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Credit: Zach Rudisin
Inside the secret vinyl record collection hidden in The White House
When one thinks of The White House, you usually consider it as the home of American politics, a place where the corridors of power have seen and heard countless explosive nuggets of information that are not fit for general consumption. Ordinarily, because of its purpose, you would not think that The White House is a place where good music is appreciated, but allegedly it is. According to one very well-connected man, The White House even has its own secret vinyl collection.
John Chuldenko is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. His stepfather is Carter’s son Jack, and duly, he’s been on many family trips with the Carters. John recalls that it was on one of these vacations that he first heard about a mystery record collection that The White House library boasts.
His uncle Jeff, Carter’s youngest son, was discussing an incident that happened during a party at The White House during his father’s premiership. Jeff, who was in his 20s at the time, was hanging out in one of the upstairs rooms on the property with some friends, playing a Rolling Stones album, 1973’s Goats Head Soup, and the notorious song ‘Star Star’.
The group were having a whale of a time before the door burst open. Stood there was then First Lady Rosalynn Carter and Second Lady Joan Mondale, and Jeff implied that they reacted to the explicit nature of the music with disdain, but no definitive account of their reaction was ever provided to Chuldenko.
“Wait, what do you mean there were records there?” Chuldenko responded to Jeff’s anecote in surprise. “Where did you get records?”
Uncle Jeff then revealed that there is an official collection of vinyl kept in the building. “So I’m like, ‘The White House has its own record collection?'” Chuldenko said. “‘Like, permanently?'”
However, Jeff maintained that was all he knew, and then the conversation moved elsewhere. So when Chuldeko returned to his home in Los Angeles, he knew he had to find out more, “That started me down this rabbit hole”.
Chuldenko is a big collector of vinyl, so naturally, he was captivated by the story of this mysterious collection. A writer, director and producer as his day job, he did wonder whether the story would make for an excellent documentary, but, his primary focus was on finding out more. It wasn’t easy though, information was sparse apart from a handful of short articles online.
Going straight for the gold, Chuldenko got in touch with the library, specifically the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, given his family ties. An archivist at the organisation then passed him information for a member of staff in The White House curator’s office, and he quickly got a reply. “Basically the response was ‘Yeah, I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but we’ll do some digging.'”
Chuldenko thought that was it, but not long after, he received a follow-up: “Dear John: Yes, we do have a record collection stored at a secure offsite facility. Because it’s secure, I cannot pass along the exact location of where the records are being stored.”
“I must have read it seven times,” Chuldenko said. “I mean, at that point, all they had said was ‘We have it.’ It’s not ‘Hey, come see it.’ It was just: ‘It exists.'”
Watch Chuldenko tell his full story below.
