Big Ten Inch Record

Alright, Zoo Freaks, settle in and crack a cold one, because the Zoo Crew just dropped the needle on a number that still makes the room lean forward. Aerosmith's "Big Ten Inch Record," sitting right in the middle of Toys in the Attic, is the kind of dirty little swing the hippie and rock and roll biker DJs around here were born to spin. It is not a Steven Tyler original. It is a cover of a 1952 rhythm and blues tune written by Fred Weismantel and cut first by Bull Moose Jackson for King Records, with Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra behind him. Jackson's real name was Benjamin Jackson, out of Cleveland, a kid who started on violin, picked up the saxophone, and got his nickname because a bandmate swore he looked like a bull moose. Radio mostly would not touch the original. Too suggestive, the stations said, which is exactly why it aged so well.

The way it landed in Aerosmith's lap is pure 1970s Boston. Brad Whitford has said a friend out in Los Angeles was listening to Dr. Demento and mailed the band cassettes. Other accounts around the camp put the tape in the hands of a character they called Zunk Buker, the guy who kept them supplied and who happened to have good ears. Steven Tyler was grinding on lyrics for the album and needed a breather, so a cover took the pressure off. Joe Perry heard it and called it a classic blues lyric, the same family as "squeeze my lemon," the old stuff that never got much air and did not need any. Tom Hamilton has admitted he sat in the studio wondering why they were bothering with some old blues number. Then the piano walked in and the horns showed up, and he changed his mind.

Producer Jack Douglas knew a boogie-woogie piano player out of Canada named Scott Cushnie, who was blind, and brought him down to play on the track. Joey Kramer has said they started it as a two-guitar rock and roll thing, listening hard to Jackson's record, and ended up close to that original once the horn section joined. The words were not rewritten to be filthier. "Got me the strangest woman," "whip out my big ten inch," "suck on my big ten inch record of the band that plays the blues" were already sitting there in 1952. The pause before "record" is the whole joke. Ten-inch 78s were the everyday disc back then, so a square could pretend it was about shellac. Nobody in the room was pretending. Columbia put Toys in the Attic out on April 8, 1975. The album went on to sell in the millions, and this little swing number stayed a live favorite because, as Hamilton put it years later, people still love it and it is a blast to play.

Bull Moose Jackson had mostly stepped away from the bandstand by the 1960s and was working food service around Washington. In the 1980s a Pennsylvania outfit called the Flashcats started playing his song, tracked him down catering an event at Howard University, and got him back on a stage. He played his last show in Pittsburgh in April 1988 and died in Cleveland in July 1989. The record lived on because five guys from the Boston area had the good sense not to clean it up.

If you want the long road that led to that Record Plant session, it starts in lake-country New Hampshire, not in a boardroom. Steven Tyler, still Steven Tallarico in those days, was drumming and singing with a band called Chain Reaction that had opened for the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Yardbirds. Joe Perry was working a hamburger joint on the harbor in Sunapee one summer in the mid-1960s when Chain Reaction came through, loud and obnoxious, and left him to clean up a food fight. A few years later Tyler and future drummer Joey Kramer caught Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton's Jam Band at a club called The Barn. Tyler has said they could barely tune, then they hit Fleetwood Mac's "Rattlesnake Shake" with a groove better than anything he had been chasing. He told them he would join only if he could step out front and sing. They said yes.

The bunch moved into a cramped apartment at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, gear stacked in the hall so you had to turn sideways to reach the bathroom, every room a party room. Ray Tabano came in on second guitar, then Brad Whitford replaced him. Their first gig was a school gym in Mendon, Massachusetts, on November 6, 1970, set up because Perry's mother knew somebody at the school. Admission was pocket change. Tyler swiped a school shirt from the locker room and wore it. He and Perry argued about volume before the night was over, which became a house tradition. They rehearsed where they could, including space around Boston University, and Tyler picked up bakery shifts to keep the lights on. Clive Davis caught the bar band in 1972 and signed them to Columbia. The self-titled debut arrived in 1973, Get Your Wings in 1974, and then Toys in the Attic, the one that made the rest of the country catch up to what the Boston rooms already knew.

That is the band the Zoo Crew keeps in the crates, the same five who could swing a 1952 dirty blues without sanding the edges off. If you are riding with the Zoo Freaks tonight, you are in the right room. Pull up a chair at THE ZOO and stay for the deep cuts.

The band still keeps the porch light on at the official Aerosmith website, where the old AeroHistory notes on Toys in the Attic still list "Big Ten Inch Record" right between "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion." You can also find them on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The Blue Army still gathers in the public Aero Force One Facebook group, the same fan-club name that grew up around the Toys in the Attic years. Spin it again, Freaks. The ten-inch is the whole story, and the record is the alibi.