There were plenty of small music stores
when I was in high school. It was difficult to get a saxophone in the school band,
the music class didn’t have any. I lived in Miami Springs and there was a music store
called Carroll Music and rented my first one. I think it was a Bundy, then when
I got a job I bought an American made Buescher in mint condition from the 60’s,
the person never played it and I was very lucky. Actually my first instrument
as 12 yr. old was an acoustic guitar but I learnt to play sax and read music
before it. Before sax I was a bass and alto clarinet player -- those they had
in the band. I was very impressed my first appearance in middle school of the giant
bari-saxes and I told the teacher what happened to them when they quickly left.
He said they had graduated to senior high, but they owned their own bari-sax.
The small music stores closed up, both owners died of cancer. Before that
happened they moved where I lived too unknowingly, went there dozens of times.
They had no children so they left the store property to the young man that was
their employee, but he sold it to a developer of the mall when business got
bad. In 2012 I bought a soprano sax in Feb. That was the how the year began. In
2000 exactly I bought my first electric guitar, then I bought a few, and got
deeply into guitars too. It is very sad how conglomerates eat up all the small business. I work in a vegan cafe and in Feb. they are going to level it, destroy the whole mall, which has a 50's diner at the front to give way to the new conglomerate business that have taken over everything, unless you are lucky to live in the woods somewhere.
