Unlike most New York City landmarks you won’t spot the Jazz Record Center from the street. Being sequestered on the 8th floor of a mixed-use commercial/residential building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood ensures that the shop enjoys exactly zero incidental foot traffic. It also ensures that anyone venturing into its densely packed three-room environs is there for a pretty specific purpose: to lose themselves in as impressive a depository of jazz vinyl and CDs, performance and documentary DVDs, reference books, biographies and ephemera as one can imagine. Fred Cohen opened the store in the early ’80s, adopting the name from a long defunct but legendary 1940s-era midtown shop. That original JRC was infamous for its insular community of 78-collecting outsiders and misfits.
