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Wednesday, December 12,2018
dawsonnews.com I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I 7A
Area man owns 60,000 records, 1910s Coke bottles
Photos by Kelly Whitmire DCN Regional Staff
Forsyth County resident Lamar Pruitt has an impressive collection of nearly 60,000 records
and thousands of Coca-Cola bottles and products.
Lamar Pruitt has an impressive collection of Coke bottles
and products.
By Kelly Whitmire
DCN Regional Staff
As Lamar Pruitt cranked a
handle on his Victor Vic III, a
phonograph produced in the
early 20th century, and dropped
the machines, the room in his
Cumming home filled with the
sound of “Golden Slippers” by
Vernon Dalhart and Carson
Robinson, a gospel tune record
ed in the 1920s, played from a
shellac disk, a predecessor to
modem vinyl records.
“You have to wind it up,”
Pruitt explained. “No electrici
ty.”
While many may have never
heard — or heard of — a pho
nograph or other antique devic
es, the Vic III is one of about
25 of the machines that Pruitt
owns, including phonographs
— machines like the Vic III
with a hom and hand crank —
and Victrolas — larger players
with internal horns inside a
wooden cabinet making it more
of a piece of furniture.
Each of the machines has its
own story and intricacies, and
most are filled with records.
Pruitt said his first player
belonged to either his grandfa
ther or uncle and aunt before it
came into his mother’s posses
sion. Pruitt said he decided to
take it after a business owner
made an offer to his mother he
wasn’t thrilled with.
“She said, ‘This lady down
below us wants it for a bar,”’
Pruitt said. “I said, ‘No, I don’t
want to do that. I’ll come and
get it. Me and my wife went
down there and got it and
cleaned it up real nice.”
Along with the machines,
Pruitt owns an impressive
record collection, a multitude
of Coke items, including some
over 100 years old, and a muse
um’s worth of other antiques
ranging from furniture to musi
cal instruments to farming
equipment and more.
By his own estimation, Pruitt
owns upward of 60,000
records, many still unopened.
“I think I counted them one
time, I had over 20,000 45s and
about that many of the 78s, and
probably more than that of long
plays [LPs],” Pruitt said.
A collection of that size takes
time, and Pruitt said he first
began collecting more than 60
years ago with his first wife,
Patsy, a hobby the pair contin
ued until she passed away.
“When we first started, that
was right after we married, I
guess, in the ’50s,” he said.
“And my wife and my broth
er’s wife, to get a good deal on
groceries, they’d go to
Gainesville to get them. If they
had a dime or a quarter left
over, they went by the dime
store and picked up a record.
You just had to do what you
could back then, but later on, it
got out of hand.”
Some locals might remember
the pair from the Cumming
Country Fair and Festival,
where he and Patsy had a booth
and their names and the iconic
Victor Talking Machine
Company, the company who
produced the Victrola. The sign
now hangs in the same room as
the larger part of his collection.
Pruitt’s collection is heavy
on country music and gospel,
and artists such as Elvis, Hank
Williams, Johnny Cash and the
Chuck Wagon Gang, a particu
lar favorite.
As a collector, he also sold
records and many are still on
displays fit for a record store.
“Most of this right here are
bluegrass, and there’s some
really, really good stuff there,”
Pruitt said. “Most of them are
just like new. If they’re
scratched up, I don’t want them
myself.”
Interestingly, a good part of
his collection is picture records
meant more for being seen
rather than heard and bearing
images of artists, college sports
teams, movies and others.
“Back I guess in the ’80s is
when you could find most of
them like that. That’s when the
picture disks came out,” he
said. “They didn’t [take any]
time until they were gone.”
Some of the more interesting
parts of his collection come
from Edison Records, founded
by Thomas Edison.
In his extensive collection,
Pruitt has Edison disc records,
which are much thicker than
most records, up to a quarter-
inch thick, and have to be
played on one of the compa
ny’s machines, a competitor to
the Victrola.
Pruitt also owns Edison
Records unlike any other kind
of record.
Whereas most records are a
flat disk, Pruitt also has a num
ber of cylinder records, which
as the name suggests was
molded into a cylinder with
the groove on the outer edge.
“This one, it is different,”
said Pruitt, adding after play
ing a brief example of its
music, “that’s kind of odd.”
While his record collection
is impressive, and came first,
Pruitt also owns a collection of
Coca-Cola products and mer
chandise including whistles,
toys, cups and other collect
ibles.
Of course, he has thousands
of bottles of different sodas,
including special Coke bottles
commemorating events from
sports teams to local events to
anniversaries of the company
and almost anything in
between.
A significant number of bot
tles date back to the 1910s and
1920s.
That collection, Pruitt said,
started when his father-in-law
ran a store in town.
“What they would do is they
would save me older bottles
when they came in,” he said.
“So I got a lot of stuff that
way, then my family gave me
stuff. Coke used to put out a
lot of good stuff.”
These days, Pruitt said he
doesn’t add as much to either
his Coke or record collections
but that doesn’t mean he has
stopped entirely.
“I really don’t look for too
much anymore because I’m
running out of room,” Pruitt
said. “But I do look at records
every once in a while to see if
there is something I think I
don’t have.”
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