DALLAS, TX.- Sandy Copeland says her husband Jim was a “quiet man.” Everywhere except in the music room.

There, for himself and special guests only, the sporting-goods magnate would spin the records that filled his sprawling collection – artists spanning John Coltrane to Black Sabbath, Etta James to the Velvet Underground, Rodriguez to The Stooges. Sandy, Jim’s wife of nearly 60 years, says her husband especially loved Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense, the concert film, most of all. Their grown grandchildren remember dancing to it as 5-year-olds.

Jim’s collection ranged from the popular to the esoteric, the influential to the unheralded – from A to Z, or at least double bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik to a test-pressing Led Zeppelin and every shake, rattle and roll in between. And he collected only the best versions of the best records – first pressings, radio promos, mono versions of stereo releases, signed copies, test pressings, shrink-wrapped gems. And only he knew where the records were located in the vast assemblage of nearly 8,000 records that filled the music room in their San Luis Obispo, California, home – how they were organized and why.

“You had to be invited into his music room to listen,” Sandy says now, a year after Jim’s death at 80. “The kids loved it when he asked them, especially the boys. They would bring their friends over as teens, and he would invite them in to listen to his music.”

Befitting Jim’s reputation as a philanthropist – so much so that San Luis Obispo Mayor Erica Stewart ordered flags on city property be flown at half-staff in his honor – his music will soon become available to anyone. Heritage offers nearly 300 albums from Jim Copeland’s Crush On Vinyl Ultimate Audiophile Archive in the May 11-14 Music Memorabilia Signature® Auction. This will be just the first of several auctions because, as Garry Shrum, Director of Entertainment & Music Memorabilia, recently said, “People’s heads would explode if we did it all at once.”

“I’ve been doing this for decades, and never before has a record collection like this ever come to auction,” Shrum says. “It has everything the collector could want, from the condition to the quality of the selections to the particular copies he had. These are in excellent condition. And Jim Copeland had everything, down to multiple copies of a single title. He bought the mono copy, the stereo copy, the DJ promo copy, the still-sealed copy, the German copy.”

When asked why her husband accumulated such an astonishing collection, most of it since 2000, Sandy says at first only that “Jim loved music.” But after a pause, she acknowledges it was much more than that.

“Whatever he did in his life, he strove to be the best and to do the best,” she says. “And for him, much of it was learning about the records. When looking for a record, he would do a lot of research. That was part of it, for sure, the learning.”

Anyone could own a copy of Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue, the moody, modal masterpiece filled with ubiquitous standards that remains the best-selling jazz album ever. But Jim owned the rare misprinted white-label mono promo copy with the flipped track listing. And he held two copies.

His collection hums with such rarities: a mono white-label promo copy of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, a dark red vinyl copy of Charlie Parker’s 1949 collection The Bird Blows the Blues, a retracted white-label promo copy of Queen’s 1980 Greatest Hits. And his copy of 1959’s strange brew Poetry for the Beat Generation, which paired Jack Kerouac’s readings with the piano playing of TV host Steve Allen, is the recalled Dot release – of which there are but 50 known copies.

Copeland’s collection is an alternative-universe version of the music lover’s library, one filled only with the secret, hidden and substitute versions of classics that were and should have been. This is likely the only time anyone will ever own the 1962 lost sessions of jazz pianist Freddie Redd; Jim Copeland, enamored of The Connection composer’s work, tracked down an acetate of the unreleased record that was likely shelved because of a dispute with Blue Note owner Alfred Lion.

“He had favorites from every genre,” Sandy says. “Jim was truly a huge music fan.” And a quiet man who liked it loud.