I first heard Brady Jefcoat's name about a year ago, while working on this story. In the process of shadowing Marshall Wyatt on his record-collecting rounds, I wound up in the basement of Jefcoat's house and spent a few hours with Wyatt going through Jefcoat's record collection before it was to be auctioned off. I was amazed to see all the vintage record players and jukeboxes Jefcoat had collected and restored, scores of them in every conceivable style.
"Oh, this is nothing," Wyatt said with a nonchalant shrug. "There are a bunch more at the Jefcoat Museum over in Murfreesboro."
That sounded like my kind of place, so I trekked on over to Murfreesboro one recent Saturday to check out the Brady C. Jefcoat Museum of Americana -- as wonderfully weird a place as I've ever visited, a converted school building stuffed chock full of items Jefcoat acquired and restored over several decades of obsessive collecting. And if I had my way, I'd still be there playing with all of it, a cache that includes 264 record players.
For more, see the story in Sunday's paper.
