Music in the Magic City

Published on September 16, 2018 at 8:08 p.m.

https://www.samford.edu/departments/oral-history/projects/samwav/Music-in-the-Magic-City.mp3

"That's where the great part of the job, for us, is where you're making these connections and you're meeting people from all over the country and they have all these different diverse tastes, because we always ask, 'Is there anything particular?' because we're trying to figure out who they are. . . really what we're doing is we're trying to establish a personal connection."

Chapters

Introduction: The Resurgence of Records

Michelle Little and Claire Davis introduce the topic of vinyl records in a digital age and, with Chase Trautwein, discuss possible reasons for the revival of analog audio.

Play Segment

Marian McKay and Charlemagne Records

Marian McKay shares the origins of her record store, Charlemagne Records, Birmingham’s oldest record store, and offers insight vinyl as an art and as a facilitator of community.

Play Segment

Gary Bourgeois and Jimmy Griffin and Renaissance Records

Gary Bourgeois and Jimmy Griffin of Renaissance Records reiterate the importance of community and personal connection in the record business.

Play Segment

Eric and Eugene Bates and Bates Brothers Recording

Switching gears from record stores to a recording studio, Eric and Eugene Bates, founders of Bates Brothers Recording, talk about the importance of “people skills” in recording. Michelle Little and Claire Davis wrap up with some final thoughts on analog’s popularity.

Play Segment

Transcript

[HARWELL GOODWIN DAVIS: He stated that he had been appointed to suggest a
president for Howard College.

EUNICE ROGERS: And so there was a lot of industry in Bessemer when I grew up, a
lot of progressiveness. However, it was still a typical, small, Southern town.

OLIVER BARREAU: To be perfectly honest with you, um, I didn't know what Alabama
was until I set foot in Alabama.

ELIZABETH SLOAN RAGLAND: I was not greeted by hecklers. I was greeted by Martha
Ann Cox.]

Michelle Little: Welcome back to Sam.wav. We are your hosts, Michelle Little --

Claire Davis: and Claire Davis.

Michelle Little: And today we're exploring the vibrant world of Birmingham's
record stores.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: The way I got into retail music was when my teaching career ended
abruptly. My next best job was I was cutting grass in the daytime and washing
dishes in the evening and my girlfriend at the time, her younger sister had just
gotten a job at the major chain store, Oz at Eastwood Mall, Oz Records, and I
would have never have gotten a job there, because I'm terrible at interviews but
her sister said, told the manager of Oz, "Hire that guy," so he did. I didn't
even have to interview. So, Then I wound up, midnight on Saturday night, because
they stayed open from ten to midnight. Every, this was Saturday Night Fever
time, every Saturday night, they played all four sides of Saturday Night Fever,
so I knew it was about 11:30 when "Stayin' Alive" played.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: (laughs) You had the track down, and yeah,

(both start singing "Stayin' Alive")

JIMMY GRIFFIN: It's on the Yellowbrick Road, it's about 11:30.

GARY BOURGEOIS: It's that time.

CLAIRE DAVIS: You just heard Gary Bourgeois and Jimmy Griffin, owners of
Renaissance Records downtown, reminiscing on their first jobs in the industry.
In this day and age, record stores seem like a dying breed. With the prevalence
of online music services, as well as the ease of listening to music at any time
and any place, the effort going into getting a record doesn't seem to be worth
the trouble. And yet the record industry seems to be growing and increasing. So
why is analog so popular? That's what we aim to find out.

MICHELLE LITTLE: So this summer in the STORI office we were lucky enough to have
one of our recent Samford graduates, Chase Trautwein, back with us. One
afternoon we were discussing the popularity of record stores in Birmingham and
the Record Store Days that were starting to pop up. And Chase is a big consumer
of records himself, so we thought it'd be fun to do a project about the history
of record stores in Birmingham and that maybe that would shed some light on this
resurgence of the record industry, especially with younger people purchasing
records and just trying to get down to the reason for that when music is so
readily available.

