Written and Photographed by Cristina Byrne
Sean Hale runs the newest record store in Huntsville Alabama called Black Rose Records. Its doors opened on Record Store Day, Saturday, April 22nd, 2023.
"I ran around weeks before trying to ensure I was open on Record Store Day," Hale told me when I stopped in. "I was working at another job full-time up until the week before we opened. My friend building the new fixtures for the store was working at that same job full-time while doing the build. Finding the time here and there to fit in working on the shop was a logistical juggling act.”
Located at Village Center on Memorial Parkway SouthWest, roughly 600 square feet in the same shopping center as Das Stahl Bierhaus and BigFoot Donuts, “I liked this location because there were already similar kinds of ‘collectible’ stores, with Lucky Dice and Bricks and Minifigs. I also don’t think it ever hurts to be steps away from a good bar or a place with good food and coffee.”
The name came from one of Hale's favorite albums, Black Rose by Thin Lizzy. "My parents were big classic and hard rock fans, and we certainly listened to plenty of Thin Lizzy when I was growing up. So, it makes me think of listening to music and watching wrestling on TV on the weekends," Hale reflected. “As I got older, my appreciation for their lyricism and songs grew as well. I just think they’re the coolest band ever.”
Vinyl is experiencing a major resurgence in mainstream music. While digital sales have dominated the marketplace, records outsold CDs in the US last year (2022) for the first time since 1987, selling 41 million units against 33 million for CDs, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
"More and more popular artists started pressing more of their albums as actual records," Hale explained. "I think part of the resurgence in popularity comes from the tangible quality of them. It’s something fairly large you can actually hold in your hands, and you can literally see the music on the record. Shopping is an in-person social experience as well.”
With over 2,000 records in stock, Hale is looking for records to be in good shape.
"The plan is to keep it lean so the quality level stays high. Also, I want people to be able to spend time here and be able to look through everything. Mostly, I just personally love a record store where I can look through everything in a single visit.”
The first record bought at Black Rose was a small stack of records, and one of them was a blues sampler called Alligator Tracks, ”Just a cool promotional record from a record label with a bunch of their artists, those are always a fun way to hear new things. That person also got an original copy of Velvet Underground and Nico’s album with the famous Andy Warhol-designed banana cover,” Hale tells me.
Some of the rarest vinyl you can find at Black Rose Record Store are some test presses of popular records such as Guns N’ Roses, Deadmau5, Leonard Cohen, Cypress Hill, and Nine Inch Nails. Mostly only pressed for the artists, pressing plant, and labels to verify quality and accuracy before mass production.
Prices currently range between $1 and $450, with the average cost of a record being about $10. Black Rose also buys all types of records directly from customers in order to keep their used stock replenished. Hale’s personal holy grail, that one record he is looking for to fill his personal collection, is the Smashing Pumpkins ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
”Huntsville is a big place, and as far as I’m concerned, there can never be enough good record stores in a city,” says Hale. “Personally, I just love the digging and the excitement of finding something unexpected.”
