Ric Louis will host his first silent auction on Father’s Day June 16, 2024, but sound is what it is all about.
Louis is selling vintage record players from the 1940s through the 70s that he’s painstakingly restored. He hopes to draw an “eclectic” crowd of collectors, buyers and folks like him who have warm memories of younger days listening to 33, 45 and old 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) vinyl records.
Louis, a true enthusiast, insists vinyl records played on portable consoles sound better than digital audio recordings.
For Louis, 73, his hobby stems from a childhood growing up and hanging out with relatives at the John Deshields, Norman E. Owens or John Robinson Housing projects in East St. Louis. He said he didn’t like “cliques” and therefore crafted a world of his liking.
“I was an only child and let’s face it, I wasn’t that popular in school,” Louis said recalling his reclusive childhood. “I was alone, but never lonely.”
He was captivated by old black and white movies, mostly musicals. He thinks he may be the only kid who could name movie stars such as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; big band leaders including Artie Shaw and Cab Calloway; performers like the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers and songs from movies such as “Swing Time” (1936), “Stormy Weather,”Cabin in the Sky (1943) or “An American in Paris” (1951).
“Those movies and songs were so upbeat and happy; it was like they were always having a good time,” Louis recalled.
“And remember, some were made during the worst of times–the 30s and 40s during World War II. They reminded me that there had to be a better life other than what was going on in East St. Louis.”
Louis said he was an inquisitive child who started “tinkering with stuff,” taking televisions, radios and record players apart then challenging himself to put them back together.
“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. So, I just figured it out,” Louis said.
His mother and “aunties” tolerated his hobby – but they did have limits.
“They’d say, ‘I need to see my news, so can you please put my television back together?’”
Louis’ fascination with portable record players is punctuated with early life memories. No one in his family owned the big, wooden consoles complete with built-in television, radio and record player. Most owned portable consoles, manufactured by the likes of Motorola, RCA, Zenith, General Electric or Columbia.
“If you had a record player, you had a party,” Louis said, remembering the sounds of Motown echoing through the hallways of the projects or visits with an aunt who owned a floor model stereo. She was the one who shared her vinyl collection of artists like Brook Benton, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Ray Charles.
That aunt, Louis said, is the reason he’s a huge Diana Ross fan. The day she bought the Supreme’s “new” album, “Where Did Our Love Go” with the chart-topping singles “Baby Love” and “Come See About Me” is still a special memory for Louis.
In high school, Louis said he felt even more like an outsider. His peers, he said, talked of getting a good education so they ‘could get a good job.’ He had another conversation.
“I wanted to get out of East St. Louis. My thinking was, ‘I’m going to get a good education to get a better life.”
Louis recalled how his classmates laughed when he announced he planned to live in Paris. He did, eventually.
After graduating from Southern Illinois University (SIU) in Carbondale, he moved to New York and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, an art school that focuses on technology connected to the fashion industry.
After graduating, he worked as a fashion designer. It wasn’t the Gucci, Fendi or Prada type of luxury fashion designing; it was more like creating knockoffs for stores like JCPenney, Sears, or Montgomery Ward.
Still, he was in the fashion industry and soon had an agent who got him modeling gigs that took him to Paris and Milan where he lived for about six months. By the late 1980s/ early 90s, Louis decided to come back to St. Louis.
The AIDS crisis had robbed him of many friends. He also felt his ailing mother needed him home. They bought a house together and Louis worked a variety of jobs including a five-year stint with Metro Theater Company before becoming a TSA agent from where he retired a few years ago.
Retirement has provided the luxury of revisiting his childhood passions. Louis hosts several karaoke shows around town. In between that, he’s once again “tinkering with stuff”- refurbishing vintage record players.
Unlike back in the day, the internet has gifted him with a wide berth of collectors, fellow hobbyists or online groups who offer advice or resources to find old, discarded consoles and/or parts needed to bring them back to life.
“Life is good,” Louis said. An old Artie Shaw record played in the background on one of his refurbished consoles. It’s the only way to play that genre of music, Louis insists.
“Digitized music is much cleaner now but some of these better stereo models were made to play this kind of music,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“The warmth of it, to me, it just sounds better.”
For more information about “Ric Louis’ Menagerie of Musical Machines” June 16 at the Hilton Garden Inn call 314-608-2424
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.
