Vinyl never really went away for Rock Hill music man

Bill Broyhill remembers the first song he learned. It was Frankie Laine’s “Mule Train,” spinning at 78 revolutions per minute on a record player. The song lasted less than three minutes. Broyhill was 4 years old.

The first album he purchased was in 1956. The price was $3.98, “$4.10 with tax,” he says. Broyhill, then 11, bought “Elvis Presley,” the singer’s first album, after attending his June 26 concert at the Charlotte Coliseum.

Record executives weren’t even sure they should produce an album, as teens bought 45 rpm records then.

But they gave the record, and Elvis, a shot. Among the tunes on the self-titled monaural album – no stereo tracks then – are “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Shake, Rattle, Roll,” “Tutti Frutti” and even “Blue Moon” by the show-tune tandem of Richard Rodgers and Lorenzo Hart.

When it came time to decide on a career, Broyhill choose something he was passionate about: music.

Forty years later, Broyhill’s passion for music is unwavering and still passed on every time he makes a sale.

Broyhill owns the Record Cellar at the Galleria in Rock Hill, one of the last original merchants in the mall. Before that he had a store in the Rock Hill Mall, and he started his career as a manager trainee at the Record Bar in South Park in Charlotte.

LP records were king when he started in the business, followed by 8-track tapes, then cassette tapes and then compact discs. Like many in his business, he heard about the “information highway” at various record conventions but didn’t understand its full impact.

As the owner of an independent record store, Broyhill made his reputation by having the music that the Record Bar, Sam Goody and other big retailers didn’t have. Variety and depth of offerings were his trademarks. His best year in business, he says, was 1998.

Broyhill’s Record Cellar continues to offer variety, but not as much depth. There are cases filled with cassettes, but not the thousands he stocked during his heyday. There is row after row of compact discs, many of them one-third of the price they once were. There’s even a section of 45 rpm records on sale.

And, in the front of the store, are bins filled with LPs.

There is a good variety of music, from the Big Band era of the 1930s and 1940s, the singers of the 1950s, jazz artists of all decades and lots of R&B artists. The bluesmen are among Broyhill’s favorites, as he grew up listening to WLAC of Nashville, the clear-channel radio station that played the likes of Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry when other radio stations didn’t.

Displayed above the bins is the music of Bob Seger, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the Allman Brothers Band and the Beach Boys. The albums aren’t used; they’re among the latest vinyl pressings.

Industry wide, vinyl is back. In Broyhill’s case, it never left.

Since 2007 vinyl record sales have increased 517 percent, according to SoundScan, which tracks U.S. music sales. In 2013 sales topped 6.1 million units, and that number is expected to continue to rise.

Compact disc sales lead the market at 57 percent, but that number is expected to drop as more people turn to Internet streaming for their music. Digital sales are about 41 percent now.

But even at just 2 percent of all music sales, Broyhill says the purchase of a new vinyl release helps his profitability just as much as a high-end CD. The only drawback to vinyl, he says, is he must buy the record. CDs that don’t sell can be returned to the manufacturer for credit.

Vinyl customers come from all generations, he says. The serious audiophile never stopped buying. College kids and younger are now coming buying records.

Why is vinyl popular again?

Broyhill said it is partly the experience of owning the record. Playing a record is a manual experience: You have to remove it from the record jacket, remove it from the sleeve, put it on the turntable and then “cue” the turntable arm.

Then comes the sound.

“The sound, it’s more satisfying, more real, there’s more warmth,” Broyhill said. “CDs are sterile, synthetic.”

And for many there’s nothing like the hiss and hum before the record starts playing and the occasional pop and crackle when it plays.

The hiss, the hum, the pop, the crackle result, in part, from the fact that a vinyl record is made. CDs are duplicated, MP3 are simply computer files, but making a vinyl record is more art than science.

It starts when the music is recorded. Record manufacturers say the recording should be specifically “mastered” for vinyl.

Then it’s making the record from PVC pellets in a multi-step process. Even applying the paper labels is a process prone to errors, manufacturers say.

And then there’s the album cover, a canvass where art, words and music converge.

“Will vinyl last forever?” Broyhill mused. “I don’t know, but there are new releases every week from all different kinds of artists. Some artists are now releasing more LPs than CDs.”

This story was originally published November 9, 2014 at 9:50 PM with the headline "Vinyl never really went away for Rock Hill music man."