Collectors Collect: Greg Wooten and His Love for Rare Vinyl LPs
An unexpected combination of a musical background, appreciation for design, the thrill of discovery, and just getting a little weird about it all informs this Angeleno’s rare vinyl and timepiece collecting.
By Mike Espindle
Executive Editor
Growing up in Cleveland, the now-Los Angeles-based Greg Wooten was something of a bass wunderkind, playing in multiple regional-favorite bands (including a stint in a band called Slam Bamboo with a young Trent Reznor as his bandmate). Moreover, in the early 1990s, he got to tour with a version of Humble Pie fronted by original band member Jerry Shirley.
Naturally, having this background in music, he always sought out and collected vinyl LPs on some level. However, when he relocated to Los Angeles in 2011, his record collecting went to a new level.
“When I moved to Los Angeles, it was a whole new world, and my vinyl collecting took off,” he told us. “With so much available out here, between 2011 and now, I’ve bought somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 records.”
Now, he DJs in Los Angeles under the moniker Uncle Power and still records music as 1x4x9 (in fact, he contributed the music background to the video linked to this article).
Two Kinds of Picking
In addition to performing music, Wooten also began a sideline as a “picker” of vintage modern design. As such, he visited estate sales, flea markets, and the like, looking for collectible decor and art finds.
Eventually, that passion transformed into a successful retail operation, and he moved to Manhattan to found a series of successful gallery/boutiques, making design his primary livelihood.
Opportunities on the West Coast called, and currently, Wooten is the co-owner (along with Lorca Cohen) of The Window, a design gallery along Melrose Avenue in LA’s Design District. Moreover, he is also one of the founders of 20th Century art and design auction house Billings.
Naturally, his educated eye for curation and experience in understanding collector-market values have informed his vinyl-collecting interest, but these qualities touch all of his collecting activities, including watches.
Simply put, Greg Wooten collects what he loves, and what he loves is undeniably cool.
From the Scholarly...
Although high-value albums are by no means exclusive to jazz recordings, some of the most valuable vinyl out there are jazz rarities, first pressings, and the like. And Wooten was able to amass a very solid collection of albums that he not only loved but would also grow in value and desirability.
“One of my ‘holy grails’ is a Milford Graves and Don Pullen LP with a hand-painted cover (rereleased recently as The Complete Yale Concert, 1966) that these two jazz musicians recorded in 1966 at Yale University,” he told us.
“Each cover is unique; they estimate there are only about 40 or 50 of these originals out there, and mine is the only one that scholars believe was painted by the musicians on both sides of the jacket,” Wooten explained. “I was honored that my original copy was used and referenced to produce the recent rerelease.”
To the Surreal...
However, with Wooten’s creative mind, his (nearly) daily practice of hunting through record bins to find the established good stuff led to a wholly different version of album collecting: LPs with jackets that were drawn on, defaced, and otherwise marred by their previous owners; some intriguingly and artfully so.
“I came across a copy of Jefferson Airplanes’ Bark album with all these hand-drawn marijuana leaves,” he recalled. “I looked at it as a kind of evocative piece of folk art.”
Since many of these previously owned LP jackets were intriguing and artfully done, he began stockpiling interesting, funny, and unique marked-up records as a lark (which was fairly easy to do because defacing a record jacket automatically reduces its overall value).
Then, in 2019, he published a book called Marred For Life featuring photography of the best of this collection and, arguably, created a new collector market for defaced LPs. “It’s a fun duality: focusing on the rarest of the rare collectibles but also becoming known as the guy buying defaced albums, too,” Wooten confessed. “I currently have over 5,000 of these special altered-cover albums.”
On the Wrist
Wooten’s fascination with wristwatches is also informed and tempered by his curatorial eye, showing a keen interest in design and an offbeat, out-of-the-box attitude. Thus, his timepiece acquisitions have continued to lean into the rare and the unexpected.
“I come in from the left field, a little bit, on watch collecting. My interest in design and aesthetics spills over into my watches,” he explained. “But there’s also some very personal connection to my watches.”
Case in point: He inherited a vintage Wittnauer “2000” with a particularly complex yet pleasingly graphic perpetual calendar dial function from his father. “This Wittnauer is very special to me as a memento of my dad,” Wooten told us.
Overall, his collection leans into some of the rarer, 1970s-era bold case “muscle” watches awash with color (like his radiant vintage Sorna Chrono). He also has some accessible but, again, graphically potent Seikos.
His latest addition to his timepiece stable? A 2020 Rolex Milgauss, which is sort of like a “last of the V8 interceptors” for the famously anti-magnetic watch (although rumors persist about Rolex re-launching the discontinued model down the line).
“This is my everyday watch; I love it,” Wooten beamed. “Traditional Rolex collectors might consider it an outlier, but I love the odd, scientific, anti-magnetic backstory; I love the scale of it, the blue face. It doesn’t scream ‘Rolex.’”
Proof of Passion
More recently, Wooten selected 3,000 of some of his most desirable vinyl and, with the help of North Carolina auction house Carolina Soul, had a very successful online auction of his treasures. “I was thrilled by the results. We set a couple of world records,” Wooten said.
However, while confirmation of his impeccable taste and procuring skills via a successful sale are all well and good, for Wooten, the attraction of collecting, be it vinyl or watches, continues to be about ‘what’s next’? What treasures are waiting for him in a bin, an auction, or a flea market that will move the needle from “that looks cool” to “I’ve got to have it.”
“It’s funny; I’ve, essentially, been a collector my whole life. My aesthetic has become more focused over time, but that moment of discovery – that moment you’ve stumbled upon something – you feel that energy. The feeling you get is pure exhilaration,” Wooten unveiled to us. “I never lose the excitement and passion about what’s going to come out of a box. It’s a positive addiction. I’m always excited about the next score that lurks down the road.”
(Photography and Video by David Haskell)