Just about anyone who’s a fan of New Orleans music knows where to locate hard-to-find albums by the Nevilles or Irma Thomas or the Meters. For die-hard fans, a must-stop is Record Ron’s, the ubiquitous used-record store with two locations on Decatur Street in the French Quarter and a store uptown.
Record Ron has been a fixture in the die-hard music collecting scene since 1981, when he opened his first store at 1129 Decatur Street. The only change is that the store now is bigger and even more crammed with records (now CDs) of all kinds. It got so big, in fact, that he opened a second location across from Jax Brewery two years ago, and an uptown location last year. Rumor has it that he plans to become the used record mogul of the Gulf South with another CD-only store in the Quarter and a new store in Metairie. Yes, folks, soon you can get your precious wax trax on Veterans Highway!
Record Ron himself is still the same—craggy hair and beard and voice to match. You’ve probably seen his mug in his many crazy ads—even on buggies in the Quarter with the direction to “Tell me I sent you.” Or, if you’re a regular customer, you’ve heard his warning to stay clear of his lunchbox collection (also in the Decatur Street store)—they’re not for sale. Ron’s been in the city about 22 years now, another victim of New Orleans’ lure that seduced him away from his native New York.
Ron Edelstein has been into music and the music business all his life. His pop was in the business, and Ron (known in his younger days as “Ronnie Eden”) was a record producer and promoter back in the sixties in the Big Apple. As a teenager, he met Brook Benton in a bar around the corner from New York’s famous Brill Building. He ended up going to work for Benton’s publishing company and got to know just about anybody who was anybody in music in those days. “It was amazing…you could stand at the corner at the Brill Building and see everybody walk by, from Johnny Mathis to Johnny Cash to Elvis Presley to Neil Sedaka to Jackie Wilson.” From office boy, Ron moved up into independent record production and promotion. And, never one to miss an opportunity to make a buck, Ron moved into the rock poster and head shop business down in New Orleans in 1969. His love of music and natural pack-rat tendencies when it came to collecting music steered him into buying and selling used records in the flea market (where a lot of independents still sell their wares on Sundays). Ronnie’s record collection got so big that his (now) ex-wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t move all the albums from in front of the refrigerator, and thus “Record Ron’s” was born.
Actually, Ron’s collection is so tremendous it boggles the mind. Only he knows how many records he has stashed in his apartment and on the second floor of the Decatur Street store. Like any collector, Ron scoured bargain stores and garage sales for albums he could add to his stash. “I used to buy albums at about eight for five bucks at this little dollar store in Slidell,” he remembers. “One day, they didn’t carry them anymore, and I found out that the chain was discontinuing all its record sales. I tracked down the source—at the chain’s warehouse in a little town in Arkansas—and made a deal to buy all their albums.” A momentous decision in the life of a guy who, it seems, was made to make a million in second-hand goods. In fact, he bought—get this—1.2 million albums for about $15,000 from the chain back in 1983. “It took five big trucks to ship all those records from Arkansas,” he says, “and a full day to unload each truck when it showed up at the store on Decatur Street. I remember when I opened the door of that first truck, the albums just spilled all over the street. It was unbelievable.”
Needless to say, collectors in New Orleans and from around the country and the world have benefited from Ron’s mania for record collecting. In addition to the albums in storage on Decatur Street, Ron’s still got about 20,000 records stacked around his apartment in the French Quarter. “I guess I’ve sold maybe half of what I picked up from the big buy in 1983,” he says. But there’s so much more, even Edelstein doesn’t know what titles he has in the netherworld of albums he has stashed.
Does he have some favorites? “Yeah, I have about two or three thousand albums I’d never dream of parting with,” he says. “My favorite type of music is doo-wop groups from the fifties like the Cadillacs, the Moonglows, the Flamingos, Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers. Those are classics.”
