Eunice radio guy grooves to records ... and that’’s not just playing them

Rick Nesbitt, owner of KEUN AM & FM radio station, is in the business of playing records, but it seems to go deeper than that.
Nesbitt estimates he has about 150,000 records, the vinyl kind that provided the music for generations before tape, CD and digital downloads.
“Records never left,” he told Eunice Kiwanis Club members recently. “You stopped buying them. Records never stopped being produced you just stopped buying them.”
Nesbitt said there is a revival of records. The new records are better made than there were decades ago when the ruled the music scene.
“These should last forever,” he said of the new records.
There is resurgence in the popularity of records, he said.
“Old music has out sold modern music, downloads and CDs, by 4.3 million copies in the past 12 months,” he said. “It is the first time in history that old music is out-selling new music.”
Nesbitt said he was citing a recently story in Rolling Stone for the record report.
Nesbitt took the Kiwanis Club on a journey through recording history from wax cylinder and wire-recording to best-sellers.
As collector, Nesbitt advised that people assess the value of the old records by what they sell for, not what the asking price might be.
Nesbitt held up two 45 rpm records that included Bill Haley’s song, “Shake, Rattle and Roll” released by Decca. One record, the 1954 release, is worth $25 to $30 while the version released in 1955 fetches about $5 a record.
Other bits of advice:
— A giveaway for reproduction often is a barcode on the sleeve.
— Eight-track cassettes may be worth up to $20, but players can be rare to find.
— Cassettes are resurging now, but he doesn’t expect that to last.
— Records provide a “softer” sound than digital recordings.