from sfgate.com - by David Rubien
Everyone knows the story of how the compact disc overthrew the 12-inch vinyl record album. It's a done deal, right? The LP put up a fight for a while, and even 10 years ago you could find collectors and audiophile die-hards pawing the stray used-record bin. But they're not getting any younger, and even hip-hop DJ scratching ain't what it used to be.
The vinyl emporiums are mostly gone - Revolver, the Magic Flute, Saturn, Brown's ... even the mighty LP stalwart Village Music of Mill Valley cashed it in last year.
But hold the phone.
Now it looks as if the dominance of the CD may be a tad overrated. The discs have only been around 26 years, and already they're being tossed aside in favor of digital downloading. According to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of CDs dipped 20 percent since 2006, and downloads of individual songs are up 54 percent.
As a result, those dusty LPs are starting to appear a bit more shiny. Certainly Rick Ballard, owner of Groove Yard records, thinks so.
"This has been a very good year for me," says Ballard, 59, but looking 15 years younger. His little store on Claremont Avenue in the Rockridge section of Oakland could fit into a single aisle of Amoeba Music in Berkeley or San Francisco. But unlike his vinyl-peddling colleagues who threw in the towel, Ballard has stayed focused and patient, and as a result his operation has blossomed like a desert flower in the parched landscape of on-premises music retail.
"I really made it a strategy to focus on vinyl, because I really think we're at the beginning of the slow death of CDs," Ballard says. "I talk to regulars who come in here who have teenage kids. ... All their kids just download. They'll never even own a CD, probably."
Ballard carries all kinds of LPs - and some CDs as well - but his specialty is jazz, a niche genre whose niche keeps shrinking. "The major labels, as far as I can tell, are almost completely out of the jazz business," Ballard says. Yet, he adds, "The demand for jazz LPs has really held up. I had three different sets of Japanese buyers in here last week alone, none of whom looked at CDs."
Walking into the Groove Yard, you're immediately struck with the sensory experience that's unique to the used-record store. First that dusty, somehow comforting aroma of used cardboard hits your nostrils, after which you tune into the jazz song playing on the stereo. Then come the visual delights: album covers from the 1950s through the '70s adorning the walls - bold, often kitschy and dated images of musicians and/or their instruments, sometimes strange and alluring abstract paintings, and titles printed in fonts meant to attract and seduce.
Less than half the size of an LP, a CD just can't deliver that kind of visual impact. And in the world of iTunes, it's almost completely eliminated.
"The 12-inch LP, and to a lesser degree the 10-inch LP, made album art relevant," Ballard says. "I mean, you can look at a history of American graphics in album cover art. ... You can have the greatest CD cover in the world, but it's still small. It's not gonna grab you on a visual level like an album does."
Needless to say, an LP is mainly about its music, and much has been written about the superiority or inferiority of a record's analog sound, as opposed to a CD's digital. To audiophiles, there's no contest. As for MP3s - forget about it.
But it's probably safe to say that sound quality is not the main reason people look for jazz LPs. Neither is it because the records are investments that will appreciate significantly in value. The most expensive jazz album at Groove Yard is a 1971 private pressing by flutist Lloyd McNeill - "Washington Suite" - for $350. The most expensive album Ballard ever sold was "House of Blue Lights" by '50s bebop pianist Eddie Costa - $700. For the most part, Groove Yard LPs sell for between $6 and $10.
The real value of these LPs is something greater than the sum of their parts. They are historical documents, windows to a slice of culture that is neglected even as it's paid lip service as America's great contribution to music. These albums tell stories of popular culture, high art, technology, marketing, drugs and race.
Just pulling a few examples out of Groove Yard's bins, there are:
-- Bassist Charles Mingus' "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" from 1963 for $45. One of the great jazz geniuses, Mingus was a deeply frustrated, angry individual who railed against racial injustice before it became acceptable to do so in the '60s. Instead of being showered with grants and commissions as he deserved, he was evicted from his apartment.
