Mind you, my 45s were not tasteless, just occasionally silly and loud. My first ones were from the late 1950s, and they had been my parents', but I decided they were mine, and my parents were so glad to have a kid that liked to play DJ at age two that they didn't argue.

Then, my mom's brother, Uncle Tom, started picking up batches of cutout 45s at twenty to the dollar. By age five, I had amassed 300 singles, a few of which were hits, most of which were not. Some deserved to be hits, and part of me understood by then that good promotion often trumps good music.

So, I was living large, with a stereo record changer and more records than I could play in one day, when a visit to the Alco Dime Store in Shoals, Indiana introduced me to the world of 78 rpm records.

I bought the stack of ten they had and played them incessantly. Because they were made of shellac, they tended to chip in my hands, and one of my kindergarten classmates sat on one. However, my favorite of all, "Why Wait" by Pérez Prado, is still part of my collection after 38 years.

Some of my singles that were flops were nevertheless recorded by future big names in the music business. Jeff Barry, for example, went on to be the third-best-selling songwriter in the pop era, a Songwriters' Hall of Fame inductee with an RIAA Record of the Year ("Sugar, Sugar") and a Grammy for Record of the Year ("I Honestly Love You") under his belt. Tommy Boyce went on to do significant work with the Monkees. Marlin Greene co-produced "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge (and played the guitar on it, regardless of what anyone else claims).

Then came tragedy. Boy-sized tragedy, perhaps, but it was brutal. As our family grew, I was told to put my box of records on the enclosed back porch. The sun got to them, and more than 100 singles and LPs warped beyond playability. I salvaged a good number of the singles, but I was sure I would never hear "Twinkle Toes" by Lennie LaCour again. Tragedy, you say?

What helped me was the CD revolution. Everyone started putting their master tapes on CD. The first melted single I was able to recover (in glorious scratch-free quality) was "People Sure Act Funny (When They Get a Lot of Money)" by Titus Turner.

Because I am blessed (or cursed) with an exceptional memory, I have been able to compile a list of missing songs. Some have come out on CD: "¿Dónde está Santa Claus?" by Augie Ríos and "The Wheel" by Bill Black's Combo. Other 45s that I still own were transferred and even remastered, including work by Buddy Sheppard and the Holidays, Jerry Jackson and Jeff Barry. There is nothing like hearing the crackles disappear from a song you have played on vinyl 5000 times (minimum).

Now, as I wait for songs to come out on CD, I forge ahead with purchases of the 45s if there is no other option. Recently, I recovered a song I did not know I had lost. I was thinking about the collection, hoping to put together more pieces of the puzzle, when a 45 label popped into my head: Swan Records. I got online and found a discography of all Swan releases. I looked at each title carefully until I found one that just had to be one I had owned: "Skin Divin'" by Eddie Rambeau. And it all came back: I knew the melody of the chorus and some of the lyrics just by having my memory jogged. When I bought the 45 a week later, my memory of the melody was in the correct musical key, 35 years later.

My companion interest in recording technology has given me the ability to get my 45s onto CD, and now I have 66 songs digitized. While I don't listen to them daily, as I did when I was three, I do pull them out occasionally. Now, I would like to share some of these intriguing, if not spectacular, tunes, and tell you what I know about the artists and their availability.

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