Editor's Note: See Randy Fox's story this week on Grimey's Too, and his past stories on Phonoluxe, The Great Escape, Ernest Tubb and The Groove.
A little less than a year ago I began writing about Nashville’s record stores. It all started with the idea of doing one story about just one store: Phonoluxe Records on Nolensville Road. I’d been shopping at Phonoluxe since they opened in 1987, and for a short while in the early 1990s, I worked there part-time when my day job was just up the street. I knew there was a great story to be told. Owner Mike Smyth was a treasure trove of great stories and knowledge about early rock music and rhythm & blues, but his aversion to self-promotion meant that few knew his background or how the store came to be. And even though used CD sales had taken a nose-dive in the past 10 years, the store’s sales were still good since Phonoluxe had gotten back to Smyth’s original vision: a quirky shop that catered to record collectors.
That first story ran in the Scene last March, and I had such a good time writing it that my next thought was to tell the stories of Nashville’s longtime survivors and newer upstarts of the record biz. After all, if you looked outside Nashville, the story everywhere was that brick-and-mortar stores were prehistoric creatures that had long since sunk into the digital-sales tar pits. And the few that remained were just struggling to gulp air before sliding down to their doom.
Meanwhile here in Nashville, we still have a number of great record stores, despite the dire prognostications of music industry doom emanating from Music Row. Almost all the chain stores were wiped out by the mass extinction events of the past decade, but three longtime shops celebrated significant anniversaries in 2012 — 25 years, 35 years and 65 years respectively for Phonoluxe, The Great Escape and Ernest Tubb Record Shop — and the younger kids, Grimey’s and The Groove, are both going gangbusters from the revival of interest in vinyl records.
