A Rich Life in Music for Mobile's Keith Glass

By: Jim Hannaford

Many of the people browsing for vinyl at Mobile Records are incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about music. Even so, they may have no idea there’s a noteworthy musical figure right there in their midst.

That distinguished-looking shopkeeper with the unusual accent is Keith Glass, who’s enjoyed an illustrious career of his own in and around the music biz for six decades. He’d already made quite a name for himself in his native Australia when he unexpectedly found a new home in Mobile 22 years ago. He opened the record shop in Midtown in 2012, and it was an instant hit.

“It’s always been about music for me in some form or fashion,” says Keith, who is now in his late 70s. “In my entire life, I’ve never had a so-called ‘regular’ job or worked in any other area.”

Though he insists that describing him as a celebrity back home would be stretching things a bit, the name Keith Glass certainly rings a bell in many circles. For starters, he is a guitarist, singer, song and music writer, and record producer, and also had a memorable stint as the star of a groundbreaking musical. 

Already part of a popular Melbourne-based rock band called Camp-Act in the late 1960s, he was studying to be an architect when another interesting opportunity came along. They were holding auditions for a stage production called Hair.

“I was in my fourth year of an architectural design course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and I heard that there was an open casting call. I went down there with my acoustic guitar and I sang a song and did some dialogue. I got a call back the next day and they told me they wanted me for the lead role.”

He postponed his studies, intending to resume them after six months, but never did. At one performance, he may have made an impression on the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, who came to check out Hair while he was in Australia filming a movie called Ned Kelly.

“Mick Jagger saw me naked,” Keith likes to tease. But then again, maybe he didn’t. One of the reasons the play drew so much attention back in 1969 was its brief full-frontal nudity. “Well, it depends on which way he was looking at the moment,” Keith clarifies, “but he probably saw me because I was front and center.”

Instead of pursuing more theatrical work, Keith dug into music on various levels. He and a partner opened a record store that became very influential, and that led to starting a label so he could record and distribute music from other artists. Among his production credits are Nick Cave’s early band, The Birthday Party, as well as a live album by Texas singer-songwriters Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. He hosted a music TV show in Australia for a while, as well. He has released numerous albums under his own name (and some as a duo with lifelong pal Mick Hamilton) and for years has written for the publication called Rhythms Magazine.

Keith discovered coastal Alabama in 2001 when he performed at the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival, whose home base is the famous Flora-Bama Lounge. He became enchanted with the area as he fell under the spell of the former Betty Breslin, who would soon become his wife. Once he relocated to Mobile, he continued performing and recording music but also focused a lot of energy on buying and selling used records. He traveled the region to sort through countless collections, always on the lookout for priceless treasures—or at least something that could turn a modest profit.

“I spent my first 10 years here playing music or collecting records for myself and going to record shows,” he recalls. “At first it was mostly vinyl and some CDs, and it was mostly old fogeys going to those shows. And then there was a perceptible change as I started seeing a lot more young people coming to the record shows. That’s when I knew it was time to open a shop.”

As he surveys the jam-packed retail store near the intersection of Sage Avenue and Emogene Street, he won’t venture a guess as to how many slabs of vinyl it actually holds. His longtime partner, Nick Piechowski, puts an estimate at 300,000 albums on the showroom floor and another 100,000 in the back room plus maybe 60,000 45s. If his calculated guesses are accurate, it all adds up to nearly half a million records. There’s no telling how many more have gone out the front door over the last 12 years, hopefully, to enrich and influence more generations of music lovers.

“This is a dynamite shop,” Keith says. “We’ve been successful since day one. We’ve had numerous people who’ve spent half their lives in record shops, many of them from Europe, tell us we’re one of the best shops, if not the best shop, in the world.”

Such a good thing may soon come to an end, at least for Keith. He is hoping to leave things in Nick’s capable hands as he returns soon to Australia to settle down for good. It’s becoming difficult physically to keep up the pace, he says, and he’s also feeling the emotional pull of family and friends and the place that he truly calls home. 

A new residence awaits in an area called Bacchus Marsh, on the outskirts of Melbourne. He designed it himself, picking up on the architectural training he abandoned 55 years ago for a turn in the spotlight.

“It’s a small, simple house, somewhat in the style of Mies van der Rohe, who was a pioneer of the Modern Movement a hundred years ago. It has two bedrooms and a double-car garage and has clean angles and no ornamentation. It overlooks a parkland, and I have no real neighbors because I’m on the edge of what used to be an estate.”

He will leave Mobile with mixed feelings that include gratitude for this recent chapter in an extraordinary life filled with music.

“It’s time to retire,” he says. “I have certainly enjoyed it, but working seven days a week at such an advanced age is not for the faint of heart.” He pauses for a moment, and adds with a laugh: “But having said that, I went to an estate sale this morning and bought a bunch of records!”