Richard Powell - Memories Of Glenivy (1976/2020)

Perhaps the only album ever recorded to commemorate a trailer park lounge, Richard Powell’s 1976 ode to low living in Corona, California, has few peers. After six years in the Navy, Powell returned to civilian life and found work as the in-house entertainment at the brand-spankin’ new Glen Ivy trailer park’s informal restaurant/bar: The Pub. Over the course of three years, Powell moved from performer to manager, then DJ as The Pub moved in a more disco-oriented direction, and finally vice president of the entire organization in a bizarre marketing ploy to sell plots. This sales hustle is how the Memories of Glen Ivy LP came to be. The album was never distributed outside the park, sold exclusively in the gift shop and given to potential buyers. The aptly-titled record would mark the beginning of the end of Powell’s time at Glen Ivy, which grew increasingly corporate, with “flashy cars, sharp suits and ties, and sales pitches that were just not of interest to me at all,” Powell recalled.