CLAIRE DAVIS: So as you conducted these interviews did you find any themes that
crossed over into all of them, or any similar ideas that they all talked about?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Yeah, the, the first one that comes to mind is probably
community. I remember asking both owners of both stores, you know, what kind of
role does Charlemagne or Renaissance Records play in the local community, and
Jimmy Griffin that works at Renaissance, he put it really well, he said that
"we're like the barber shop in Mayberry." So, ah, and that carried over to
Charlemagne as well. It seemed like both of those places were these spaces where
it's a, yeah, it's a business, it's where people come to buy stuff, but it's
stuff that they meet other, you know, sometimes they make friends. They meet
other people who have similar interests. They bond over musical tastes or
introduce each other to different albums, artists. And Gary and Jimmy were
saying that on Saturdays the place is really buzzing because you get people from
all over coming in and talking about music and exchanging stories, and, uh,
Marian had the same thing to say, so, that it's where a lot of people go for
years and that it's a generational thing. So that was one theme, uh. Another one
was just kind of a nostalgia. With the resurgence of vinyl and buying whole
albums instead of individual songs on an mp3 file. They were talking about --
when I say they, I mean, uh, Marian and Gary and Jimmy, saying that, you know,
they were, they were talking about that golden age of, in the seventies and
eighties of vinyl records and how, you know, it kind of reminds them of that, a
little bit. With people connecting over an older form of music, but nowadays
they're doing it either, you know, in person, like back then, or via the
Internet, um. So that plays a big role too.

CLAIRE DAVIS: Would you agree? What do you think the role of a record store is today?

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Uh, with the communal aspect of it, yeah, I would definitely
agree, 'cause I had met some people at the fortieth anniversary celebration at
Trimtab who, uh, who just happened to be sitting at the same table and got to
talking about music, and, uh, ended up, yeah, uh, knowing two more people who -
we started off, you know, strangers going in there but then, yeah, by the end of
the night, you know, we exchanged names and phone numbers. And so, yeah, I would
definitely agree with the communal aspect of it, 'cause, uh, you know, I like to
go in there and um, just kind of have a conversation with, uh, whoever is
working there or, um, I mean, I like to talk with anybody, but anywho, so then
when you put me in a music store then it's kind of a perfect storm. [06:29]

BOTH: [laugh]

CLAIRE DAVIS: Chase's journey began where it all began in Birmingham -- at
Charlemagne Records in Five Points South. One June afternoon on Southside as a
few customers browsed the tight shelves and the air conditioning struggled on,
Chase sat down with owner Marian McKay to discuss how her store began as well as
how the community support through the years has kept the store alive. [06:49]

MARIAN MCKAY: And that's where we started. The garage is an interesting place,
um, back in the Twenties, it was built and there's, oh, I don't know, a dozen
cubicles that would fit a Model T and so the chauffeurs would park their Model
Ts and then drive them to all the big, um, glorious homes in the Five Point
Park, I mean in the Highland Park area and so that's where they'd park the
owners' cars, so it's--

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Hence the name.

MARIAN MCKAY: The Garage. At the Garage, the little, um-- garages were shops in
the Seventies and so we started our shop there and so, um, it was kind of like
if you... came to our little shop, if you had about four people in there, it was
standing room only, (laugh) but we started with five peach crates full of albums
and $500.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Wow.

MARIAN MCKAY: Yes and that's, that was the origins of our shop.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Wow.

MARIAN MCKAY: Yeah.

CHAE TRAUTWEIN: And that was in 1977?

MARIAN MCKAY: 1977 and then the same year, right around, um, right around
Thanksgiving, we moved the shop to our location in this building downstairs and
we shared it with a bookstore and, um, then the druggist Harry Wells bought the
building and so it became a drug store and actually this building is very
interesting. It was built in 1918, and it was a grocery store downstairs, and
this was a living space. It was where the owners of the grocery store lived.

CHASWE TRAUTWEIN: Right above their business.

MARIAN MCKAY: Uh-huh, above their business, yes, so it has a real homey feel to it.

CHSE TRAUTWEIN: It does. It's very cozy.

MARIAN MCKAY: (laughs) Yes, yes. And so, um, we did move over here, and then Mr.
Wells said "Well, you can move upstairs." So we said "Oh, well OK! That's
great!" you know. So we did and we've been here ever since.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: You know, with local record stores like Charlemagne that have
been around for you know, 40 years, um, with things like cassettes and then CDs
and then MP3 and then more, uh, I guess expanding more on that, you have online
streaming like Spotify or Sound Cloud, um, what is it that you think keeps
people coming back to vinyl or, or why is there, why is there a renewed interest
in it now, would you say?

