Jack’s Music Shoppe continues to thrive as a mecca to audiophiles

By: Ray Schweibert | May 25, 2024 |  Features |  Red Bank

By Ray Schweibert

Among the milestones Jack Anderson achieved as an exceptionally successful businessman and real-estate investor is having embarked on his 54^th year as proprietor of Jack’s Music Shoppe in Red Bank. Anderson officially started the business in February 1970, but the circuitous route that got to that point sprang from a work ethic that his father passed along to him – a work ethic that might serve as a touchstone to a bygone generation.

“My father was born on a farm in Missouri, and rode a horse 10 miles to school every day,” says Anderson, 81. “He and his brother moved to Philly and eventually to New Brunswick, and they managed theaters in the late 1930s, early ’40s, which were very popular back then.

“When World War II broke out, he had two kids (exempting him from the draft), but he took a job working at a pharmaceutical company after work to help support the war effort and his family. He was a real hard worker.”

The elder Anderson eventually moved his family from New Brunswick to Red Bank, where he purchased a record store.

“He bought the store in 1947, and at that time it had already been in business for about 40 years,” says Anderson. “I have a newspaper article from back then with a picture of him about his buying it. It was called Stork’s.”

Jack’s father had a business partner who set off a series of occupational mishaps, leaving the record store – which is housed in a gorgeous, three-story Colonial-style building on Broad Street – sitting padlocked for about a year.

“The guy running it got himself severely into debt, so one day he just put everything he could fit into a truck and left,” says Anderson. “My father called me and said, ‘Why don’t you go over and start all over again?’ So I did. That was at the end of 1969. It took a couple of months to clean the place up, but we opened in February of 1970 and called it Jack’s Music Shoppe.

“Back then you could fire a cannon down Broad Street and not hit anybody, but we were doing well,” he said. “We’d often have 50 or 60 people in the store sometimes when the rest of the town was dead.”

Rolling with the changes

Jack’s has had to adapt to changing times and tastes over the years – primarily with the advent and proliferation of Internet streaming services and online competition – but still finds a strong market among those who prefer vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. Jack’s stocks all of these modes of play in a variety of genres, and new and used sections, plus used and repackaged cassette tapes.

“We deal with all the major labels and some of the more obscure stuff,” says Jack’s manager Tim Cronin, who began working at the store in 1988. “There’s still a core group of people who prefer buying physical music to online streaming. We did phase out the sheet-music department because you can get anything like that online, and Covid took its toll, but we have a good customer base and still see a demand for physical music.”

Anderson mentioned, and Cronin concurred, that Jack’s lack of debt and few overhead expenses – directly related to the shrewd business decisions Anderson made over the years and mirroring the prudent investments and work ethic his father conveyed – has helped Jack’s thrive when many other record stores folded to the online pressure.   

“Jack owns this building, and he owns the four buildings across the street, so the rent he collects definitely helps keep this place afloat,” says Cronin, 62. “And as other record stores went out of business – the mall places, the franchise stores, the mom-and-pop’s – a lot of the business sort of shifted from the ones that went under to here. But I think Jack also keeps it because he likes the people, he likes the business and the history behind it.”

In the early days of operation, Jack’s served as a ticket distributor to concerts until that side of the business became too stress-provoking, particularly if Central Jersey’s favorite son Bruce Springsteen was performing within a hundred-mile radius. The store still markets some used and reconditioned musical instruments and amplifiers, new musical supplies such as picks, strings and reeds for horns, and such miscellaneous merchandise as pins, mugs, T-shirts and posters.

Special promos in the shop

Occasionally Jack’s serves as a live-music venue for soloists, duos and trios that perform for free in the shop, often to publicize newly released material on vinyl and CDs. In March, multi-instrumentalist James Mastro was joined in the store by Tony Shanahan and Megan Reilly to promote Mastro’s debut solo album “Dawn of a New Error.”

“It’s a little setup we do in the DVD department,” says Cronin. “We use a small PA system and people come in and listen. It’s a nice alternative and a good way to break up a Sunday.”

Jack’s also participates in a bi-annual event called Record Store Day (see RecordStoreDay.com) that was, according to the website, “conceived in 2007 as a way for independent record-store owners and employees to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the United States.”

“They do a couple of them each year – one around April 20, which is the bigger one, and another on Black Friday,” says Cronin. “There are records that are only released for that day (such as special anniversary re-releases), and in different versions, so the demand among collectors is pretty high.”

“I got there at 7, and the first guy in line said he got there at 4 in the morning,” says Anderson. “It was raining, people were all bundled up, but they came out in droves for Record Day. The line didn’t end until about 2 in the afternoon.”

Jack’s also participated in an inaugural outdoor event called the Red Bank Record Riot, held on May 11, that included dozens of booths and tables of LPs, CDs and 45s from dealers across the Northeast.

“There’s a company that puts on a bunch of record shows every year throughout the state (and in other states; see RecordRiots.com),” says Cronin. “One of the local city councilmen is also a customer and mentioned that it might be good for the store. I fully agreed.”

Brushes with fame

Not counting the basement, which is used for storage, the three levels of Jack’s Music Shoppe include the street-level store with a mezzanine, a second level rented out as an office to a financial firm, and a 1,900-square-foot luxury apartment on the top floor that boasts a large deck with views of the Navesink River. For a while, a member of the rock band Bon Jovi, which formed in 1983 in nearby Sayreville, was the apartment's tenant. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Anderson actually met the frontman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band, Jon Bon Jovi, in his store during the band’s formative years.

“A long time ago, Bon Jovi came in while I was working the register,” Anderson says. “I didn’t even know what he looked like. His band was just taking off. He came over to buy something, and three or four girls came up to him and asked if he’d sign their pocket books and other stuff. Afterwards I said to him ‘Oh, you must be in a band.’

“He was thinking about maybe doing an in-store event, but then his career took off and that was the end of that.”

In the early 1970s, when both he and the store were still in their developmental stages, Springsteen did an in-store performance at Jack’s, and has been spotted shopping there many times since.

“Bruce did an in-store event, and that was the first and only time he ever did something like that,” says Anderson, who also holds the honor of having sold Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson a flute from the shop, again finding out who he was helping after the fact.

“(Tull) had an upcoming show at the Arts Center (Red Bank’s Count Basie Center for the Arts, a landmark theater that first opened in 1926. See TheBasie.org). As a promo, he was giving away a flute. He didn’t want to give away one of his flutes, so he came in and bought a used flute from me. The price was $150 and he chiseled me down to $125. And then we realized who he was.”

The store was also used as a shooting location for scenes in Red Bank-born movie producer Kevin Smith's flicks “Chasing Amy” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.”

“The building’s iconic and the business helps keep me connected with the community,” says Anderson. “I really enjoy it and have for many years. And hopefully will for many more years.”