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Out of the Past Records:
A Vinyl Paradise on Madison St.
If you’re one of those people like me, who still enjoys listening to vinyl, you gotta stop by Out of The Past Records at 4407 W. Madison St. Just know this before you get here…this is Not your regular record store, it’s more like the Walmart or Sam’s Club of
record stores. Also make sure you plan ahead and have plenty of free time on your hands, because you could easily be here a
while.
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The History
In 1963 the late Charlie Henderson and his wife Marie opened a photography studio at 8 South Pulaski in West Garfield Park. He was a big music fan, so they decided to put a record shop insidethe photography studio and began selling records. The couple eventually opened and operated 10 record stores across the city. Mrs. Henderson added,
The store provides more of a family atmosphere and covers many genres of music, including soul, jazz, blues, house and steppin music. The place is a paradise for people who like to dig around and find those treasured classics. By design the store is not set up to display all the merchandise. One side is organized, and you can flip through the records listed by artists in alphabetical order. Another side, the fun side, is just rows and rows and stacks and stacks of vinyl records separated by genres, so you must do your own digging around.
“Back in those years on Fridays and Saturdays when people got paid, they would always buy recordsbecause that was the thing back then.” After Mr. Henderson passed away, the stores were eventually consolidated into two, and then one current location at 4407 W. Madison St.record stores. Also make sure you plan ahead and have plenty of free time on your hands, because you could easily be here a while.
Mass Appeal
The store also has back rooms full of vinyl that haven’t even reached the shelves yet. With so much merchandise, Out of The Past has attracted record buyers from around the world. Mrs. Henderson mentioned, “Before the pandemic I had a lot of buyers from overseas. They would actually come in from Germany,England, France, Australia, Korea…we had a lot of buyers coming in.
We just have influx of good people that like their music still.I’m kind of glad that they’re showing people LP’s again because we’re getting a lot of young folks in and you’d be surprised at theamount of young people buying LP’s and 45’s.
Blast from the Past
In addition to all the vinyl, Out of The Past also carry cd’s,cassette tapes and believe it or not 8-track tapes…yes, they goback that far.
As an additional service, you can also have your hard drive loaded with your favorite style of music.
They also have a turntable available where you can listen to anything before you purchase it.
The kind of place where can accidentally come across some of your favorite ol’ school music, I found a couple classics laying around near the turntables.
Deep in the Music
Anissa Gooden has been around the store since she was a a baby. She is the granddaughter of Mrs. Henderson, and she now helps manage the store. She said what drew her deeper into music was the sampling aspect. “What got me started is I would hear a song like Mary J Blige and the certain songs that they would sample from older artists.
So, I would hear the original artists and think itwas somebody else and that’s when my grandma would tell me,‘No that’s the original person’.”
Wall of Fame
Anissa mentioned that from working in the store she gets to see people from all walks of life and she knows most customers by name.
The first thing you see as you enter the store is a photo
gallery put together by one of their customers, a retired photographer. He takes pictures of other customers and people from the community, and they call it their ‘Wall of Fame’ and as
Anissa mentioned, “They don’t play about that wall, they want to see their picture up… Most of the wall is filled with people from
our community and now their kids and grandkids come in and shop with us so it’s like a generational thing here.”
