Shreveport, LA | Remembering Stan “The Record Man” Lewis: A Shreveport music pioneer dies over the weekend. Now he’s being remembered by those who knew him best as helping discover the sound of an entire generation. “A man that loved what he did and that’s why he was Stan the Man…the Record Man. Seriously.” Lenny Lewis is remembering his father, Stan “The Record Man” Lewis, a musical pioneer and international music industry exec. “A man that loved something, that never got out of his system. Loved the music industry. He loved it.” Stan and his wife Pauline opened his music store in Shreveport, but it eventually grew into so much more. Garland Jones say, “Most people for the most part only knew about the store, the retail store. They didn’t know behind that store, there was probably 200 people working behind the scenes as one of the largest record distributors in the country.” Stan’s business eventually expanded to six stores.
Shreveport, LA | Shreveport music legend Stan ‘The Record Man’ Lewis dies, age 91: Stan Lewis — known in Shreveport as “The Record Man” — has died. He was 91. Lewis died Saturday morning in Ruston where he lived for the past several months, according to his son, Lenny Lewis. Visitation will be 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, July 18 at Roseneath Funeral home, 1815 Marshall St. in Shreveport. The public visitation will be followed by readings from a priest and speakers from 7-8 p.m. In the 1940’s, Lewis, a Shreveport native, was a music distributor and retailer as the owner of Stan’s Record Shops. He eventually operated a nationwide mail-order and distributor service and record label. “He was definitely ‘Stan The Record Man,'” Lenny Lewis said of his father. “He ate and breathed music.”
Nashville, TN | Third Man Records announces Nashville photo studio: Third Man Records is pleased to announce the addition of a photo studio to their Nashville location. The newly opened Third Man Photo Studio specializes in high-quality photographic film development and analog print processing using the darkroom hidden in the walls of the famed Blue Room. Third Man’s photo chemists hand process C-41 (Color Negative), Black & White, and E-6 (Color Positive/Slide) films, and they use traditional photographic enlargement techniques to create one-of-a-kind archival quality prints from film negatives. This is a hands-on, all analog process, which yields the highest quality photographic prints possible: completely free of pixels and ink.
Boston, MA | The world’s best record shops #115: In Your Ear, Boston: Found a stones throw from the snaking Charles River that flows through the city of Boston, one of America’s oldest, and arguably its most boisterous, cities, In Your Ear boasts a musical heritage that stretches back for decades. 36 years to be exact, first opening its doors in 1982 and now owned by Reed Lappin, Mark Henderson and Chris Zingg. “We are all music lovers, we have no other skills,” laughs Lappin, but what skills they do have they channel into their 100,000+ strong record collection that climb the walls and takes over every conceivable space in this humble store. Their racks span everything from classic rock and weirdo jazz to euphoric disco, rare boogie from a bygone era and Detroit techno, making In Your Ear a quintessential slice of Americana.
Mapping Record Stores: New York City in the 1970s and 1980s: Between the early 1960s and the mid 1990s, the independent record store was a mainstay in New York culture, providing a space for music fans, critics, and creators to congregate and share the burgeoning rock and roll, disco, dance, and new wave scenes. A basic understanding of economics and technological change, however, can explain the sharp decline in the world’s record stores since the 1990s. Besides the shift to digital consumption of music, New York has become one of the most expensive cities for commercial renters, leading to the loss not only of its shops, but the sense of community they once provided.
