Bob Koester

Robert Gregg Koester (born October 30, 1932) is the founder and owner of Delmark Records, the oldest independent record label in the United States and one of jazz's best-known imprints, and the Jazz Record Mart in Chicago, the world's largest blues/jazz record store.

Koester was born and grew up in Wichita, Kansas during the heyday of big band jazz and started collecting and then trading records in his high school years. Wanting to become a movie cameraman, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri to study cinematography and business at Saint Louis University, where he sold records by mail order from his dorm room. He was a founding member of the St. Louis Jazz Club through which he met Ron Fister, another record collector. Koester and Fister opened a small record store called K & F Sales. On moving to bigger premises they renamed it Blue Note Record Shop. After nearly a year together, Koester and Fister decided to split their business and Koester founded Delmar Records on Delmar Blvd. In 1953 Delmar first recorded a traditional jazz group and then searched out and recorded blues musicians of the 1920s and '30s who were living in St. Louis.

Koester moved to Chicago in 1958. After a poor start in business there, he purchased Seymour's Jazz Mart in the Roosevelt University Building from Seymour Schwartz in 1959. The name of the label was changed from Delmar to Delmark, partly because of copyright issues. In 1963 he relocated Delmark and the store to Grand Avenue. In 1971 he purchased premises at 4243 N. Lincoln Avenue and moved Delmark there. However he kept the store in Grand Avenue, naming it the Jazz Record Mart. At this time Koester's wife Susan also worked in the business and their only employee was Bruce Iglauer, who later founded Alligator Records.

References

* [http://delmark.com/delmark.history.htm History of Delmark Records] by Sandra Pointer-Jones
* [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:5m811vs8zzxa Bob Koester] by Steve Huey at Allmusic