Brenda Fillipi gazes around at the exposed brick walls and high ceilings of the Capitol Hill store her family has owned since 1952 and recalls an earlier time when her parents, Ted and Kits, sold books and music from their Madrona home.

"It was a fun, interesting, unconventional upbringing," she says. The house was always full of theater, music and book people.

Those friends and customers followed the business when it moved to the store in 1952, expanding room by room as the inventory grew into one of the Northwest's finest collections of used books, sheet music and records. Brenda Fillipi, now 65, grew up in that store and took it over from her father. Now she's ready to join her husband, Ian MacGowan, in retirement sometime early next year. Until then, she's liquidating her store's inventory.

"I hate to see other businesses closing," she says, "but now I have a better understanding of why."

Handwritten block letters label bin after bin of LPs and 78s. The selection is deep: hot jazz, sweet jazz, gospel, classical, pop, square dance (with or without calls). There is spoken-word from Dylan Thomas and Charlton Heston. There are even cut-out-and-play record premiums like Remington's "Music to Shave By" that came in '50s magazines. (Apparently a shave is smoother with Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong along.)

But what has set Fillipi Book & Record Shop apart for Seattle's vinyl lovers is its deep stock of 78s. And she says she doesn't know where to send people looking for old 78s.

"There's a nice void there that needs to be filled by someone."

Heather McKinnon, Seattle Times staff