-- The Chet Baker Quartet, "Jazz at Ann Arbor" ($35) - a cool and handsome trumpeter, he was marketed as a white alternative to Miles Davis, yet like so many other jazz artists, he couldn't resist the lure of heroin, which brought him down.
-- Miles Davis, "Miles Ahead," a 1957 release with the original album cover that Miles demanded Columbia change. "Miles made them withdraw the cover because he said he didn't want the cover with the white woman," Ballard says. That's ironic, because Davis was famously color-blind when it came to choosing band mates.
The beautiful thing about Groove Yard is that no prior knowledge of any of this stuff is necessary, because a walking, talking encyclopedia is always in the house. That's Ballard.
"It's really more than a store; it's a conversation center," says Herb Wong, the jazz educator, producer, prolific liner notes writer and former DJ at the late KJAZ who is a frequent visitor to the Groove Yard. "Rick is not just a merchant, he's someone who brings a set of values to his merchandise. He has a very easy grasp of the relationship between different vintages and ensembles. So it's much more rewarding to be at his store and have the chance to rap with him."
Ballard got into the record business as a distributor. Anyone of a certain age who was interested in cutting-edge jazz of the '70s and '80s probably has a few records adorned with a little gold sticker reading "Distributed by Rick Ballard Imports."
Ballard, who grew up in Oakland, was a record store clerk with a degree in psychology from UC Berkeley in 1971 when he became curious about some of the music he read about in European and Canadian jazz magazines - music that wasn't available in the States. So he wrote to a couple of labels asking if he could order records. They wrote back.
"They knew that I worked in a record store, so they asked me if I'd be interested in importing their records and being a distributor," Ballard says. "I had always wanted to run my own business. So I took $250 and sent it to the guy in Paris, and he sent me 100 records. I sent another $250 to a guy in Munich. That company was ECM. They had just issued their first Keith Jarrett record, which was 'Facing You.'
"I got in my car, drove over to (former Berkeley record store) Leopold's and they bought everything I had right on the spot. I took the money, sent it back overseas and got more records."
He eventually became the West Coast distributor for several labels, including Black Saint, Hat Hut, India Navigation, Unit Core, with artists like Cecil Taylor, David Murray, Don Pullen, Chick Corea, Anthony Braxton and dozens more - most of them brilliant U.S. artists who couldn't get record deals back home. And he sold to dozens of stores in the West Coast and later nationwide.
When CDs began to become the dominant music format in the late '80s, Ballard found himself stuck with a warehouse full of more than 20,000 LPs. He decided to try to sell them directly to the public, so he sectioned off part of his warehouse in Jack London Square, and the Groove Yard was born in 1987. Then he began purchasing used records from the public in order to round out his inventory.
Four years later he moved the store to 48th and Telegraph avenues in Oakland, and in 2002 he arrived at the current location, which had previously housed Berrigan's, another great record store.
Ballard still salts and peppers his bins with the old imported product from his warehouse, some of which fetch top dollar. But as a retailer he's become a jazz expert, and he's learned the intricacies of the used-record market, what to pay and what to charge. He also dons his distributor shoes now and then, shipping jazz CDs by local artists like singers Sony Holland and Jenna Mammina to stores in Japan. "The Japanese are crazy for piano trio and female vocalists," Ballard says. That's about the extent of his CD business.
With Amoeba Music - not to mention eBay - out there swallowing up so much used product, Ballard has to be on his game. Part of that involves spreading the jazz gospel via a monthly newsletter he e-mails to about 2,200 people. Sprinkled with Ballard's extremely dry wit, the newsletter keeps customers abreast of product that's arrived in the store, recommends what jazz shows to see, hosts ticket giveaways, and mentions special jazz events and radio schedules.
None of this is making Ballard rich, but he's a happy man, living his little corner of the jazz life.
"It's a sound that really feels good to my ears," he says. "I love other styles of music... but nothing does it for me like jazz does."
Groove Yard Jazz LPs/CDs:
5555 Claremont Ave.
Oakland, CA
Open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat.
noon-5 p.m. Sun.
(510) 655-8400
myspace.com/grooveyardjazz
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