Longtime N.B. record store owner sells to Halifax-based Taz Records after 43 memorable years | CBC News

Around 43 years ago, Gordie Tufts decided that after years of working in music retail, he was going to open his own used record store in Saint John.

So off he went to Halifax to speak with the founder of Taz Records, the late Bob Switzer, and get some advice, as he owned a used record store at the time.

And now, everything has come full circle. Tufts has decided to retire, and Taz Records is taking over ownership of the Saint John and Fredericton stores under a new name, Taz Backstreet.

“It’s something after all these years to see it go to Taz,” Tufts said.

The first Backstreet Records shop opened in 1980 in the Ritchie Building, a few doors from O’Leary’s Pub on Princess Street in uptown Saint John. But the store was destroyed by arson on Christmas Eve 1982.

Two months later, Backstreet moved to a compact, 600-square-foot storefront at 124 Germain St., where it has been ever since. 

Eight years after the first location got going, a sister location opened in Fredericton. 

Taz Records also has a long history, dating back to 1983. It has three stores in the greater Halifax area.

Bob Russell, the current owner of Taz Records, has shown interest in buying Backstreet for a while. In 2016, Tufts threw around the idea of retirement in an interview with CBC News, and that caught Russell’s attention.

“[Russell] presented himself, and had wanted to know if I was really serious, and I said at that time, ‘No,'” Tufts said.

But more recently, Tufts started playing with the idea of selling again. Three weeks after getting an assessment, Russell invited Tufts and his wife to Halifax.

“[Russell] wined and dined us, and we walked away with a signed agreement.”

Russell said that in the past he worked as a computer consultant, so he knew the type of system that Taz needed when he took over.

He said with a decline in retail record stores, naming Sam the Record Man and HMV as examples, only a few good “catalogue stores” with large inventories remain. 

“We have 25,000 new titles, another 25,000 used titles, so you can almost find anything that you want because we are highly efficient and computerized,” Russell said.

Despite the market changes, moving through the ages of vinyl, cassettes, CDs and streaming platforms, Tufts said the market continues to get stronger.

He said people still like to collect music with vinyl records, and the introduction of Record Store Day — an international annual event that offers a number of records pressed specifically for the day — also reminded people that record stores are still alive.

In the lead-up to Record Store Day in 2008, CBC Radio 3 host Grant Lawrence narrowed down the top five small-scale music retailers in Canada — another big thing for Backstreet.

Backstreet Records and Taz Records both made the list. 

“Because of that, we had Joel Plaskett play on the street in front of Backstreet, and 300 people gathered, blocked the traffic,” Tufts said. “The police just came and waved.”

Tufts also recalls in the 1980s and ’90s how there would be 40 or so kids in the shop or outside on the street during the school lunch hours. 

One day, he passed by the Saint John High School principal at the time, Dennis Knibb, whom he didn’t know. 

“He says, ‘Good day, Mr. Tufts,'” Tufts recalled.

“I thought, ‘Oh, he knows me,’ and it was because he knew where his students were at lunchtime. [It’s] little stories like that about Saint John that you go, ‘Whoa, you know, that’s pretty neat.'”

And holding onto memories like those of his time owning Backstreet, Tufts isn’t walking away completely. 

He said he’ll be working one day a week to oversee the transition. 

While Taz is a systems-operated company, Tufts said Backstreet has not been, and a website and new system will bring changes. 

Tufts said the Fredericton store doesn’t have the space to accommodate the transition so it will eventually have to move to a new spot. 

But some things will stay the same in the transition. Customers will see the same Backstreet staff faces.

And while Tufts said there have been some hard moments since he decided to sell, just the other day, he felt a bit of relief.

“Each day gets a bit better, and knowing that I can be in the store one day a week, that’s good — it’s comfort.”