2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Records

Send us Fan Mail Growing up in the 1930’s in Cincinnati OH, Rudy Danzinger’s parents weren’t music listeners. Lionel Hampton was Rudy’s first major exposure to music and because of that single live performance he became a fan of big band music.  Moving to California, Rudy took a job as manager of a local record store, Marin Music, in Mill Valley CA.  Rudy innovated early on; soliciting record orde...

Send us Fan Mail Before he started working for Tower Records Watt Avenue in 1975, today’s guest Mike Farrace had already run a Sacramento music magazine called “Rock & Roll News”. Following three years working at Tower Records Watt Avenue under Store Manager Mike Koontz, Farrace started working for Tower Advertising.  Mike tells us all about his time as Northwest Advertising Ad Manager, chasin...

Send us Fan Mail Born to a single, loving, hippie mother and possessing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers, Brandi Merolla didn’t recognize the brightly lit storefront at 4th & Broadway. She was on her way home in the fall of 1983 when she came upon this neon temple.  As she walked up to open the door, she saw a sign that said “HELP WANTED”. Brandi asked for an application and when th...

Send us Fan Mail Dave Muholland grew up greatly influenced by the musical taste of his older sister as well as the music he was hearing in Northern Virginia record stores like Penguin Feather  and Kemp Mill Records. In fact, he spent so much time hanging out at Penguin Feather while he was under 18, he got a job cutting lawns and cleaning up the parking lot and received his payment in records.  Da...

Send us Fan Mail “If you don’t have the product customer’s want, but you have a lot of the product customer’s don’t want, why bother opening your doors?” was a line that this week’s guest, George Scarlett, wrote in one of his famous memos to the field. That single sentence stuck with me throughout my time at Tower and in various situations in other jobs. With one simple sentence, George summed up...

Send us Fan Mail Jerry Pompei got turned onto music partially because he had two older brothers that worked for Tower Records; Tom and Mike Pompei. Promo albums came home regularly and Jerry took the time to listen to what his brothers were leaving behind. Shortly after he turned 18, Jerry started working at the Tower Broadway location in Sacramento.  Jerry jokes with us that he holds the record f...

Send us Fan Mail In 1971 Carla Henson went to interview for a Summer job at the Tower Records headquarters in Sacramento. She got the job and she stayed with it for the better part of 30 years. Her original workplace was at a desk in between  Walter “Bud” Martin and Russ Solomon.  Later, Carla worked for John Schier, Stan Goman and Chris Hopson. When she started with the company, there were only 5...

Send us Fan Mail Jon Burk grew up in South New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. In the mid 70’s he was a teenage Beatles fanatic and all he wanted to do as a young man was work in a record store.   Jon never worked at Tower Records, but he did put in his time, working several years for the Listening Booth record chain where he specialized in doing displays, i.e. visual merchandising. He made...

Send us Fan Mail “It was better than going to college. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything,” is how this week’s guest, Tom Rule, describes his 20-year tenure with Tower Records.  Tom started his career at a small indie record store in California called Condor Records. As it happened, his first day on the job was the day Elvis Presley died and for a while he didn’t understand why everyone was ca...

Send us Fan Mail Born in Mexico City, raised in Chicago and moved to California at age 12, Monica Ricardez started her career with Tower Records as a clerk in West Covina. She got a call two days after  submitting her application and filling out Bob Fetter’s famous 2 page music quiz. Rotating between the record floor and the Classical Department, Monica also worked in the unique position known as...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s guest, Mark Ryan, is Canadian.  Don’t let that stop you from listening.  Mark was on site the very first day of building the Tower Records store in Toronto, ON and he was the last person to lock the doors six years later.  “To this day, it’s still the best job I ever had. It was a dream job”. On this episode of the “2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Recor...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s guest, Dave Coker, was shopping at the original Tower Records location in Sacramento when he was 10 years old. When he started working at the Tower Broadway store in 1968, the San Francisco Tower store had just opened and soon the world of music retail would open itself up to Coker Dave.  Going to College and doing Military service while working on and off for Tower in...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s guest has an extensive music retail resume. Prior to working at Tower Records Sharon Vitro worked for Record Town, a New England music retailer for six years. She ran stores in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts before quitting over a ridiculous corporate policy. The next day Sharon was working at Tower Records on 360 Newbury Street where she  worked for 5 yea...

