Audiophiles and vinyl novices alike congregated at Druid City Brewing Company for the first-ever Tuscaloosa Record Show on Saturday.
The show brought in vendors and patrons from around the state to buy, sell and trade vinyl records.
“There’s two record shows up in Birmingham, and at the one that just occurred in August, they were promoting this show,” said Sam Sumner, a Jefferson County collector who had several hundred of his over-15,000 pieces laid out for sale on Saturday. “Some people with the Birmingham Record Collectors Club were handing out flyers, trying to get other sellers from there to come down here.”
While the campaign to attract out-of-towners brought a lively spark to the event, locals made up the majority of the crowd. Students and faculty from the University were excited to come out, shop around and discuss vinyl with other enthusiasts.
“It was nice to get to explore their collections and see more people there who are excited to sell vinyl,” said Catey Rose Callahan, a sophomore majoring in history who bought several records at the show.
The event’s presenters, DJ Tom Kat Kitten and Ragged Company Vintage, were the heart and soul of the show. Together they took up the entire south wall of the brewery’s dining room; Tom Kat Kitten spent the afternoon spinning and remixing funk, soul, and blues records, while Ragged Company Vintage laid out thousands of records across several tables for patrons to sift through.
Ironically, the event was held just a stone’s throw away from the now-defunct Oz Music, once a Southern institution that supplied music lovers across the region with records and CDs. Oz, which previously had locations in Atlanta and Birmingham, closed the doors of its last remaining location in Tuscaloosa in 2022. To this day, all of its locations are remembered fondly by former patrons.
“When I was a kid, the original Oz was up around Birmingham, and they had scarecrow characters and all the stuff … it looked like you were walking into the movie set,” Sumner said.
Oz was the go-to spot for vinyl lovers at the University, and its closure left a hole in the community that has yet to truly be filled.
“I moved here from Atlanta a couple of years ago, and coincidentally Oz closed right when I got here,” said John Prince, a photography instructor at the University who had a subset of his collection for sale at the record show. Prince went on to say that since Oz closed, it’s been hard to find records in Tuscaloosa.
The inaugural Tuscaloosa Record Show drew an impressive crowd, the size and enthusiasm of which seemed to suggest that in the years since Oz’s closure, Tuscaloosa’s love for physical forms of music has remained fervent.
“There’s a ton of interest, and I’m surprised to see how many people are so passionate about it,” Prince said. “As someone who moved here, I don’t know a lot of people outside the school, so to meet people I don’t know in the community is really cool.”
Only time will tell how Tuscaloosa’s vinyl-loving community develops and grows, but some attendees seem to think the Tuscaloosa Record Show could be a part of its future.
“The turnout has been amazing and I think it’ll get better each time they do it,” Prince said. “This is a necessary thing for sure.”
