n Family Business
The Arden Way store was one of Dimple Records’ seven locations in
the Sacramento area. photo by matthew keys
hanging around him. I didn’t want anything to do
with him. He was kind of a jerk.”
But John won her over — and her dad with his
station wagon. “When my dad saw that car, and it
was so much nicer than the car he had, and this
guy worked for a company who let him use a car
like this, my dad was impressed,” Dilyn says. They
married in 1967.
In 1969, John joined Music Isle of America,
where he continued delivering records to small
stores throughout Northern California. At one
point he was stiffed out of a company initiative
where employees who worked long routes were
given new cars because his boss had kept it for
himself.
“John was ready to quit,” Dilyn says. But, in-
stead, Dilyn says John drove down to the Bay
Area and confronted his boss, Vern Couples. Vern
made John a compromise: Go to the car lot, pick
out what you want, and the company would help
John pay off the car by paying out mileage on his
routes. John picked out a new Mercedes — with
wood paneling — and estimates he drove around
1,500 miles a week delivering records, enough to
pay off a car that was titled in his name.
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In 1974, Musical Isle threw a huge celebration
dinner in honor of Couples, but one day later, Cou-
ples was let go. When John found out, he called
Couples, who told John he planned to sell records
out of his garage, and John could buy inventory
while still working for Musical Isle. John agreed,
and that relationship eventually grew when John
formed his own distribution company after Musi-
cal Isle folded later that year.
In 1975, John and business partner Ed Lewis
agreed to buy the inventory of a record store in
Roseville that was going out of business. While
John continued delivering records, Dilyn worked
as the brains and muscle behind The Record
Shoppe on Douglas Boulevard, making sure the
books were balanced and the employees were in
line; sometimes, she’d bribe her young sons, An-
drew and Ollie, with doughnuts if they’d help her
sticker inventory and stock the shelves (Ollie and
Andrew continued working for Dimple well into
adulthood, with Ollie serving as the family’s chief
financial officer and Andrew working as treasurer
and manager of the stores).
“I’m the person at home at the office while
(John and Ed are) on the road,” Dilyn says. “They’re
calling me in the middle of the night or early in
the morning … and I’m like, ‘How many checks
do you have? How much money do you have? Well,
that’s not enough. Stay out there. I need to have
$8,000 from you and $5,000 from him, and don’t
come back until you have it.’ I wasn’t the nice per-
son, I was the person who was writing the checks.
I was the person paying the bills.”
LEAVING THE ROAD BEHIND
By 1983, John and Ed decided to wind down the
distribution company and throw everything be-
hind the retail operation. Nearby businesses had
f lashy names like Licorice Pizza, Peaches and Od-