Record Store Day Returns Saturday To Beverly Records Where Vinyl Lives

CHICAGO — If you’ve spent the last two years streaming music while socially distancing during the pandemic, it’s time to get reacquainted with the charms of your local record shop. Record Store Day returns to its traditional one-day celebration on Saturday, April 23, where the staff, customers and artists come together to celebrate the unique culture of the independently owned record store and the special role these businesses play in their communities.

Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day. Musicphiles usually start lining up outside these storefronts on city streets and strip malls in the wee hours of the morning to snag the limited edition releases.

For brothers Randy and Jack Dreznes, Record Store Day is the biggest sale day of the year at Beverly Records, 11612 S. Western Ave., Chicago, where vinyl still lives. Beverly Records claims a collection in the tens of thousands. From the front door to the alley, bins of records line the walls and center aisle, along with a few bunny heads left over from Beverly Costumes.

The store also boasts a collection of 45s, mostly of the golden oldie variety, that spun around a 1,000 monophone phonographs at teens' basement record parties back in the day.

“Beverly Records is known worldwide,” said Randy Dreznes. “If we don’t have it, we’ll find it and order it.”

Beverly Records originally started out as a record and stationery shop, a few doors down from where the current store is today, that sold Top 40 singles, greeting cards and airplane models. You could also pay your utility bills there, and buy stamps. Dreznes’s parents – John and Christine – purchased the business in 1967.

“My mom was a real go-getter sales person, always doing side jobs selling leagues to bowling alleys back in the mid-60s to make some extra money,” Dreznes said, who grew up in St. John Fisher Parish. “She was always home for us at lunch, then she’d go back to work. My dad thought it would be great for her to have a business of her own.”

Renowned throughout the South Side as “Mrs. D,” Christine began to notice the frequency of customers coming into the variety store and asking for certain records. Always wanting to help, Christine would order the titles they requested. Eventually, the stationery and airplane model side of the business was phased out.

“Someone would come in and ask for a record like the Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody,’” Dreznes recalled. “She had sources where she could bring in the record they wanted. It was a way to help people out. To this day, we do the same thing.”

John and Christine began buying other floundering record shops on the South Side. Before his parents knew it, they had built up a sizeable vinyl inventory. Soon, Beverly Records grew out of its 1,000-square-foot store. When the storefront at 11612 became available for rent in September 1971, the Dreznes family filled it with records.

“My dad would tell me to get my buddies and go clean out the inventory of a store at 87th and Ashland,” Dreznes said.

In 1972, Christine Dreznes started dabbling in costumes when a frustrated mother came to her looking for a Halloween costume that would fit her “husky” son. It was close to Easter, so Christine ordered 25 Easter Bunny costumes, too. The plus-sized costume business took over the back of the record store, so it moved to 11628 S. Western Ave., where Beverly Costumes operated successfully for 40 years, until the convenience of ordering new costumes online eliminated the need to rent character heads that someone else breathed in.

“We never carried the small stuff, all the Santa suits are big,” Dreznes said. “We sell them for $100, including the beard and wig.”

Starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, Beverly Records will start selling 85 of the hundreds of exclusive RSD releases available in 2022, representing an eclectic mix of genres, from heavy metal and rock to jazz and opera. A sampling of the RSD curated artists feature David Bowie, Alice in Chains, Blondie, Cold War Kids, Doors, Jazz Sabbath, Charles Mingus, Joni Mitchell, Rolling Stones, Santana, Maria Callas, Peter Tosh and U2.

Like other Record Store Day participants, Beverly Records has signed the RSD pledge: to sell the commercial Record Store Day releases to their physical customers on Record Store Day, not to price gouge them, or hold product back to sell online. Beverly Records has also enacted its own strict one-of-each, first-come-first-serve, no-hoarding policy, in the spirit of the day.

Besides the exclusive RSD releases, except for some limited editions the store’s $4.98 vinyl on the floor from the front door to the alley, will be on sale: 50 albums for $100; or 5 for $20 (except for some limited editions).

Don’t ask Dreznes if he thinks vinyl to making a comeback as some quaint analog relic of the past.

“It isn’t making a comeback, it’s gone to the moon,” he said. “Thirty to 40 percent of my customers are between the ages of 15 and 30. They’re coming in and buying all the heavy rock, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Metallica and Led Zeppelin.”

Visit Record Store Day for a list of all participating stores.