PHOTO: Joe Mabel [ jmabel@speakeasy.org ]

GOLDEN OLDIES
201 NE 45th St.
Seattle, WA 98105
TEL: 206.547.2260
EMAIL: oldies@goldenoldies-records.com
HOURS: Mon-Sat 8 a.m. - 7 p.m.; Sun 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.
VINYL/CDs/CASSETTES/8-TRACKS • BUY/SELL/TRADE
[store website]

When I walk into Golden Oldies on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in May, the store’s owner and founder Dean Silverstone is standing behind the front counter.

“One moment,” he says. “I’m recording a record for a customer.”

It only takes a moment of poking around the store’s massive inventory of vinyl to realize I’ll never need to venture to another record store for as long as I live. Everything I will ever need is here: Nat King Cole and Etta James, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, John Wayne. Spoken word records featuring black history, politics and, of course, a diverse selection of circus music and sound effects.

Golden Oldies has been the go-to store for Seattle record collectors since records were the main form of purchasable music. For almost 40 years, the store has existed on a little corner of Northeast 45th Street and Second Avenue Northeast in Wallingford. With an arsenal of over 10 million records on vinyl, it is pretty much impossible to go into this store and come out without exactly what you were looking for. The store houses every genre of music, from classic rock to hip-hop, early jazz to 70s punk. It’s records range in date from the 1800s to albums released this month.

“We buy everything that comes through the front door.”

There has recently been an increased interest in vinyl in the US, however Silverstone says Seattle has never lost its interest in vinyl. Golden Oldies, which will be 40 years old in July, is the oldest record store in Seattle.

“When we first opened the store we were just dealing with 45s,” said Silverstone. “After one week in business we sold out our entire inventory. So we decided to sell LPs too.”

Silverstone says the store gets most of its inventory from walk-ins who are looking to sell their old records. “We buy everything that comes through the front door,” Silverstone said. “We buy about 3,000 records every week, and only sell about 300 of those. The rest aren’t good enough quality. We guarantee every record, including the cover.”

Golden Oldies has a customer base all over the world. Fifty percent of its business is mail-order, customers place orders via email, telephone or even snail mail. “We have customers from the UK, Japan and France, where vinyl never went out of style,” Silverstone said. “People from all over fly in to Seattle to see the store.” He says the store has a customer in Italy who buys the lower quality records in bulk.

The store allows customers to submit ”˜want lists’ to its staff, who, if by some mysterious fluke the store doesn’t have the items on stock, will search for the items and alert the customer when it comes in. This service is free of charge, and customers aren’t under obligation to buy anything on the want list after it comes in.

Silverstone has seen his inventory and customer base change over the last four decades. “When we first opened up Frank Sinatra was the rage, but the people who come in now probably don’t know who Frank Sinatra is,” Silverstone said. “Right now Stevie Ray Vaughn is the rage. Young people are just finding out about his music. When they find out about him they want to buy all of his records.” He says there is always a demand for something different. However, there is always a big demand for musical staples like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan. And while Silverstone says his customer base has always ranged in age from 15–35, he has seen more younger people come through his door in recent years.

While Golden Oldies specializes in vinyl, especially hard to find and out of print, it also carries a wide variety of cassette tapes, CDs and 8 tracks.

TEXT AND PHOTOS (BELOW) BY LYDIA SPRAGUE








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