What do Peaches,Paul McCartney and Atlanta all have in common?

I remember all my friends' and their cooler older brothers and sisters having Peaches Records & Tapes t-shirts and of course they kept  all their albums in this "peach" crate.  I can still remember being confused at the artwork on the Steely Dan cover of Aja leaning up against a crate in one of their bedroom floors as we were snooping around.  Ironically in my adult years its one of my favorite albums.

Peaches Records & Tapes was a music store that was on Peachtree Road right down from Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta,Ga.  It was the place to buy records back in the the 70s and into the 80s.  They had stores all over the country and began opening in 1976 and at their peak there were approx 35 branches...of peaches...sorry I couldn't help it.

Part of the Peaches tradition was to have large concrete squares along the sidewalks surrounding their stores. Musicians would be asked to sign and put their hand prints into the quick drying concrete squares and then they'd be displayed like Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
Besides having walls of albums and cassette tapes and probably 8-tracks (I cant remember and I'm not that old), they sold crates for storing albums that looked like old peach crates with the Peaches logo labeled on the end of the crate.

In my mind I can still see Peaches logo t-shirts everywhere and everyone wanted one.
Peaches went out of business in 1985 and other stores like Turtles and Record Bar may have lasted into the early 90s,but eventually got bought up by the group that owned Blockbusters.  It is speculated that Peaches downfall was that they gambled that consumers would not buy a thing called a Compact Disc.  If they could have just held on until present day...it only took 35 years for vinyl popularity to come back around.



One of the best stories surrounding Peaches and their famous concrete wall of stars involved Paul McCartney and Wings when they were in concert at The Omni in Atlanta in 1976.  As you can imagine it would have been crazy to try and bring Paul to the store so the staff at Peaches got creative.  Read the story from this great blog called Meet The Beatles For Real.

Paul McCartney and Wings and Peaches concrete wall

Another story about The Allman Brothers and Peaches Records & Tapes in Atlanta.  Allman Brothers attempt to play at Peaches store

Lastly the Godfather of Soul gets a Peaches t-shirt.

ZZ Top making their concrete prints

James Brown & Peaches store director Lee Berman-1976

Mike Smith, The Showbiz Kids