Ep. 16 Kevin Cassidy (Bay Area, SW Regional, Exec VP Retail Ops)

2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Records

“He was the most important factor in any type of music education I had” says this week’s guest Kevin Cassidy in reference to his father. Kevin grew up on the streets of Philadelphia and pretty quickly grew into a jazz-loving, doo-wop appreciating, Beatles album buying, James Brown revering pre-teen and teenager. As a teenager Kevin quickly found a double date to a Blind Faith/Frank Zappa concert wasn’t the best way to score with the ladies (“You’ll never take me out again”), but it laid the groundwork to Mr. Cassidy’s exploration of a variety of musical styles.

Going to college at the University of Georgia on a basketball scholarship, started working at Underground Records which eventually turned into School Kids records. When basketball didn’t figure into his future, Kevin headed to Colorado to, again, work in a record store for close to six years. After years of the record store life, Kevin Cassidy headed out to the Bay Area where his family had relocated. Working for a family that owned three local restaurants, one of his customers, Robert Olsen suggested he leave the service industry and become the Tower Records Berkeley jazz buyer.

From there, Kevin blazed a path through Tower Records. He learned some smart business lessons from his Regional Manager Wayne Ennes. Running stores and then becoming a Regional Manager full of single store markets, the nightmare of opening the WOW store in Las Vegas, Kevin eventually was bumped up to running Retail Operations during Tower’s toughest time.

We finish with Kevin reminiscing about two important Tower folks who had a great impact on him; Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and his good friend Robert Olsen.