“Back then, young boys had two directions they could go in
life,” John says. “One is not a good direction. I look back at that
as probably one of the smartest things they could do.”
He left his home in Los Angeles, enlisted in the U.S. Navy
and was dispatched to the USS Ticonderoga at the height of
the Vietnam War. While helicopters took off to drop Agent Or-
ange, he and his friend, Dave, put on shows for fellow sailors,
changing the lyrics of popular songs at the time as part of a
comedy routine that drew the attention of USO performers like
Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton.
“Johnny gets out of the service, out of the Navy, in 1966, and
has enough money from a car wreck when he was a kid to fool
around for about a year,” Dilyn says. But he blew that money on
his friends, and after a while, the money ran out.
With his wallet thinning, John moved to Sacramento to be
closer to his brother. He visited an employment agency where
he was interviewed by the owner of Canterbury Records, who,
like John, was a Navy veteran.
Canterbury bought John, then 22, a brand-new Dodge
Monaco station wagon and gave him a route delivering about
$5,000 worth of records up and down Northern California.
Back then, records were primarily sold in furniture stores that
sold console stereos, drugstores and some grocery and depart-
ment stores like Raley’s and Woolworths.
“(The records) brought life to that store, the employees
loved it, and they wanted to see what you’re going to bring
in, what the latest thing was,” John says. “And the communi-
ty liked it too. This rack might hold 600 albums, and in three
weeks, you’d come back and half of them were gone. It’s a good
turnover.”
While delivering records, he met Dilyn. “He thought he
was really cool,” Dilyn says. “He smoked. He always carried his
f lask. He always thought he was a cool dude. Girls were always
“The liquidators keep saying it won’t fully
hit (John and Dilyn Radakovitz) for the first
few weeks. They’ll see the (sales) numbers,
and things will feel like they’re still going,
and then they’ll start to see the store
shelves empty out. They’ll sell the fixtures.
And that’s when it’ll feel real.”
Andrew Radakovitz, son of Dimple Records owners
John and Dilyn Radakovitz, in July
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