Keeping this short will be hard...
My first trip to Manny's was back in 1976. I waited at the counter forever, but nobody paid me any attention. I was working with Harry Belafonte at the time and told the other guitarist Scott Kuney about what had happened. Back we went to the store. When Irene and Billy saw Scott, who was already a seasoned pro customer, they talked to him immediately. He proceeded to introduce me to everybody behind the counter. I never had to wait again - I was "in". Over the years they all became mine and my wife's extended family - Ian, Judd, Henry, Stuart, Billy, Irene...We loved them all. One year my wife PEGGI BLU bought me a leather gig bag, and they let her in the back to go through all the cases to find a blue one - customers weren't even allowed back there, but we weren't just customers - we were family. When Peggi won Grand Prize on the TV show "Star Search", the first thing we did was head to Manny's to buy the Tascam 388 recorder I had been hungrily staring at in the window all year. We took that machine with us to California to make the demos for our Capitol Records recording. That machine got me started producing records. It's a real shame that upcoming generations will never know the feeling of being in that store with all that musical history surrounding you. Actually, "store" is not the proper word for the place - "Home To All Musicians & Singers" is a better term. God bless everybody who has ever worked in there - they made all our lives warmer and richer.
Ted Perlman
Producer-Arranger-Composer-Guitarist
ted@tedperlman.com
www.tedperlman.com
www.myspace.com/tedperlman
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