Adair Man's Vinyl Record Collection Keeps Growing

By Rick Wells, The News On 6

ADAIR, OK -- Few people have ever seen a record collection as big as the one Myrl Hall has accumulated at his home in Adair.

There are more than 10,000 vinyl records, which contain more than 107,000 songs, and the collection is still growing.

Bill Haley and the Comets is playing on a 60-yearold juke box that plays 78 rpm records. Myrl Hall and his wife Nelle have two working juke boxes in the house. The new one is about 50 years old

Both juke boxes are filled with records from his collection. Some were dropped off last weekend.

"It's amazing what people bring," said Myrl Hall, record collector. "No one wants them."

Hall probably has most of them, but he's not sure. He says he's gotten boxes of records from schools, radio station libraries, demolition companies and strangers who just know he collects them.

Some are rare. One by the a group called the Runaways was in a stack of records someone dropped off, and it's on the list of hardest to find recordings...

"It's 78th on their list," Hall said.

The collector has no idea where it came from or how long he's had it, but he researches his records as best he can and catalogs every one in a series of binders.

Most of the collection is in a building out behind the house. His favorites he has locked away in safes including some rare Edward R. Murrow news reports.

There is every conceivable kind of music. Every collection needs yakity sax. Myrl says he has about a dozen different ones.

Myrl Hall takes requests.  He says people will call and ask if he has a particular record, and can they come by and listen to it.

He usually says yes. Myrl says the memories the music brings back are too important to say no.