Send us Fan Mail If you had to bet which employee of Tower Records had visited the Playboy Mansion the most, who would you bet on? Russ Solomon? Robert Stapleton? Stan Goman? Robert Stapleton? Bob Feterl? If I could place an actual wager on this bet in Vegas, I’d take my life savings and bet it was Robert Stapleton. But I’d be very wrong and very poor.  Clint Johns visited the Playboy Mansion more...

Send us Fan Mail “He was the most important factor in any type of music education I had” says this week’s guest Kevin Cassidy in reference to his father. Kevin grew up on the streets of Philadelphia and pretty quickly grew into a jazz-loving, doo-wop appreciating, Beatles album buying, James Brown revering pre-teen and teenager. As a teenager Kevin quickly found a double date to a Blind Faith/Fran...

Send us Fan Mail “It was all music, all the time” is the way our guest this week, Wendy Powell, describes growing up in a family where her father was a musician traveling around the country playing in a variety of bands and styles.  That love of all things music led to Wendy working at Tower Records in Stockton, CA. Her first meeting with her boss from the future, Stan Goman, consisted of him tell...

Send us Fan Mail “I don’t think I ever recovered from Tower going away” Zev Feldman tells us towards the end of this episode. If you worked at Tower Records on the East Coast, you most certainly worked with Zev Feldman. Starting as a salesman for Polygram Distribution, young Zev covered Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. A visit from Zev Feldman was full of energy, enthusiasm a...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve gotten the call to go to Japan and run Tower Records Asian Operations…now what? In part two of our podcast interview with Keith Cahoon, he takes us through his journey navigating the record business in a place that originally didn't want Tower Records to succeed.  In fact, initially, many of the major Japanese record companies would not sell to Tower Records. But that...

Send us Fan Mail When you're a carpenter and it's getting into the rainy/cold season, what do you do for employment? If you're Keith Cahoon, you apply for a job at Tower Records, which you expect to last for a total of 3 months.  Working at Tower, then leaving, then getting hired back and then leaving again was a regular occurrence for Keith. Staying with Tower Records provided Keit...

Send us Fan Mail Rick Dorsey is a 20 year Tower Records veteran. Starting his career in West Covina in 1986, Dorsey also worked at, and then in May of 1992 (the first day of the LA riots) ran,  the Westwood, Los Angeles store until 1995. Rick ultimately went back to West Covina where he worked until 2006 when Tower Records went out of business.  But long before he worked for Tower, Rick had the bu...

Send us Fan Mail In 1984 Suzy Leydonfrost was attending the School of Visual Arts in NYC, when she decided that scene wasn’t for her. A friend who had a job at Tower Records in the Village told her she’d get her a job interview. What happened during that interview was pretty outlandish, but Suzy got the job and her journey with Tower Records began.  In this episode of “2500 DelMonte Street: The Or...

Send us Fan Mail Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a young man named Robert Stapleton applied for a job at Tower Records at the age of 15. He got the gig and he worked at the landmark Sunset Strip Store from 1970-1979. He was later store Manager of El Toro, CA and in the late 80’s ran the store on Newbury Street in Boston, as well as being the New England Regional Manager.  He ended his career in 200...

Send us Fan Mail Terri Williams started working at Tower owned Central Valley Record Racks in 1975 at 15 years old. In 1978 when she talked about going to College, Russ Solomon told her “Stick with us, kid. I’ll make you a star!” Terri was hired by Chris Hopson in the newly formed Tower Advertising Department.  For the next 32 years she helped Chris Hopson and Tower Records establish a first rate...

Send us Fan Mail Tim Devin started working record retail in the Bay Area for Wherehouse Records. On new release dates, he would have to drive to the Tower Records Campbell store on his lunch hour to pick up New Releases as Wherehouse wouldn’t receive theirs until 4 or 5 days later.  Finally realizing he needed to be working for Tower, he applied at Tower Records Mountain View where he was hired by...

Send us Fan Mail For someone who spent two years campaigning for a minimum wage job at Tower Records Rockville, Dalia Goldgor ended up with quite a career with the company. In this episode, we talk with Dalia about the role music played in her early life, surrounded by Ukrainian and Russian family members singing folks songs at dinner parties, her much older brother turning an 8 year old Dalia ont...