my driver's license 2 years later, I entered the fray part-time after school and some weekends.  Gerry will now have his memory jump started when I remind him of the time he had to come with the spare key to the '59 Olds after I locked myself out of it not once but twice in one day while picking up records and then filling the beast with Atlantic Imperial at 27.9!  And will you ever forget the jamming of what, 8 people ?, into the Olds with that Christmas Eve '66 snowstorm after the store was shut at 11:30 PM?  

 

The store attracted a rather eclectic cross section of people from not just Philly but other states who would make sojourns to ours as we imported jazz from France & Germany.  These records, sometimes extremely unique, were recorded by the African-American musicians who desired the freedoms they saw in France during WW I but denied them in America.  Saturday afternoons almost always found musicians & jazz aficionados in the back debating who was better at "this" by playing the cuts from the different recordings made by favorite artists.

About the time Gerry entered Law School, my time there increased along with the branching off a small rock store subsidiary at the original Electric Factory located at 22nd & Arch.  Herbie (Oops!!  Forgot to put his last name which was and still is Spivak) not only owned the Factory but also the Showboat Jazz Theatre which by that time had become the premier jazz club in Philly (not to take away from the Aqua in West Philly or the Impulse in North Philly).  We also handled tickets for his jazz concerts at the Arena, the Convention Center and the newly built Spectrum.  The Spectrum had an absolutely unique ticket manager.  He counted tickets by flipping them next to his ear and his counts were never off!!!  BTW, Herbie later opened a great restaurant, H.A. Winston's, which rapidly expanded, franchised and had the best French Onion Soup I've ever tasted.

 

The oldies scene was more than adequately covered by Jerry Green's Lost Nite albums and yes, I remember Lee Andrews very well.  IIRC, Jerry was also branching out at the time ('65-'66?) with selling all the accessories one would need to sell at the record shop & we bought batteries, needles, etc. from Jerry.  

Lastly, and not the least, I got to meet some great jazz musicians over the course of time ranging from Milt Buckner who played piano for Lionel Hampton; Grover Washington, Jr. who worked part-time for us on weekends until his musical career took off, Leonard "Doc" Gibbs, the percussionist and ending with the great Jimmy Smith, the organist, who would lug his Hammond organ by way of the P&W (home of the Brill Bullets & Liberty Liners)  from Norristown to 69th St. and then take the Market Street El/Subway to whatever jig he had.  If it was at the Aqua, which was just down the street, the Hammond would go in the back of the shop and then the place would be alivewith discussions I wish I had taped.  (BearLead; I know you would give your eyeteeth for that)

 

Bill

Gerry,

I have a question for you. What was the name of the Philadelphia group that sang the Doo Wop song " What Am I Going To Do"?

The Dovers

Marty,

I had the wrong name of the record. The correct name of the record was What Do I Have To Do by Frankie and the Fashions. I believe this song was recorded in Media, PA.

Bill and Gerry,

 

I'm glad you mentioned amongst your list of notable jazz recording artists who frequented the store, the late, great Jimmy Smith, the greatest jazz organist in the history of the planet!  While you are all happily immersing yourselves in the pleasant memories of the '60s in Philly, I am remembering coming home after class and finishing my announcer's shift at KUOW-FM on a Friday afternoon to my apartment on 22nd Avenue in Seattle's University District, pouring myself a Lucky Lager Draft, and cranking up my favorite Jimmy Smith album on my AR turntable- equipped stereo!  That regular little ritual symbolized the end of another school week at UW for me.  Sorry, I know it's not the "good ol' days in Philly", but at least I was lucky enough to hear Jimmy Smith in person three times during those college years in Seattle.  My impoverished fellow students and jazz-loving buddies and I would go to the Saturday jam-session matinees at a jazz club down on historic Yesler Square which featured top talents like Cal Tjader, George Shearing, Jimmy Smith, The Montgomery Brothers, etc., with no cover charge, and $1 beer per set minimum which could be nursed by a starving college kid through a full set of the afternoon gig.  The amazing thing about Jimmy Smith was how approachable he was.  He welcomed local musicians to jam with him, and when the all afternoon gig eventually came to a close, Jimmy would stand at the door and shake hands with all the patrons as they left the joint, just like a pastor bidding farewell to his flock!  Fantastic memories of a departed era in American entertainment!

