GemCityRecords.com

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Gem City Records, Inc.

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phone: +1 937 223 3494,Fax: +1 937 223 3494

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Welcome to Gem City Records!

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John Huffman founded Gem City Records as a mail order company in September of 1981. For several years the business bought and sold music around the globe through the mail as well as an emerging Record Show scene. It was great fun meeting new people every weekend, buying new merchandise and traveling to many parts of the country and eventually, all over the world.

Many highlights from that those days: a call at 3 in the morning from some cat in Oslo, Norway who wanted ten Hank Williams box sets at $100 a pop, my biggest sale at that time! The crab cakes at Crisfield's Restaurant in Silver Spring, MD. Rick Cioffi in his bathrobe and slippers at most of the Record Shows we traveled to. A call from Doc Pomus that began "You may have heard of me..." Ah, yea I think so! And then there were the negative highlights: A speeding ticket at the end of a 1200-mile weekend 5 miles from home. Lugging 15 record crates up two flights of stairs and then back down again. Shows with no customers 300 miles away, etc. All in all we were still young and those were the best of times. It certainly beat working a real job.

In the midst of one of the coldest Decembers' in Dayton's history we opened our first retail store December 5th, 1983. I didn't know how we would ever fill the 500 square feet of space that we had leased for $500 per month, but before long we did. We quickly established ourselves as a Jazz and Blues specialty store that eventually evolved into Dayton's top Rap and R&B store. One of my favorite memories from that time is a letter of congratulations from Bob Koester, owner of the Jazz Record Mart and Delmark Records in Chicago. "Hoodoo Man Blues" by Junior Wells was always one of my favorite records and I was thrilled to hear from such a cool guy as Bob Koester. I still have that letter! As it turned out our timing was good for opening a retail store. With CD's just beginning to enter the marketplace we were able to exceed our first year projections. From there things continued to expand and our success continued to grow. A lot of the credit for the success of the early years goes to great staff mates Dave Barber, Phil Webb, Matt Chapman, Todd Robinson.