{"id":273147,"date":"2026-08-27T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/273147\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T10:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:00:17","slug":"longtime-pittsburgh-music-staple-jerrys-records-turns-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/273147\/","title":{"rendered":"Longtime Pittsburgh music staple Jerry’s Records turns 50"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O’Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in Squirrel Hill this Saturday and pass by Jerry\u2019s Records, you might see folks hurling 45 rpm records across the sidewalk like Frisbees.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll be aiming for a bucket. But rest assured, it\u2019s one of the few times you\u2019ll catch anyone at Jerry\u2019s throwing records away.<\/p>\n

The store, which this weekend celebrates a half-century since its late namesake founder began selling used vinyl, has an estimated 1 million records on site, some nearly 80 years old. And the vast majority of the time, it\u2019s focused on coddling those discs and chaperoning them to the turntables of customers who might like anything from Elvis and Beethoven to Roberta Flack, Cannonball Adderly, Metallica, Tone Loc or \u201c24 Popular Irish Dance Favorites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founder Jerry Weber retired in 2017<\/a> and died five years later<\/a>. But along with servicing the healthy local appetite for classic and rare LPs and more, the massive store on Murray Avenue remains as good as anyone this side of the Steelers at luring visitors to town.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, on a daily basis, there\u2019s people from out of town, whether they\u2019re from somewhere else in the U.S. or from other countries,\u201d says Chris Grauzer, who took over the store from Weber. \u201cWe get people from Europe, we get people from South America, you name it. \u2026 Buyers from the U.K. who come here just to shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

DJs, at least the kind who still spin vinyl, have long dug Jerry\u2019s too.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I have an out-of-town visitor who is a music fan, I take them to Jerry’s,\u201d says WYEP director of creative services Brian Siewiorek, who hosts the all-vinyl show The Grooves. \u201cIt used to be my first stop on Sunday-morning errands, and most times Jerry himself was sitting behind the counter. Now, when I look through my records and come across an old Jerry’s price tag (usually $3 or $7) or one of their \u2018Exceptionally Clean\u2019 stickers, it puts a smile on my face. Pittsburgh has been so fortunate to have such a place for the last 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weber was a mail carrier who in 1976 joined fellow record collector Jim Petruzzi to open the Record Graveyard, in Oakland. A few years later, Weber split off to launch Garbage Records, later renamed Jerry\u2019s. The shop relocated to its current home, a former car dealership, in 1994.<\/p>\n

The 10,000-square-foot main store is jam-packed with LPs, its aisles wide enough to slip by fellow browsers. The section reserved for jazz, country and gospel alone is as large as many whole used record shops. Jerry\u2019s might in fact be, as Weber used to claim, the biggest store in the nation dedicated to used vinyl.<\/p>\n

Most of the LPs, says Grauzer, come either from individuals scaling down or from the families of the departed. The lots range into the thousands of individual records. And despite the remarkable resurgence of new vinyl \u2014 some 47 million EPs and LPs were sold in 2025<\/a>, nearly 50 times more than in \u201906 \u2014 most of Jerry\u2019s stock dates from the late \u201980s or earlier.<\/p>\n

For non-aficionados in the digital age, the question of who\u2019s still buying mechanically engraved PVC platters might seem mysterious.<\/p>\n

Some are collectors like Grauzer was 20 years ago, when he stopped by daily just to see what was new. (It was a habit that turned into a part-time and then a full-time job.)<\/p>\n

Others are bulk buyers from places as distant as Hong Kong and Japan, who Grauzer says purchase \u201cpallets of stuff\u201d to satisfy audiophile cravings back home for jazz and classical, though he adds that market has shrunk as shipping costs have risen.<\/p>\n

And more buyers these days, says Grauzer, are young.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, we\u2019re talking even 18 to 30-year-olds,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Favorite buys have not changed much: rock, soul and jazz predominate, and the appeal of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin seems timeless. But Grauzer thinks vinyl allure is more than just the appeal of media you can hold in your hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think young people are also getting sick of streaming things,\u201d he says. Streaming playlists, he says, are the enemy of intentional listening.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s people who are serious listeners of music,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey want to actually listen to the music, not have it on in the background.\u201d<\/p>\n

The faithful will gather this weekend. From Friday, Aug. 28, through Sunday, Aug. 30, comes one of Jerry\u2019s semi-annual Dollar Sales, with 20,000 LPs, CDs, DVDs and more on offer for $1 each. (Non-vinyl media are sold in Jerry\u2019s Future Zone annex.)<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s 50th-anniversary celebration<\/a>, meanwhile, features a storewide 15% off sale, food, DJ sets by Buscrates, and \u201ccarnival games\u201d including that 45 rpm record toss, with store credit as the prize.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t fret about those singles people are flinging. Grauzer assures they are completely unplayable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O’Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-273147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}