 

I hope whoever manages the Ameritowne product line at OGR is reading this thread.  In honor of Pat and Jean Marinari, they did the "Pat and Jean's Jewelry" store, so an Ameritowne version of Empire Records would also be in order to honor two of our most prolific and helpful fellow Forumites, PRRBill and Gerry Morlitz and their family's iconic West Philadelphia institution!

 

NostalgicBear

Aw shucks, Bear.  You have me blushing.  

 

Actually, I think (always a dangerous situation) that during the late '60s, I probably attended more jazz concerts (not to mention the rock concerts at the Electric Factory, Spectrum & other venues) than Gerry as he started law school as I started college so his work load was much more vigorous. 

 

If there ever would be an OGR Empire Records building, it would have to include a depiction of that ubiquitous, hand cranked, brass bodied, wooden drawered National Cash Register from the beginning of the last century (ours was around 1903 IIRC).  I had it restored for our mom by a friend & it now resides in Gerry's living room.  There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that the reason it's there is because Gerry charges admission to his train room.  

 

Leaving the train room?  Well, that's a different story.    (It's a joke, folks, about having to pay to get out.)

 

Bill

Buonasera, Bill!

 

Ah yes, the nostalgic memories wash over us.  It gives one a wistful feeling.  We're all getting older and except for a few eccentric people who still believe vinyl records are "warmer" to the ear than CDs (and I happen to believe they are right) and who hang on to their turntables with Shure or Pickering cartridges perched on the ends of their feather light pickup arms, we've been dragged kicking and screaming into another dimension that lacks something when compared to the experiences of our long departed youth.  

 

Come to think of it, who uses CDs anymore?!  Everybody's music is stored on a cloud somewhere, and somebody named Pandora is the technologically morphed disk jockette who plays music back for us after analyzing some algorithm of our musical tastes from selections we've made in the past.  Can this really be progress?

  

I'd love to see that NCR register.  I'll bet it's a beauty.  Does it have the marble or glass cash shelf below the keys where we used to park the big bills like twenties while we were counting out the change from the cash drawer?  I can only imagine what your mother would say about the way change is counted back to the customer today!  Of course that's if you can still find anybody that still uses cash!

 

NostalgicBear

Bill,

 

You have been misled.  I was at Gerry's home this past weekend and he charged Locolawyer and myself to go down to his fantastic train room.  He used that cash register and when Erol and I paid (in cash), he kept pushing the no sale button.  I wonder what that was all about.

 

BTW, his new layout is very impressive.

Hi Marty,

Not misled but a change in policy.   Gerry is collecting the admission money beforehand as the ticket price now includes liability insurance.  But ringing no sale? Hmmmm, maybe it's going into a special fund.

Bill

Yeah!  I got one number.

What prrbill isn't sharing with you is that the first two numbers are the address of the house we grew up in and my daughters birthday. 

 

I had none of the numbers. 

 

Gerry 

 We didn't hit anything either. I had decided that if I had won the $600Mil. I was going to have a 1:1 replica of the Pennsy T-1 built and then donate it to the Railway Museum of Pennsylvania in Bill and Gerry Morlitz' names!

I just found this thread having been off the forum for a couple of days.  I really enjoyed the family story Gerry and I learned something new: that you and PRRBill are brothers!  I have seen you both at York, but I don't remember seeing you together.  I usually see you with Locolawyer.

 

As for Philadelphia, I have never been there, but somewhere in that town is a statue of one of my ancestors from some long ago war.

.....

Dennis