Columbia House, 1955 – 2026

Columbia House Record Club announced that it will be shutting down on Sept. 15, so those of you still trying to desperately get out of your contracts can rest easy (my family had to change our name to The Chadwells and move out of state). I still remember the first records I ever ordered from them: The Mamas and the Papas, Nancy Sinatra, Tommy James and the Shondells, Petula Clark, Flip Wilson, The Fifth Dimension . . . We had a state-of-the-art hi-fi in the den, which my sister and I were not allowed to go near, and you could only order 78s from Columbia, so thank goodness for 45s and little portable record players. Somehow, Columbia held on through CDs, cassettes, iTunes, and streaming, but after multiple bankruptcies and changes in ownership, one more slice of my childhood is gone.