MARIAN MCKAY: Well it's a superior art form to anything out there, so when
you're buying an album, it is in fact a piece of art and um, we are a go to
store for classic records and nostalgic items and um, that's just not available
anywhere else in Birmingham and it's a social kind of place. People, my very
first customer that's gonna be at our 40th anniversary party singing with me and
my band, um-- he met a friend here. He met somebody here that became a lifelong
friend, you know, and his friends have come up here, so we have another
generation of people that have, um, you know, been in here generations of kids,
you know, their parents went here. Every day I hear that. "Oh, my mom and dad
went here when they were such and such" and they come in and then people would
come in and say "Gosh, I've never been in here." Just now "I've never been in
this place. This is amazing." It's just got a great vibe to it. It's a very warm
friendly place and um, a lot of people meet. A lot of bands meet. We have
in-store performances and it's just a, a great social meeting kind of place for people.

CHSE TRAUTWEIN: Sort of a communal...

MARIAN MCKAY: It really is and we offer the community a service in that we buy,
trade, and sell and, um, people that have had relatives that passed away and
they just, you know, can't deal with the records or people are moving or people
are just going into a different, um, format of their music, um, but it's always
the art. It's always the art that's remained the same and it's always the
superior, um, music format.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Yeah, because you, I mean, with an MP3, um, you pretty much
just get a file on your computer and maybe a little square of album art, but
compared to you know, something like that, where you can look and see who played what.

MARIAN MCKAY: And a gatefold album is great, you know, and a double album is
great and you might get some, um, um-- liner notes that are, that are in a
booklet with it. There's, and then you have the al- the, the record sleeve that
has information. It's just, it's just fantastic. And it, and you really have to
sit down and listen to an album. It's, it's an experience. Um, it's just more
than just a CD or, or, um, or anything that's digital. And it increases in
value. I mean it'll just increase in value no matter what, you know, the era is.
There are some things that are, really, you know, a dime a dozen, and things
like that, you have to cull through, but it's still a piece of art. Somebody
will want it.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: With, with, uh, you have the resurgence of vinyl in the past,
mmm, would you say it's seven, eight years or ten years?

MARIAN MCKAY: Ten years. I would say ten years.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: That kind of overlaps with the, um, revival of Birmingham as a
city and a lot of local things like farmer's markets or um, local attractions
like Railroad Park, Regions Park. Do you think that these old, or older, more
established stores like Charlemagne play a factor in that sort of local
renaissance or revival of, you know, "Go check out this, you know, local place"
or, or "Shop at this local store" or "Eat at this local restaurant." Do you
think that, um,that there's a role, that Charlemagne has a role in that?

MARIAN MCKAY: I hope so, I definitely think that's true because, um, the last
um, Support Your Local Business Day, I don't remember what day it is, but we had
people bringing us albums, some from Third Man Records that were very valuable
and just practically donate them to us. They'd traded it out for some vinyl and
they were like "No, no. No, this is for you. This is for you."

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Wow.

MARIAN MCKAY: Yes, so we've really had a lot of community support.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: That's encouraging, I imagine.

MARIAN MCKAY: Oh yes, it really is.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: That they would just say "Here."

MARIAN MCKAY: Oh, it was a gift. It was just so, you know, wonderful, that
people would say "We really want you to stay here. Don't ever move. Don't ever
go." So we plan to stay as long as we can. We made it through 33 and a third,
we're about to go to 45, and then there's a 78, so we'll go for that.

MICHELLE LITTLE: As we just heard in the clip from Marian McKay, the community
aspect of the store is integral to its success. This theme also cropped up when
Chase interviewed the owners of Renaissance Records. Renaissance Records is only
one block away from Charlemagne, tucked away behind the Methodist church on the
corner. Among a veritable maze of boxes holding records, cassette tapes,
paperbacks, and CDs, Chase talked with Gary Bourgeois and Jimmy Griffin about
how the record store provides sanctuary for the community around it.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: So that role of, like what kind of role do you think a record
store like Renaissance has in the community? I mean, what's the--?

GARY BOURGEOIS: Yeah I think...

JIMMY GRIFFIN: It's psycho retail.

GARY BOURGEOIS: It is. Jimmy calls it psycho retail.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Psycho retail.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: Well, you're like a barber shop in Mayberry, you're like actually
a place where people come to look at records, but it's like a, like a nice
restaurant without maybe the high end prices where it's partly entertainment,
you know. Part of going to a nice restaurant is the service and the ritual event
of being there so there's a certain ritual associated with used and new book and
record stores.

GARY BOURGEOIS: There really is a ritual. It's a ritual.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: People come from all over. Some people, like the guy who was in
today, he was in town for the Senior Olympics, he said "I go to every record
store I see." He likes the ritual of the record store.

GARY BOURGEOIS: People will travel.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: And each one is unique.

