History: Kalamazoo’s First Record Store

Kalamazoo’s First Record Store

by Keith Howard, Kalamazoo Public Library

Before the days of Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, vinyl records were all the rage. But that venerable old format had all but died out by the mid-1990s, thanks to CDs, MP3s, and streaming services. Lately, however, there’s been a resurgence of interest in vinyl and sales of vinyl records has seen a dramatic increase. If you’re a record buyer in Kalamazoo these days, stores like Green Light Music and Satellite Records, or perhaps the Kalamazoo Record & CD Show should be familiar. If you were buying music in the 1970s and 1980s, you probably recall the likes of Flipside, Boogie, Music Express, Bop Stop, For a Mere Song, Recordland, Soul Town, Looney Tunes, Believe in Music, Bach to Bach, and Discount Den. Meyer Music, Grinnell’s, Dodd’s, Treva Reed, and others preceded those, but that raises the question… what was Kalamazoo’s fi rst record store? Kalamazooans began reading about this thing called the phonograph back in 1878 when the Gazette carried a detailed description of Thomas Edison’s “Most Wonderful Invention of the Age.” In July that year, “The Talking Wonder” made its fi rst appearance in town with a three-day exhibition at the Ladies Library, where a 25¢ ticket (roughly $6 today) was required just to see the thing. Most folks simply wrote it off as a toy that “would never amount to anything.” Indeed, it would be another decade or so before “talking machines” would become a commercial reality and records (as we know them) would be available to the general public. Although phonograph records and the machines that played them were growing in popularity, sheet music still dominated the industry at the turn of the 20th century. In those days, if you liked a song, you might rush down to your local music store, buy the song sheet, and try to recreate the tune for yourself. That soon changed, however, as furniture stores, hardware stores, and musical instrument stores began to devote valuable fl oor space to phonographs and phonograph records. In June 1911, Kalamazoo’s popular bandleader Charles Fischer opened the Fischer Music Department on the third fl oor of Gilmore’s Department Store with what he claimed was “the largest collection of classical, operatic, and popular music in Kalamazoo.” Fischer’s was often the fi rst store in town to stock hit records and they spared little expense in promoting them. When “Livery Stable Blues” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band (often considered the fi rst ever jazz record) was released in April 1917, Fischer published a telegram from the manufacturer in the newspaper just to prove his store would have it in stock. Although other stores sold records, in many ways, Fischer’s could be considered Kalamazoo’s fi rst true record store.

Record sales grew strongly during the fi rst decades of the 20th century, from 4 million units per year in 1900 to 100 million per year by 1920. By the mid1920s, improvements in electrical recording technology led to better-sounding records, which helped fuel public passion for recorded music. By 1929 annual global record sales topped 200 million. Today, recorded music industry revenues exceed $23 billion.

Over the years Kalamazoo has been known for many things musical; guitars, organs, and perhaps even records, but it’s the community’s rich legacy of entrepreneurship, education, philanthropy, and a deep connection with the music itself that continues to inspire.

More at kpl.gov