It all began back in 1963, when she was 13 years old her mother gave her two 45 rpm records – an Elvis Presley and a Don Gibson. Fast forward nearly 60 years and Cheryl Rehermann would have the largest private collection of records in the United States; well over 100,000 records.
“My mother had a big console record player with a radio – a big, big, wide thing. I started listening to albums and enjoying the covers and reading the liner note. And then it just grew from there.”
It was the time of folk artists such as Leonard Cohen, Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds and, of course, Bob Dylan. “I was interested in all of the folk artists for their social and political messages. I liked that I was considered a rebel. Women burning their bras, and the Vietnam War, and that kind of thing.”
Because Dylan recorded on Columbia, Cheryl joined their record club. When members didn’t return the post card with their preferences, Columbia sent records of their choice. “I got trapped,” she laughs. “But I never sent any of them back. I always enjoyed whatever they sent.”
Cheryl married Tom Rehermann, and her passion became the couples’ obsession.
From their Connecticut home they traveled to Vermont, Massachusetts and New York on weekends and holidays in search of auctions, estate sales and thrift stores that might have records for sale. “We got truckloads of records. We would clean them by hand with alcohol and cotton swabs.” Then they would check the record guides to determine their value.
The Rehermanns also got into buying bootleg records.
“People would sneak into a recording or rehearsal session, record the music, have it pressed into vinyl and sell the bootlegs for a lot of money,” she said.
Some of them were priced at over $1,000 because of their rarity and because many of the studio tracks never made it to commercial albums.
Storing the ever-growing collection required some innovation.
“We began making record crates out of wood pallets. We had crates piled from floor to ceiling – anchored into the wall so they wouldn’t come toppling over – we had them in the living room, family room, and one of the upstairs bedrooms was totally devoted to records and albums.”
In addition to the albums, they had large numbers of cassettes, laser disks, music books and, later, CDs.
Their children, Deborah and Jeff, became part of the collecting mania. “They loved the music I listened to, for the most part. When they were in high school, the English teacher taught the work of Bob Dylan. They would bring in all of my Dylan albums, so they could be played in class.”
Of all of the thousands of musicians in her collection, Dylan and Leonard Cohen were by far Cheryl’s favorite. “Dylan had it as far as the writing, and philosophy, and the spiritual being. He was amazing!”
She worked for a number of years as a counselor in the school and courts system and, in 1991, Cheryl obtained her master’s degree in psychology and was in private for the next decade. The passion for record collecting never wavered. In 2005 the Rehermanns moved to Ocala – with their record collection. “It cost us $10,000 to move the records from Connecticut. Tom built an air-conditioned shed that was full of records along with two rooms in the house that were floor to ceiling records.”
It was a good time to get used records. “The radio stations were no longer playing records – they were using cassettes and CDs. “It was serendipitous,” Cheryl recalls. “Radio stations were also closing, and I got all the records I could. People were downsizing and getting rid of everything. I was always happiest at the end of a weekend.” That’s when she returned home to assess and enjoy her new finds.
Since it would take years to listen to every record in her collection, Cheryl only listened to her favorites. “I wasn’t interested in hearing things like scary Alfred Hitchcock music, but other collectors might want it, and we would trade.”
One of her favorite finds was a west coast band called The Chocolate Watchband.
“A friend of ours has been searching an original ‘Chocolate’ for years. Very rare. We found one at a tag sale somewhere in Connecticut. Those are ones I’m really proud of,” as she displays several other albums by the band.
Tom passed away in 2009 and Cheryl, and the record collection moved to The Villages. About 100,000 of the records, 78s, 45s, and sound tracks were stored in air-conditioned storage units, with another group of over 10,000 records in her home. Earlier this year she got an offer from a local collector to buy the contents of the storage units. “I gave him the locks and keys, he gave me the money, and it was a done deal.’
She was no longer the nation’s ‘record record holder,’ but her home in the Village of Pine Ridge is still full of records, record books and art, and her cockatiels. This summer she nurtured monarch butterflies on milkweed plants outside her lanai.
She calls herself a “completist.”
“For example, I have Dylan’s very first album, his last album, and everything in between. It’s a complete set.” The collection also boasts the complete collection of other musicians.
“Music is therapy,” Cheryl says. “And growing up in the times I grew up in, there were other options like drugs, alcohol. I chose music. It calmed me. As a psychologist I used to play music for my clients and suggest different genres they might like. We don’t all like the same kind of music, but understanding the language of music is universal.”
John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. For more information visit www.GoMyStory.com.