GARY BOURGEOIS: And they're, always they reflect the personalities of the owners
and then the personalities of the customers.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: And the neighborhood.

GARY BORGEOIS: And what's really cool, Jimmy and I will notice on Saturday, it
really gets buzzing on Saturday and the customers start talking to one another.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: Steve was helping someone today.

GARY BOURGEOIS: Yeah, yeah. And there is that, there's that community thing
about it too and, and there was a guy that was in here the other day, he got his
Beatles CD, he's collecting them and so far I think he's gotten Abbey Road, uh,
Revolver, and uh, Sgt. Pepper, just got the Sgt. Pepper fiftieth year
anniversary and he's real excited and all and I said "Well, I'm gonna go outside
here and take a break. You want to join me?" He said "No, no I'm gonna stay in
here and socialize for about five minutes" and I couldn't believe it that he
articulated that.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: Yeah and you think "Wow this is happening in, in our, in our store!"

GARY BOURGEOIS: Yeah he put it in words.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: And part of psycho retail, it applies to all retail when you meet
the customer to a certain extent because the customer comes in and you've got to
communicate to see why are they're here and we can get some really strange
opening remarks. (laughter)

GARY BOURGEOIS: Well you know what he really meant when he said that. I had
helped him for about five minutes and talked with him, telling him Beatles
stories and all and about the making of the album Sgt. Pepper, what he really
meant when he said that was "Alright I've talked to you. I want to talk to Jimmy
now. I need about five minutes now with Jimmy" and he wants to hear Jimmy's story.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: Yeah, he answers the phone sometimes-

GARY BOURGEOIS: Oh yeah, "Renaissance Records and Counseling, may we help you?"

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: And counseling!

GARY BOURGEOIS: Because sometimes people who come in, really, they really do
come in and they just want to, you know, they, they, a lot of the, we have a lot
of characters who live in the neighborhood and they really do, they, and Jimmy
and I are in place, you know, we're here and uh, and we're pretty good with
people, you know. I mean we kind of have the educational background, you know?
So we're like psychologists but we don't really get paid for being
psychologists. (laughs)

JIMMY GRIFFIN: Music and literature are our personal purchases, so you do, it's
a little bit more fun, say to buy a record than it is, say, even to buy new
socks or shoes, although shoes can be fun, I'm sure, if you're into shoes. You
know what I'm saying. It's a personal choice so it's like, it's representing,
when you go and buy a book, even if you don't say anything to the clerk, you're
kind of representing who you are when you put it on the counter to a certain extent.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: I think even more so with music.

JIMMY GRIFFIN: And we understand the obsession of collecting because I think as
the world changes, less people have the collector's obsession as people from my
generation and previous generations had, because they're, we've, we know a
customer in town who has a house full of classical records, he has every
conductor conducting every symphony that he can find. He has, if it's chamber
orchestras doing Bach, he's got every different chamber orchestra that Bach
(unclear). I mean, his house is like a classical archive.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: It's like a museum.

GARY BOURGEOIS: We have customers who come in here, they come in from the coast,
they come from New Orleans, they come from Mississippi, they come from, a lot of
them come from Nashville, Atlanta, they come from all directions and when
they're traveling, they're from LA, from Texas, or New York. They're from
everywhere and, uh, Wisconsin, I mean they're, Michigan, they're from everywhere
and so they come in and you really, it's, it's really great. That's really the
great part of the job, for us, is because you're making these connections and
you're meeting people from all over the country and they have all these
different diverse tastes, because we always ask, you know, "Is there anything
particular?" because we're trying to figure out who they are and they don't
realize that, so when a retail, when a retail person says "Is there anything in
particular that you're looking for?" really what we're doing is we're trying to
establish like a personal connection.

CLAIRE DAVIS: This sort of organic community isn't limited to Birmingham's
record stores. As Chase continued to interview around town, he decided to
include Bates Brothers Recording studio in his project as a foil. He wondered,
would the experiences in a recording studio be inherently different from those
in a used music exchange store? Spoiler alert: not really.

ERIC BATES: You know, another thing, too, in this business, it's probably one of
the few businesses where your clients, you really, you get to know them real
well and they get to know you because you're working. We'll have people come in
here that will work for six months on a project.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: I was about to say, that's a lot of hours.

