LA's oldest record store is also its lowest rated

On a recent balmy weekday afternoon, Sanders Chase, a professional violinist-turned-record store purveyor, sits behind a wooden desk and watches as several customers stride into his Los Angeles shop, the Record Collector. Their eyes trail heavenward, toward the labyrinthine stacks bursting with thousands of used classical and jazz records — 500,000 to be exact. 

“Hi folks,” Chase calls out to the group, adjusting his spectacles. “Need any assistance?” The newcomers smile shyly and keep walking around. 

He then turns to me. “See, this is my problem,” he mutters under his breath. “They’re curiosity seekers. Curiosity killed the cat.”

Someone else strolls into the store. “Is there anything I can steer you to?” Chase asks him. The man says no; he’s just looking around. “Make a list and come back, because that’s basically how we do it,” Chase tells him. “We make sure you get some direction and then seriousness of purpose. We work from that.” The man nods and walks out.

Plenty of people have accused Chase of being prickly over the years. He might prefer the term purposeful.

Chase has been in the record business for 50 years, though he’s looking to hand off the reins to a new owner soon. Since 1974, his store the Record Collector (located first on Highland Avenue before a move to Melrose Avenue in the late ’90s) has weathered the ebb and flow of the record industry as well as various recessions, a pandemic and countless other calamities. Boasting half a million records on the premises and 300,000 more in storage, it’s Los Angeles’ oldest record establishment — and arguably its most exhaustive when it comes to jazz and classical music. Musicians including the Notorious B.I.G., Michael Jackson, Warren G, Pete Rock, Frank Sinatra, Quincy Jones and Flea have flocked to buy records from this trove.

Not everyone responds to Chase’s blunt approach. Beyond its long-standing presence within LA’s music community, the Record Collector also bears the unusual distinction of being the city’s lowest-rated record store (1.9 stars on Google).

“Total nightmare experience,” wrote one unhappy customer recently on Google. Another dubbed it “honestly the worst record store on Earth.” The vast majority of online ire revolves around the rule that all must abide by when entering the premises, one that Chase strictly enforces: You may not simply browse the records. Instead, you must come equipped with a specific list of albums, genres or artists that you’re looking for.

Otherwise, he might show you the door.

When I suggest to Chase that some people might want to look at the record stacks specifically in order to learn, he scoffs. To Chase, those who browse aimlessly at his store are an affront to actively learning about music. He sees his role less as an omniscient owner and more as someone who’s “here to provide a service,” he tells SFGATE. “If you went to a doctor or a lawyer or a mechanic, or any professional, you’re there for a purpose. If they come here, I’m not here to entertain people.” He considers the Record Collector not a record store but rather an archive, one that necessitates an expert (him or his colleague, Henry) to guide people through it. Granted, these archival records happen to be for sale.

As it happens, the building housing the Record Collector recently went on the market, as did its small mountain town outpost in Idyllwild. For the stalwart Melrose location, Chase is seeking just under $5 million for the building, which doesn’t include the business itself, nor the trove of records (though the price for those is negotiable, he says). 

Chase isn’t solely seeking someone who can cough up that kind of money. He’s scouting a buyer who can be a steward of the Record Collector, someone who’s up for bringing the archival haunt into the next generation. He has yet to find someone.

“I’ve been doing this for over 50 years. I’m not going to do it for another 50,” Chase says. For the sale to happen, “it would have to be transferred to a logical entity or persons that had a similar sensibility to me. I don’t want to take a wrecking ball to it.”

‘We can’t be all things to all people’

Chase’s proclivity for record collecting started early. Born to a concert pianist mother, Chase grew up near Hawthorne, California, and constantly went to concerts. “Buying records was part of the deal,” he says. He became interested in records at age 12, after hearing a 78 set of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, performed by Nathan Milstein, at home — and a decade later he’d amassed 10,000 records. Chase had a brief stint playing violin with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in North Carolina, and has done a bit of studio work. 

“It’s a hard way to make a living,” he says.

