Cutout Bin: Gary Bradford's I'm Not Handicapped... Just Inconvenienced

Nick DiFonzo July 9, 2009 12:30PM

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Cutout Bin has been looking for this record for a while! After being introduced to Baytown's Gary Bradford through his first album, Sings For You and You and You, (which you can see on our Web site here), we've had our eyes out for this later record. With the great title I'm Not Handicapped... Just Inconvenienced, COB finally found it at our neighborhood thrift store last week - for 20 cents, no less!. We also picked up yet another copy of Sings For You.... It's one of those records we can't pass up even though we already own, like, three copies.

Gary (Dee) Bradford was, as described in his bio, "born without arms and having hands at his shoulders from birth." His twin brother, similarly handicapped/inconvenienced, died in infancy. But Gary went on to a career as a musical minister, touring the nation and giving performances at churches and conventions. He has performed at the Southern Baptist Convention, Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA, and on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. He released his latest CD (best COB can tell) in about 2002.

Since then, Gary has been in the news for suing the University of Houston for violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act over a professor's refusal to provide assistance taking notes. As a result, he was forced to drop out just hours shy of his music degree. KHOU did a report on Gary's lawsuit (with video), as did the Chronicle.

We still haven't been able to find out if Gary won the lawsuit or not.

Although COB had seen this record before on their websites, we'd never seen the back cover. Imagine our delight to find Gary with a ventriloquist dummy! As any longtime viewer of BizarreRecords knows, Christian ventriloquist records are one of our favorite album-cover genres!

Is it possible that Gary sings with his dummy on the record? You'll have to listen to find out!

Nick DiFonzo is a Houston-based record collector and author of Seriously Bad Album Covers! See his Web site at www.bizarrerecords.com.