Our Story

Bananas Music has been locally owned and operated by Doug and Michelle Allen since 1977. Collectively, we have over 17,500 sq. feet of retail space with another 8,000 sq. feet of sorting warehouses. Our 11,000-square-foot retail store features a large selection of new and used compact discs, DVD and VHS movies, new and used vinyl records, vinyl accessories, and new and used equipment. Our 6,500-square-foot location houses over 3 million pieces of vinyl LPs, 45s and 78s. Customers come from around the world to visit and shop from our vast inventory. Doug is a member of ARSC and frequently does record collection appraisals for individuals and insurance companies.

A Brief History

The business started in April 1977 when the Allens decided they wanted to have their own business. Each being employed full time for large corporations, the store was open only weekends for the first few months until enough money was made to pay the bills and outside jobs could be eliminated. The original store was a used bookstore under the name Allen’s Book Store. Immediately the store took off and we had a large following. Garage sales were frequented every weekend to get more inventory and one day a stack of records caught Michelle’s eye. A Joan Baez record was calling her name and when the lady was asked how much, she would only sell the whole stack. It’s not recalled how much was paid, but the Joan Baez was removed and the rest of the stack was put in the store for sale. Every record sold, so a new product line began. After about two years, the store had more records than books, so the book inventory was sold to another local dealer and Allen’s Record Exchange was born. The name was changed to Bananas Records some 5 years later to make the marketing for the store more fun. As new formats like the compact discs came about, the store was changed to the current name of Bananas Music.