Olsson's Books and Records - Washington DC metro area - 1972-2008

Olsson's began in 1972 as just a record store when John Olsson, who had been a classical music manager at DC's Discount Records & Books, left to start his own business -- then called Record and Tape Ltd -- at 19th and L St NW. Within a couple years he convinced semi-legendary bookman Jim Tenney (one-time owner of DC's semi-legendary Saville Bookshop) to open up a book department for R&T, but since there was no room in the record store they took a spot a few doors down the block and called it The Book Annex. A few years later they found a great spot in the center of Georgetown DC and opened what became the flagship store; and when Discount went out of business in the later 70s John Olsson took over their Dupont Circle store, whence he had come. At some point (early 80s?) it was decided that "Record & Tape Ltd and The Book Annex" was too cumbersome a name, and since John was well known as a music and book seller they just changed the name to Olsson's Books & Records. By the way, although it is now common to find stores selling books and music together (B&N and Borders selling CDs, Tower selling books etc), Discount and R&T/Olssons were in the 60s and 70s innovative (if not unique) in bringing books and music together in a major way.

Eventually Olsson's opened stores in Old Town Alexandria VA, Bethesda MD, Metro Center DC, The Lansburgh Building DC, and 4 or 5 (depending on how you count) other locations in VA and MD. Yeah, that made them a "chain" but they were really just an old-time indie spread around (and eventually spread too thin). There was no "corporate" feel, John Olsson was a real person who came to work every day. And the customers loved those stores; Washingtonian Magazine dubbed Olsson's "in a class by itself".

We all know the rest of the story. In the new millennium Olsson's developed a limp. Classical music customers dying off, and a paradigm shift in selling pop music. Borders and B&N moving into town, Amazon moving into everywhere. Book and music buying moving online. Largely because Olsson's did NOT have a corporate culture they were unable to respond adequately, and they closed rather suddenly on September 30, 2008 after deciding they didn't have the cash to buy in sufficient stock for Xmas 2008. In another couple weeks I would have been there exactly 20 years, as a book buyer and bookseller.

Since Olsson's closed both John Olsson and Jim Tenney have passed away. But their legacy lives on (here music swells in the background) -- a lot of great people worked there, many of them still in music or books in some way (e.g., the publisher of Basic Books is a former Olsson's book manager) and there are a LOT of great books and CDs (and cassettes and 8trks and LPS and 45s!) that once sat on the shelves at Olsson's now in people's homes and lives bringing them knowledge and joy ...

Ave atque vale.

edited to correct typos and punctuation

Here's the residual Olsson's homepage with a nice memorial photo of John in the Georgetown store, and a link to almost 500 customer testimonials. http://www.olssons.com/

Update -- on the testimonials list all the entries from 2012 on (only about a page worth) are just spam links from assholes. Scroll down a bit to find the real Olssons testimonials from 2008-2009.

I still dream about Olsson's...