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Trans World Entertainment is supposedly in the process of rebranding all Sam Goody stores as FYE. The also own the Wherehouse brand and for whatever reason, have a few stores still operating under that name (there's one in Norfolk, VA, for example), as they apparently do with Sam Goody.

I suppose it would be sort of like Federated still operating one Hecht's somewhere. Not what you usually see these days.

There is a Wherehouse branded store in Clovis, Ca -- unless they've changed it in the 3 months since I moved from that area. Sometimes chains will operate one-off stores of retired names just to protect the trademark. That's why there's still a Standard station in San Francisco, so another company can't claim the name is abandoned. (If Albertson's had done that with Lucky, the whole mess with Grocery Outlet never would have happened.)

One of the biggest ones in Michigan was Harmony House. They were mostly in Detroit area, but for some reason, they had a few small-town locations far flung; I know that Charlevoix (north of Traverse City) had one, as did Allegan (north of Kalamazoo).

I know that Harmony House had a few mall locations: Oakland Mall (now f.y.e.), Lakeside Mall (now Steve & Barry's; f.y.e. took the former theater directly underneath, where H&M is now), and in the defunct Trapper's Alley festival center in downtown Detroit (now a casino).

The last remaining Harmony House, in Ferndale, is now a standalone f.y.e. store.

Don't know if they existed anywhere but southern California, but I fondly remember the Wallach's Music City chain, listening booths and all.

I remember Blockbuster Music. They had a pretty good selection of music. Here on the island, we just lost a music store: musicall. Nantucket was its only location.

One more I forgot about was Franklin Music (or was it Franklin Sound); at least in the Atlanta area they had several stores. They were one of the first retailers in Atlanta to use some sort of barcode reading technology (along with Richway) in the early 70's...their barcodes were the two color type (green and black bars) applied as separate labels to each individual product.

As far as Peaches went in Atlanta, one of the tragedies associated with that chain was their decision to destroy rather than let other acquire their cement handprints, footprints, signatures in their sidewalk when they closed/converted their Brookwood Station area (Roswell Road) store. There were impressions made in that sidewalk by many visiting recording artists over the years, and the uproar at this destruction of such history gave the company a black eye locally.

Specs is gone, too. I remember some in Florida back in the 80's. I'm not sure when, or if, they converted to Sam Goody, fye, etc.

And one we can add soon to the list of defunct record retailers will be Circuit City. Some of their stores had a very large music selection.

Daniel wrote:There is a Wherehouse branded store in Clovis, Ca -- unless they've changed it in the 3 months since I moved from that area. Sometimes chains will operate one-off stores of retired names just to protect the trademark. That's why there's still a Standard station in San Francisco, so another company can't claim the name is abandoned. (If Albertson's had done that with Lucky, the whole mess with Grocery Outlet never would have happened.)

There was also a Wherehouse store operating up until about a year ago in Bellevue WA, which then became an FYE. I think they might actually be in the process of closing down the store, but I'm not entirely certain of that.

Elsewhere in Bellevue, there's also a single Standard station operating as well (which got upgraded not too long ago to the current Chevron design package but still retained the Standard name.) Every other one I know of around here is a Chevron.

In the Northwest, we had DJ's Sound City, originating in Southcenter in Seattle. They had 22 stores in four states. Their logo was obnoxiously huge, which made them cool, I guess.

"DJ" was apparently Dick Justham, who passed away in May 2008.

Dave wrote:Trans World Entertainment is supposedly in the process of rebranding all Sam Goody stores as FYE. The also own the Wherehouse brand and for whatever reason, have a few stores still operating under that name (there's one in Norfolk, VA, for example), as they apparently do with Sam Goody.

According to the fye store locator, there are still Sam Goody stores in Adrian and Petoskey, Michigan. I think the Petoskey one may have begun life as an On Cue, which was a brand that Sam Goody used in smaller towns. Adrian is probably a former Musicland.

Anyone else remember Kemp Mill Records in the Washington/Baltimore area? Most single disc albums were $5.99. ("It's amazing!!! It's incredible!!! It's $5.99 and it's EVERY DAY at Kemp Mill Records.....)