ROSCOE VILLAGE — Wilbilly's won't have any exclusive releases on Record Store Day on Saturday, but music lovers should make the shop a must-stop anyway.
Owner Wil Sutphin (aka, Wilbur or Billy) is closing the store, 2010 W. Roscoe St., at the end of the month, and he has stuff to sell and stories to tell.
Wil Sutphin has been a fixture of Chicago's record store scene for 40 years. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
Sutphin, who turned 60 in January, has been a fixture on Chicago's vinyl scene for four decades, getting his start at Downtown Records back when Downtown's chain of stores "were literally a block away from each other, like Starbucks," he recalled.
Though running Wilbilly's as sole proprietor is "getting too hard," there was a time when the business was fun, Sutphin said.
Everything must go at Wilbilly's. DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
Ask him how or why he first got into records and Sutphin will say, "You know what, I don't know."
Maybe it's the way music conjures up memories or can set a mood "better than drugs," he said.
Or maybe it's just that he's been around it his whole life.
His mom worked for Mercury Records at the label's Chicago plant, pressing vinyl.
"I remember her bringing home 'Chantilly Lace' and 'Purple People Eater,'" Sutphin said.
When he was old enough to pick out his own records, the first LP he bought was the Rolling Stones' "Out of Our Heads," otherwise known as the album with "Satisfaction."
"When you bought a record, it was more of an event," Sutphin said.
The day George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" was released, Sutphin and his pals "went to Flip Side and bought it and cut school and listened to it all day."
Spend some cash to get some Cash at Wilbilly's. DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
After graduating from Amundsen High School — Sutphin transferred in when his family moved north from the West Side — he went to work at Downtown's Ravenswood warehouse where he filled orders, stunned that he could get paid to handle records all day.
From there, tracking Sutphin's movements is like taking a stroll through Chicago history.
There was a stint at Sound Unlimited and then Metro Music on the South Side, where owner Eddie Carter was playing videos before MTV was a glimmer in anyone's eye.
"Chaka Khan would call the store. Marvin Gaye, Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire," Sutphin said.
"We put the party on for Donna Summer's first record. Everybody was like, 'This record's going to be big,'" Sutphin said. "That was a great party."
Pick up some vintage vinyl at Wilbilly's. DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
In the '80s, Sutphin dabbled in deejaying, "wasted a lot of my time at The Record Exchange" and along the way amassed a collection of LPs that still numbers in the thousands.
His taste runs the gamut from classic rock to jazz to soul to world music to Italian disco to unclassifiable oddities.
No snob, Sutphin said, "You can like what you like."
Case in point: "There used to be this great record I had by a local preacher" where each of the minister's sing-song stories was punctuated by the refrain, "Don't squeeze the Charmin," Sutphin said.
At every juncture when his excitement for music seemed on the wane, an artist would come along that would reignite the flame, Sutphin said.
In the '80s, it was The Smiths, he said, and more recently the White Stripes.
These days, Sutphin's been listening to a lot of string quartets and "real country, like George Jones" — listening, it should be noted, on CD, not vinyl.
Sutphin's turntable spins the tunes at Wilbilly's, but "at home I have a boombox," he confessed.
Final sale at Wilbilly's. DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
Those thousands of LPs formed the foundation for Sutphin's first record store, Deadwax, which he opened on Lincoln Avenue in North Center in 2001.
"I wanted to run a store the way I wanted to run it," Sutphin said.
There were flush years when collectors would drop $60 every week at every record store in the city, he said.
But Sutphin's model of trading in used vinyl and CDs has become less and less sustainable.
Hidden gems are harder to come by and while the resurgence of vinyl would, on the surface, seem a boon to business, as the availability of new product and re-issues has risen, the stock of Sutphin's oldies has fallen.
"Reckless [Records], that's where all the kids go," Sutphin said. "They've got everything."
Pointing to an Elvis LP, Sutphin said, "This used to be a big deal. You'd put it out and, bam, it would be gone for $40. Now '50s stuff is worthless."
And then there's the Internet, which killed things like the b-side and import markets.
"Bootlegs are nothing anymore," Sutphin says. "Now there's websites and even if they're illegal, nothing happens."
He shuttered Deadwax in 2011, right around Record Store Day, and said, in retrospect, "I should have pulled out sooner."
WilBilly's was supposed to be a temporary shop, lasting a month or two at the most, with Sutphin settling into the old Hard Boiled storefront to get rid of Deadwax' remaining inventory.
That was four years ago.
Letting go of his lifelong love proved harder than Sutphin anticipated, and he took on part-time jobs to keep the doors open at Wilbilly's.
But after horrible holiday sales two years running, he finally decided to call it quits. A cancer diagnosis earlier this year "moved things up," Sutphin said.
"It's hard to leave it," he said. "Could I go to Wicker Park? The passion might be slipping away."
Marla Wigutow and Wil Sutphin. The high school sweethearts reconnected after 40 years. DNAinfo/Patty Wetli
If the past few years have been difficult professionally, personally the closing of Deadwax is one of the best things that happened to Sutphin.
Flashback to Record Store Day 2011: Marla Wigutow walks into the Lincoln Avenue shop, thinking she might pick up some LPs to reboot her album collection.
Also, she'd heard that her old high school sweetheart Billy Sutphin might work there.
She doesn't recognize Wil but he knows her immediately.
"Marla?" he said.
"I was just so ecstatic to see him again," Wigutow said. "I always said he was the love of my life."
Sutphin was divorced and Wigutow had never married, since no guy ever measured up to her memories of Billy.
How it took them decades to reconnect, neither can say.
"I lived at Clark and Grace, she still lives at Clark and Sheffield," Sutphin said, marveling at the possibility of countless near-misses.
Regardless, the two have been inseparable since reuniting, finishing each other's sentences like a couple who's spent 40 years together instead of 40 years apart.
"Outside of how good-looking he is, it's just his personality," Wigutow said of what it is she loves about Sutphin.
"He's got this gift for gab — isn't he the best storyteller? He just makes me laugh all the time."
Though she works as a physical therapist — "She was smart, she got a career," Sutphin said — Wigutow also pitches in at WilBilly's, having picked up by osmosis a small fraction of Sutphin's encyclopedic knowledge about things like which Beatles' records are better in mono ("Meet the Beatles!") or stereo ("Sgt. Pepper's").
She'll be there Saturday, the couple's fourth anniversary of sorts, helping Sutphin unload what's left of his marked-down everything-must-go inventory.
"Come in and find some s--- for a dollar," Sutphin said.
Then stick around, and ask for a story.
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