V.A. Boddie Recording Company: Cleveland, Ohio

From 1958 to 1993, Thomas and Louise Boddie’s
industrious Boddie Recording Company issued nearly
300 albums and 45s, recorded 10,000 hours of tape,
and remained in operation longer than any other
studio, pressing plant, or label group in the history of
Cleveland. Long forgotten even by the standards of the
chronically overlooked northeastern Ohio music scene,
Boddie was a fusion of its owner’s engineering genius and his limited economic means; its DIY recording
studio housed in a humble barn, churned night and
day to capture the sounds emanating from Cleveland’s
east side neighborhoods. The 58 tracks on these three CDs represent the best of the Boddies’ in-house Soul
Kitchen, Luau, and Bounty labels, which released an
unspoiled treasure trove of kitchen-sink eccentric soul,
fuzzbox funk, shoestring doo-wop, and haunted, eerily
hook-laden spirituals. Enclosed inside is a mountain of
office-styled ephemera: two massive booklets brimming
with detail on the Boddies and their artists; extensive
notes and scores of unpublished photos; a complete
detailed discography folio; reproduced fliers; and a
Boddie greeting card—all rendered with the handcrafted
charm that was the Boddie hallmark. Call it a selfcontained record industry crammed into one box.