Why the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville Mattered: An Appreciation

News that country music fans had long dreaded arrived this week: The Ernest Tubb Record Shop, a fixture of Nashville since 1947 and a mainstay in its current Lower Broad location since 1951, will be closing some time this spring, according to owners who purchased the iconic business and building two years ago. The store was famous not only as a very old-school physical media mecca, but for hosting performances on its rear stage for the “Midnite Jamboree” program by the likes of Loretta Lynn or even a nascent Elvis Presley.

Writer Matt Powell, who began working at the store in 1999 and was its manager from 2001-2005, penned an eloquent appreciation of the shop that Reporter Door is sharing here: 

I arrived at the turn of the century, time enough to catch the falling tail of the old Nashville, with its honky-tonk music and easy charm. I saw a want ad in the paper; it read: “Do you love country music?” I was hired on the spot and the Ernest Tubb Record Shop became my life, my home, and my family. One of my first days, over Broadway sidewalk smoke breaks, I heard three different versions of “Crazy Arms” pouring out of three different honky-tonks, blending into a humid mid-day summer stew. I was right where I was supposed to be.

A couple years later I was managing the institution. I was a kid with no idea what I was doing, but I was all-in and well-liked and had a pretty good run. Whenever I’ve tried to write about my years at ETRS, I become overwhelmed at the onset by the enormity of emotion and material, the characters and lessons. No other experience has shaped me more than my early 20s spent at 417 Broadway.

These were the simple, offline days. There were no digital databases or algorithms. The Ernest Tubb Record Shop was the premiere classic country music resource in the world. Every day customers came or called from all corners of the globe seeking information about an old song they heard during the war, or their mother used to sing, or some such thing. A fragment of a lyric, sometimes a few bars of a melody, often only a presumed title. We got it (almost) every time. We thrived on it. If we were stumped, we’d take customers’ numbers and knock it around and call them back. If we had a question about a certain musician or artist, sometimes we’d just call them and ask. In some cases, we’d run off bootleg mix tapes of out-of-print songs and give them away. The only thing that mattered was connecting people to the music they loved and could not find anywhere else. That was the very reason ET opened the store to begin with in 1947, listening to fans at shows across the country tell him they couldn’t find his records locally.

Some of my coworkers had been at ETRS for 30 or more years. Others were wayfarers like me, out of sync with our times, cultural pilgrims seeking asylum in new old worlds. We were collectively the greatest living brain trust of country music knowledge in existence at the time. I’d put us up against any machine or digital tool to this day. The Ernest Tubb Record Shop died with that hammer in its hand.

I thought I knew a lot about classic country music. I didn’t realize until I started working at ETRS how little I knew. As part of my first duties, I took down each of the priceless framed photos and paintings, one at a time, and cleaned away the decades of dust and cobwebs from the glass and frames, getting to know each story intimately. It was an environment of total immersion, and I lived it 24/7. When we were busy, I learned from the customers and what they were into. When it was slow, I learned from the vast catalog of recorded country music at my disposal, playing records, reading every book that came through, and learning to distill the gold from the bullshit from the many stars and sidemen and almost-weres who were always stopping by, overflowing with anecdotes and insight. Endless discoveries, gems and threads and revelations.

I learned from osmosis by simply being there, descending the old wooden steps, each creak a bell ringing throughout time; the footsteps of ET and countless country legends, Army doctors taking dead kids down to the basement morgue from the days when the building was a Civil War hospital. When they replaced that dilapidated staircase I kept a plank, flaking dull-red paint, heavy wood, worn with ghostly imprints.

The nights I closed, I would wait until the last tourist or drunk had left, then gently lock the door, put Mr. Tubb’s latter-day recordings on the overnight speakerphone system, shut the lights and go downstairs to punch the clock. I’d walk back across the floor, slowly creaking, past the little stage where so many greats had played — Hank and Elvis, Patsy and Loretta — Mr. Tubb singing low and eerily through the tiny phone speakers, the neon glow of Lower Broad casting shadows through the glass, long noirish streaks of pink and blue whispering against the hardwood, a thousand faces of country music history staring back and a small bronze Ernest Tubb on a pedestal, silhouetted against the neon window. I slowed down every time, making each step longer, knowing without being able to yet articulate that these moments were irreplaceable and ephemeral.

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