ERIC BATES: And you spend a lot of hours with them, you know, then you really
get to know them real well. A lot of times you become good friends and most of
our clients, not all of them, but a majority of them are repeat customers.
They'll always come back and um, there's some businesses where, you know, you
don't, you don't get to know your clients that way, you're not working one on
one with every customer you have, you know, but that's the way this business is,
so it's a very-- so you've got to be a, you know, you got to have, not only do
you have to have the skills on the recording side, but you got to be somebody
that people will enjoy--

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: You got to be a people person.

ERIC BATES: --you got to be a people person and I tell our interns, if I'm ever
asked to, you know, talk in front of anybody about this, if there's one thing
I've learned as much as this industry is about the equi--the gear, and all the
cool stuff, it just is, it's as much or as more a people business than it is
anything else, because, you know, if you're not treating people like they want
to be treated and being, you know, having some diplomacy about you and how do
you say things.

EUGENE BATES: Sense of humor.

ERIC BATES: Your sense of humor, you know, just, just how people are, you know,
how you're coming across and getting along with your clients, even if they leave
and the project will sound great, if it wasn't a good experience for them
because of how you treated or acted, there's a good chance they're probably not
going to come back.

ERIC BATES: Recording studios are, are really unique places. I mean, it's where
you are creating a piece of music, you know, you've got this, I look at it
almost like an artist. You start with this blank canvas. We come in here,
there's nothing, and you're really creating something that can be very magical
and impact a lot of people, you know? And it can be something that's really a
big deal. It's always going to be a big deal to the person who's recording it
and that, you know, our main goal is for, they're, they're completely satisfied
with everything they did and beyond that you hope that it reaches and touches a
lot of other people. You're making something that's going to be kind of etched
in stone. It's always going to be around and you never know, it's amazing. What
I've found over the years is it's amazing where projects end up and it'll end up
in the hands of people you would have never even imagined that would get it, big
time producers or other artists and "Hey man I heard your project was really
good" or it ends up in all these different countries. Now that was back before
the Internet. Of course now, everybody's putting everything up on iTunes and is
worldwide pretty much, but um, yeah, it's almost, that's why we have the
candles, you know, it's kind of like a temple of sound. It's, it's where you
come and you create something from nothing and you create this beautiful,
hopefully this beautiful piece of music and it can hopefully, people will like it.

EUGENE BATES: And lava lamps.

ERIC BATES: You got to have the lava lamps and the candles. It's all about the
vibe. Really this console is just to hold the candles and the lava lamps.

CHASE TRAUTWEIN: That's the truth.

CLAIRE DAVIS: So why is analog still popular?

MICHELLE LITTLE: It seems like the big idea here is community and communicating
with people and creating a space. You know, either a space for people to come in
the record store and talk about their life or a space for new artists to create music.

CLAIRE DAVIS: I think it's always been communal. I think, you know, when you
have a record, and you sit down, and you listen to it with your family, it's
been a communal action that honestly, in the past few years with earbuds and
headphones, doesn't really seem to be around anymore. And I think, because of
that, some people are hungering for that communication and community, and so
they're listening to more records, they're having listening parties. You said
you went over and listened to records with your friends in Athens--

MICHELLE LITTLE: Yes! One thing I noticed when we were putting this podcast
together, during a trip to Athens, Georgia, I was hanging out with some friends
that were playing records on a Saturday afternoon. And just because I was
thinking of this topic, I happened to ask them what drew them to records as
opposed to playing music on their iPhone. And my friend, Katie White, mentioned
one thing that really changed it for her was when she realized she was spending
most of her working day on her phone, and when she came home she didn't want to
deal with her phone at all. And it was just much easier to put a record on,
listen to it in its entirety, and not have to flip through her phone to try to
enjoy music and relax at the end of the day.

CLAIRE DAVIS: And this trend of purposeful communal action is what drives us in
our mission as well. Oral history, like analog music, requires people to slow
down and listen to a story in its entirety at its own pace. Learning this
history of a place and its function through the voices of its community
contextualizes its story in a way that hard facts cannot manage. In a city such
as Birmingham, that history begs to be shared. Next time, we'll be sharing the
stories we gathered from the East Lake community last spring. Until then,

BOTH: Make waves!

MICHELLE LITTLE: Our music for this episode was composed by Samford student
Kerry Joiner. Our cover art was designed by the Samford Marketing and
Communications office. Our interviews were conducted by Chase Trautwein. Today's
show was written and hosted by Claire Davis and Michelle Little. This is a
Samford Traditions and Oral History Recording Initiative production. For more
information on Samford University or our program, please visit our website at
oralhistory.samford.edu or follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Samford_STORI
and on Twitter at SU_STORI.

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Accession	SUHist/STORI/003