At 83, Bob Koester opens his newest record store (and how it compares to Jazz Record Mart)
Delmark Records owner and founder of the now defunct Jazz Record Mart, Bob Koester, opened a new store at Delmark Records
studio and warehouse in the Horner Park neighborhood on May 2, 2016.
By Howard Reich
May 3, 2016
It's not nearly as big as the old store, and it lacks the high-profile downtown address.
But the new shop that Jazz Record Mart founder Bob Koester has opened at his Delmark Records studio, 4121 N. Rockwell St., certainly has enough funky character, dusty ambience and offbeat inventory to keep jazz and blues connoisseurs knocking at his door.
In February, Koester was forced to close his famous shop at 27 E. Illinois St. "because the rent is killing us," he told me at the time. When he sold the contents of the Jazz Record Mart, and its celebrated name, he figured that was about it for his life in retail. Delmark Records would continue cutting new records and selling old ones online, but the store was history.
A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion, however. Though Wolfgang's Vault — a Reno, Nev., business — officially bought all of Koester's CDs, LPs, "record bins, all the artwork and everything," as he described it back then, the company left behind some of the store's accoutrements.
"I had to pay $3,000 to have the rest hauled away, so I moved some of them here," Koester said Monday, standing in what used to be the front room of Delmark Records.
"If they'd taken the fixtures … then maybe I wouldn't have done this," added Koester, referring to bins that hold CDs, LPs, 78s, cassettes and just about anything else that carries recorded sound.
"When I got the fixtures, I figured I could do it."
So Koester and colleagues set up the bins and have been filling them with record collections Koester has acquired plus, of course, a robust line of Delmark product. A new sign in the window announces "Delmark Records Music Shop. Selling CDs, Vinyl LPs, Books, DVDs and more!"
True, the new store — with less than 1,000 square feet — is but a fraction of the 5,000 square feet that made 27 E. lllinois St. a magnet for record collectors from across the city and around the globe. And yet "new" space feels remarkably like the old, and not only because of the worn-out interior and too-narrow aisles.
Where else, after all, are you going to find in a single room vintage LPs by bluesmen Sunnyland Slim and Roosevelt Sykes, jazz legends Barney Bigard and Art Hodes, experimenters Roscoe Mitchell and Josh Berman — and literally thousands more?
As Koester was pricing records and rearranging them in the bins, customers trickled in.
"I was really disappointed when they closed," said Paul Carr, who picked up CDs by former Chicago tenor saxophone master Ed Petersen and Chicago guitarist Bobby Broom with the Deep Blue Organ Trio.
"I just saw on Facebook last night (that the Delmark store had opened), and 12 hours later, I'm here," added Carr. "I'll come here a lot now. I think it's great, because it's really a treasure to the city. I hope they'll be able to plump up the inventory."
Koester intends to do just that. Even with what's there now, it would take a lifetime or two to listen to it all.
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