Thomas Eugene Patrick Fay

His passion started at Skippy White’s record store in Roxbury, MA, flipping 45 RPM records like some baseball kids do, holding them on your thumb looking for the Holy Grail: So and So on the Red Spark label, Nolan Strong on Fortune, James Brown on green Federal, and , of course, Little Richard on yellow Specialty.

A young man from a textile mill family in Lawrence, MA, he met Jack Kennedy and cried for Norma Rae and Ray Charles, went west to discover and save nearly all of the original fruit crate labels you've ever seen on your grandma’s kitchen wall, such as “King Pelican” and “Piggy Pears.”

Exploring CA, WA and OR, seeking out old California farm owners and dropping their names when he was hounded by fruit picking bosses as he was looking for the old packing house where the unused labels were still stored in mint condition bundles of hundreds and stacks of thousands.

He saved these stone lithography pieces of art and American history from the dump, sometimes at the dump, a curator of a vanishing art form. He was the author of “California Dreaming:The Golden Age of Label Art.”

He was a jazz musician and Rhythm King, a raconteur extraordinaire, pop culture collector nonpareil excellence, member of the Knights of Columbus, a West Point candidate, a tomcat lover and a mad dog postcard publisher, [email protected].

He's Out of The West (80's company) and into the stratosphere singing his yearly gift to us all, the Santa Rhumba.

Ladies and gentlemen, our Bad Boy, Mr.Tom Fay, has LTB. It's the beat.

April 25, 1945 -- October 24, 2022.