Photo: Jay Willett/WBZ NewsRadio
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Over a year after the passing of Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer, his nephew is honoring him by sharing his vinyl collection with his fans.
Stephen Dyer lives in Ohio, but he made the trip to Cambridge this past weekend to show off his uncle’s vinyl collection, consisting of around 20,000 classical records.
“He was a serious collector of classical vinyl records, especially vocal,” Stephen said.
Dyer opened up the collection to the public, allowing fans to look through the records and buy ones they want in a name-your-price fashion.
“I’m trying to give the Boston music community first crack at taking a look at taking a little piece of Richard with them,” he said.
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Hundreds of Dyer fans showed up on Saturday for the sale, with some even going above and beyond just to have a chance to look through the critic’s collection.
“I had a guy come in from New York, who took a 4 a.m. bus so he could come up here to go through the reel-to-reel tapes,” Stephen said.
Once all sales and donations are finalized, Dyer plans to digitize the rest of his uncle’s collection to preserve it for years to come.
Beyond sharing these records with Richard’s fans, Stephen was happy to flip through his uncle’s collection as a way to remember him.
“I also just love looking through records, so this is a lot of fun for me. It’ll always mean a lot to me that he meant so much to so many people,” he said. “He was a music critic, so he said mean things about people, but he never said an unkind word to me nor to my wife or my kids or anything like that. He was a wonderful guy, everybody loved him.”
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willett (@JayWillettWBZ) reports.