Yup, Harold Bronson owned Rhino, both record shop and record label. The label started small, issuing offbeat, obscure artists in the 1970’s, selling them in the store. They then got into assembling comps of 50’s and 60’s music, and then single-artist/group greatest hits albums. I’m sure Rhino’s deal with Warner Brothers made Harold a fairly wealthy man ;-) .
Remember Rhino’s store employee Phast Phreddie? He was a Blues music expert, and played around town, fronting a pretty good band comprised of local hipsters. He left L.A. in the 80’s, moved back East. A lot of musicians and songwriters paid the rent and ate by working a day job in a record store. In the late-80’s Lucinda Williams was working in the Moby Disc store in Sherman Oaks, three blocks from my apartment. I’d be thumbing through the LP’s and see her standing behind the cash register, staring off into space. Composing song lyrics, I suspect. The store manager was Kip Brown, the guitarist in the Punk band Shock, and later in The Little Girls, a band fronted by two sisters.
As happened to the great record shop in Mill Valley---Village Music (which had an incredible inventory of UK and European pressings of Blues, Jazz, Rockabilly, and Hillbilly LP’s and 78’s, and was frequented by musicians. I saw James Burton shopping there in the 80’s)---the introduction of and takeover by CD’s ruined the store.
