Bulgarian Diva At Betty's Resale Shop

I picked up this record because the woman on the cover looks exactly like Rita Tushingham, who I had a crush on after watching The Knack And How To Get It.

Don't ask me...I know nothing about this record. Everything is in Cyrillic except for "Made In Bulgaria" on the record label. Click on the image above if you can read it. (it's Lili Ivanova...thanks everybody)

The record is a sad and melancholy mix of traditional melodies blended with 70's arena rock ballads. I find this song quite haunting.

Unknown Bulgarian Diva - ??? (mp3)

I found this record at Betty's Resale Shop on Lincoln Avenue on Chicago's north side. Betty's was a strange junk shop operated by the feeble 75 year-old Betty and her white trash daughter. The whole place was a mound of garbage spanning two storefronts, a maze of water-damaged crap and piss-soaked furniture.

There were layers and layers of stuff piled- years and years worth, I'd imagine. I once dug through a pile for an hour, trying to excavate an old pump organ I saw way in the back. But honestly, most of Betty's wares were junk, absolute worthless crap. The big pile of moldy and filth encrusted records yielded only a handful of finds over the years I went there. If you looked hard enough through the mounds of crap, you could see various secret rooms such as a filthy kitchen and a little hovel for the dog to hang out. They had a few birds in cages ensconced in all that garbage as well.

Betty was always stationed at the front of the heap and her daughter would be wildly zinging around the store, a real nervous type, fiddling with this and that, flirting with the guys they hired for furniture moves. I still kick myself for never bringing in a recorder to Betty's, because every visit was priceless as Betty and her daughter would constantly fight. It wasn't petty squabling, they really went at it at top volume. If it was quiet in there, I would linger around just to hear one of their ridiculous arguments.

Gentrification eventually came to the neighborhood and Betty's was bulldozed down. (pictured above) R.I.P. Betty's