Today, there are more than 600 Sam Goody stores in the United
States, but in l955 there was only one. It was on 49th Street
west of Broadway in Manhattan, and it was about the size of a
supermarket. Goody billed himself, accurately, as the World's
Largest Record Dealer, and he was the first to discount LPs. This
was in the early days of the LP, and Goody had so many of them
that they had to be filed by catalog number, which meant that
few customers could find what they wanted without the help of
a salesman.
Newly in New York and without a job, I went to Goody's, which
was famous for its depth of stock, to find the first album by
the wonderful jazz pianist Dick Marx, who had given me a few lessons
when I was going to school in Chicago.
It was close to Christmas, and the store was jammed. The sight
of it was overwhelming. I stood near the entrance, trying to figure
out a way to find what I wanted, when a fiftyish balding man in
rimless glasses and a three-piece suit asked, in a gravelly voice,
"You the kid lookin' for a job?" He turned out to be
Sam Goody, and I had the presence of mind to say, "Yes."
Goody did not believe that the customer was always right. Nor
did he believe the people he did business with on the phone were
right, either. I once heard him on the phone to the RCA distributor
in New York, saying, "I don't give a shit if I do owe you
$60,000. I want those fuckin' records here by three o'clock."
The play A Hatful of Rain was appearing a few blocks
away. One Saturday afternoon between matinee and evening performances,
the actor Henry Silva, who played a dope dealer named Mother in
the play, walked into the store in his costume of shades and a
trench coat, and, so frightened by his mere appearance, several
customers who had no idea who he was left the store.
On another Saturday, the star of the show, Ben Gazzara, came
in and lit a cigar. There is a law against that. Goody walked
over to him and asked him to put it out. "Do you know who
I am?" Gazzara asked. Goody didn't miss a beat: "You're
somebody wants to buy a record, aren't you?"
An elderly salesman, watching the scene, asked me, "Who
is that reptilian young man?"
Another time, a man looking at audio equipment asked Goody for
a special discount. Goody declined. "I'm Buddy Bregman,"
the man said. Goody just looked at him. Those of you as unimpressed
as Goody may wish to know that Buddy Bregman was the husband of
the singer Anna Maria Alberghetti and was the arranger and conductor
on Ella Fitzgerald's latest Songbook album, which was a
hit. "I said, I'm Buddy Bregman," Buddy Bregman repeated.
"You'll have to forgive me," Goody said. "I'm not
very good with names. I only remember a few. Cadillac, Dun &
Bradstreet, names like that."
And then there was the lady who asked Goody to recommend a
performance of a particular piano concerto. "The only concerto
I know is the cash register concerto," Goody told her. "It
goes ding ding ding, all day long."
And it did.
See Joe Goldberg's other features in our SOUNDS
chapter: "The Birth of the Cool"
and "The Coolest Jazz Records."
photo courtesy michaelochs.com
***
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