Jack White Hid Singles Inside Furniture And It Took A Decade To Find Two

Prior to forming The White Stripes, Jack White was for a short time in a band called The Upholsterers, with friend and mentor Brian Muldoon who he had worked alongside as an actual upholsterer in Detroit. As the legend goes, the pair hid 100 vinyl copies of their second single inside their reupholstered furniture, two of which have just been uncovered.

According to White’s label Third Man Records, two people have come forward claiming to have found two separate copies of The Upholsterers’ second vinyl single Your Furniture Was Always Dead … I Was Just Afraid To Tell You, inside their upholstered furniture.

In a 2012 interview with KROQ, White confirmed the duo attempted to combine the worlds of upholstery and music, culminating in the idea of hiding their records in the furniture. It was to be the start of White’s long history of unconventional vinyl releases.

“I used to believe that upholsterers should leave messages for each other because we’re the only ones that see the inside of furniture,” he explained. “First I would write jokes or talk about the client who was a jerk who owned this chair. Then I started writing poetry and started getting more elaborate.”

“By that time Brian Muldoon had his 25th anniversary so he wanted to do something special,” he continued. “We had a band called The Upholsterers so we released a 7″. We made 100 copies of a 7″ on clear vinyl with transparency sleeve so you couldn’t even see it if you x-rayed it. We left those in a hundred pieces of furniture that he upholstered that year… to one day be found, or maybe never be found.”

More than a decade on, at least some of those copies now seem to have been uncovered, and there’s still 98 to go. Third Man Records have also shared the single’s cover art, created by noted Detroit artist Gordon Newton. What will happen to these unearthed singles remains to be seen.

Check out the artwork and listen to The Upholsterers first single Apple of My Eye, released traditionally by Sympathy for the Record Industry in 2000, below.

Watch: The Upholsterers – Apple of My Eye

The Upholsterers – em>Your Furniture Was Always Dead … I Was Just Afraid To Tell You cover art via Third Man Records.

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