Henry Stone on Breaking Records, For Insurance Money: “Survival Tricks”

“Whenever I needed some extra cash I’d take crummy records, smash em’, and file a damaged goods shipping claim. I’d grab a hammer and break em’ right there in my distribution warehouse. Like, say, when we used to receive 78rpm records by truck. Let’s say you receive a stiff record that wasnt selling at all and is just laying in the warehouse. Ya take the little hammer and chh, chh, chh, give it a little crack, and then you’d say the shipping got damaged and you put a claim in for it and they pay you whatevr the wholesale price was. You had to do that to survive man. And they’d pay ya for it. Wholesale. Whatever the wholesale price was, they’d cut ya a check for the loss. Little tricks, survival tricks. Call em survival tricks.”

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