Every jazz fan knows the feeling: you’re digging through crates of old records in a charity shop or flea market, fingers dusty, expectations low, but quietly hoping that something rare might turn up.
Most of the time, you find the usual suspects—albums you already own, compilations with odd artwork, records too scratched to save. But every once in a while, you get lucky.
That’s what happened to Angelina Palumbo, who recently picked up a jazz LP from a Goodwill store in the US for just $3.
The record itself might have been a great find on its own—but what she discovered inside the sleeve took things to a whole new level…
Tucked inside the packaging were two additional records from 1954, containing spoken love-letters between an serviceman in the Air Force and his wife.
“The husband is saying that he loves and misses her and he thinks about her often. The wife, I believe, is saying that she works at the New Brighton Armory.”
This short video captures that story beautifully.
After the story broke, CBS Minnesota helped track down the daughter-in-law of the couple so Angelina could hand back this piece of family history.
“It made me really happy that we’re able to kind of have full circle, full closure” she said.
The Thrill of the Hunt
Jazz collectors and enthusiasts will tell you: the joy isn’t just in the listening—it’s in the hunt.
That moment when your fingers land on something you’ve never seen before. That twinge of excitement when you slide out the vinyl and discover a first pressing, or a forgotten label, or a set of liner notes written in longhand.
Sometimes, the story is right there in the grooves. Other times, it’s in what people left behind: old ticket stubs, love notes, handwritten corrections, or—as in Angelina’s case—an unexpected piece of memorabilia.
It raises the question: how many of these personal jazz time capsules are still out there?