Dave's Gold Records

Oct. 2004

Here's a photo of me with an early Birth Day gift to myself. Recently Heritage-Odyssey Auctions were selling a TON of Rock and Roll Memorabilia. Included in this auction were Gold Records from the estate of Lew Chudd, the man that started Imperial Records in the late 1940's.. Lew signed such stars as Slim Whitman, Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson and had Million Selling records with all of them from the early 50's until the early 60's. In the 1950's when a record sold a Million copies a Gold Record was awarded to the artist and, in the case of many independent labels of the time, to the Owner/Founder of the label. So, unlike Gold and Platinum Record awards of today, only two copies of these awards exist at all! These are the actual Gold Records gang !

I was lucky enough to get in on the bidding and actually get these two. To me, this is not just a memento but a part of Rock and Roll and…..now that I think about it, American History and Culture. I want to personally thank Jim & Jennifer at Heritage for all of there help. This was the first time I ever have gotten involved with an auction of any kind and they made it a lot of fun! I want to also thank the Chudd family for giving guys like me the opportunity to have these and not just have them put in storage or sent to a museum.

"Stood Up" by Ricky Nelson my all time favorite song of his and one that me and the guys in my band do practically every week. "Stood Up" is Ricky's third biggest hit record, aside from "Poor Little Fool" and "Travelin' Man" respectively. The song peaked at Number "2" in January of 1958 on Billboard's Pop Charts. It also went up to Number "8" on Billboard's Country Charts and Number "4" on the R&B Charts. Back on the Pop Charts, "Stood Up" stayed at Number "2" for three weeks and was kept out of the Number "1" slot by the song "At The Hop" by Danny & The Juniors

The "Flip" side of the record was another Rocker called "Waitin' In School". This song didn't do too bad for itself either. It went to Number "18" on the Pop Charts, Number "12" on the R&B Charts and also Number "12" on the Country Charts.

"Whole Lotta Lovin" by Fats Domino is another song that the boyz and I perform practically every weekend. This is one that always gets folks dancin' In 1958 this song peaked at Number "6" on Billboard's Pop Charts and at Number "2" on the R&B Charts. The "Flip" side "Coquette" went to Number "92" on the Pop Charts and Number "26" on R&B.