Chase opened his Highland Avenue store in 1974, after leaving the symphony. The Record Collector took off from the jump, and he became known as the go-to guy around town who’d be willing to purchase private collections of jazz and classical music. His stacks grew and so did his business, and in 1999, he purchased the building at 7809 Melrose Ave., located across the street from Fairfax High School, for $500,000. 

One customer at the time was confused as to why he’d want to open on that tranquil stretch of Melrose Avenue, away from the retail and food bustle during the street’s heyday.

“‘Why do you want to move there? So quiet and dowdy,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘I like quiet and dowdy. Gives me an opportunity to build up the place.’”

He kept the Highland location open while he had a builder put in custom shelving throughout the new store that could hold thousands of records. 

Over the years, the Record Collector has primarily focused on jazz and classical music, but it has expanded to include a smaller selection of rock ’n’ roll, bossa nova and a few other genres. Most of the records stop at 1985, with a few exceptions. He says he makes a point to stock records even if they don’t align with his personal taste, though the jazz and classical focus has never changed.

“There’s nobody that deals in the combination that we deal in,” he says. “We can’t be all things to all people. So we’ve always been specialized, to one degree or another.”

Its longevity might also have to do with the staggering resurgence of vinyl, which went from being regarded by some as an old-school medium collecting dust in a parent’s closet to becoming a must-have way of listening to music (or collector’s item), especially among young people. Vinyl sales have been steadily growing for the last 17 years, and last year, LP sales accounted for 40% of album purchases in the United States. Chase thinks this is a great turn.

“I think that everybody should have a record collection,” Chase says. “It’s up to them as to how they want to go about it.”

That said, he believes that the cost for a new LP, which can often run from $30 to $40, is too steep a price to pay for something that’s “not made the same,” he says. “[Companies are] taking advantage of the demand for records without having the proper engineering and the proper methodology of making them the way they did before. So older records sound better. Vintage vinyl, that’s the way to go.”

‘Of course I’m intimidating. So what?’

The day that I visit Chase’s shop to interview him (which took several rounds of back-and-forth emailing and calls, because he would say things like “any time should work, until it doesn’t” every time I tried to nail down an actual time), I’m pleasantly surprised to see people flit in and out of there — especially given the struggles that Melrose Avenue, Third Street Promenade and other notable LA shopping haunts have faced in recent years. When I ask him how business has been lately, he says it’s been “OK.” 

By virtue of owning the building, Chase isn’t beholden to some of the same struggles his neighbors face with rising rents. I suspect that has a hand in his particularly esoteric business model, which some bristle against.

Later on that afternoon, a group of customers walks in. “What’s your pleasure?” he asks them. They seem surprised, and a little unsure of what to say. Then someone asks to see Heart records, and he gestures to Henry to help them find what they’re looking for. They walk out about 15 minutes later, after not having found their Heart record of choice, to Chase’s annoyance.

After they leave, he wonders aloud why they didn’t just ask for the specific record (“Magazine”) — he could have told them they don’t stock it. 

“Maybe some people find you intimidating,” I say.

“Of course I’m intimidating,” he retorts. “So what?”

“Don’t you think that could be a barrier to some people?”

“Well, I don’t care,” he says. The issue, for him, stems from when he asks people what kind of music they like and they don’t have an answer. “They give me the deer in the headlights look, like: ‘I don’t know,’” he says. “That’s why we’re here. This is to serve you. You don’t want to help me help you.”

“It’s like going to class and taking a test,” he adds. “You don’t take a test without studying. So when you come in here, be prepared.” 

I’m skeptical that the record store as midterm assignment ethos amounts to the most viable business model, but Chase says that his business is profitable (and I own neither a record institution nor an archive, so what do I know?). His impetus for letting the place go, he says, is because he doesn’t have another 50 years in him.

Until then, he says he’ll keep buying records (“if they’re good records”) while he waits for a quality offer. That may take some time given Chase’s specific asks. It doesn’t help that the commercial real estate market in Los Angeles hasn’t budged much recently thanks to heightened interest rates, Chase’s real estate agent Brett Alphin tells me.

“I’m listening,” Chase says of his eventual sale. “And I’m not going to take it precipitously. So it’s going to keep going until there’s some logical transition. What that is, I’m waiting to hear.”