Workers from the old CBS Records plant in Carrollton have a warm spot for Michael Jackson, who gave them tons of overtime and a sense of ownership of one of history's greatest pop culture phenomena.
In November 1982, Jackson's album "Thriller" was released. "From Day One, we knew it would be big, but that sucker just kept going and going," Bob Myers, the retired vice president who ran the plant, recalled Friday.
"We were working seven days a week, three eight-hour shifts for eight months," said Myers, 71, who lives in Carrollton and still has the LP in his collection. "We couldn't make them fast enough at first. It was quite a sight, a well-oiled machine."
It was the world's biggest record and cassette manufacturing plant, with 1,500 employees, cranking out the best-selling album ever.
"Probably 40 million went out in the first year-and-a-half to two years," Myers said. That run was about 60 percent LPs and 40 percent casettes. CDs were not yet a factor. Later runs of the album were mostly cassettes.
In all, he said, the plant manufactured 68 million copies of "Thriller." Estimates of worldwide sales range upward of 100 million.
Jackson never toured the plant but he sent several notes and mementos thanking the workers, Myers said.
In the late 1980s, CBS Records was sold to Sony Music. The manufacturing plant was closed in 2001, as LPs were largely a memory and cassettes were losing out to CDs.
"Still, to this day, if the workers talk about anything [about their time there], they talk about the Michael Jackson record," Myers said.
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