A message from Birmingham Sunday ULTRA rare album
$
727
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Description
The word "rare" is tossed about pretty casually all over Ebay, but once in a while you find something to which it really applies; I believe this is one of those cases. I am NOT a record collector, but I AM the original owner of this record. There is a bit of a story behind that:
Back in 1967 my best friend at the time and his family moved to Carson City, Nevada. The following summer I made the first major road trip of my life to visit him and while I was there he told me he knew a guy in a band who had recently released an album. We went over to his house and I bought this album then & there. Unfortunately, time has erased my memory of exactly which member of Birmingham Sunday I met that day and the friend I went to visit died a few years later in an automobile accident, so I have no way to reconstruct any more of that day. BUT, I came home with this record and added it to my collection. This album never saw a turntable very much for two reasons:
1) Back then and through the '70s after I'd listened to an album a couple of times, I copied it to reel-to-reel tape and used that as my working copy to play.
2) While the music on it was "OK" it didn't really appeal to me all that much at that time - I really don't know when I last listened to this but it has to be over 30 years ago, maybe 35.
Recently, while moving some stuff, including some of my old albums from that era, I came across this and, out of curiosity, I decided to see what, if anything, I could find about it on line. That search lead me to call some serious record collectors who wound up saying things like, "Wow, I've never seen one of those." I have to admit, it's a really nice closet find.
For reference, here's what I've found on a couple record collecting web sites: From PopSike.com "Released by All American (AA 5718) label, this is an ultra rare original psychedelic album from 1968. The album is titled "Birmingham Sunday" and, according to Fuzz Acid and Flowers Revisted, "This was a local California album recorded by a local Nevada group in December 1967. Only three or four original copies of this record have surfaced...." The LP contains ten vocal cuts."
And from Hippy-djkit "Birmingham Sunday-A Message From Birmingham Sunday -1968 US":
This is a very rare (more than 1600 $) California album by a Nevada group.
Only three or four copies of this record are known to exist despite being on a real label and produced by Strawberry Alarm Clock guru Bill Holmer. It's a nice West Coast effort with male and female vocals well produced pop rock finally available thanx to the effort of the Akarma label. A real must have!
The listed sale prices I've been able to find range from $600 to the above mentioned $1600.
As I said, I am not a record collector, but I think this album and the jacket would be fairly called "Very Good" as I understand vintage record ratings. The jacket does show a bit of edge wear, there is minor wear around the center hole (both of which can be seen in the pictures), one thing that you may not be able to see is that on side 1 there are some light surface scratches across track 1 and part of track 2. These would probably be audible but would not cause a tracking problem. I have no idea how or when this happened since, as I said, I rarely played this album and I always had a good quality turntable.
So, there you have it, record collectors. HAVE FUN BIDDING ON A ONCE IN A BLUE MOON OFFERING.
I have placed a reasonable reserve on this considering the sales history of this very rare album. If you have any questions, I'll try to be responsive.
Domestic shipping will be a flat $15 INTERNATIONAL BUYERS PLEASE CONTACT ME BEFORE PAYMENT TO GET A FIRM QUOTE FOR SHIPPING.
