Damn right Marie Henderson has got the blues.

Henderson, a short, stout 84-year-old, is the grande dame of Out of the Past Records in West Garfield Park, the dustiest vinyl shop in Chicago. Not in the sense of the fine grit that settles on old things — although there is plenty of that in the store — but in the sense of the old-school tunes you’ll hear on WGCI.

“I love Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Albert King,” says Henderson, who grew up in Mississippi and moved to Chicago when she was 14. “Howlin’ Wolf and Johnnie Taylor, they were my favorite artists. I like the way they sing.”

Henderson sits down on an old chest in front of the cash register — she’s about the same height sitting down as she is standing up — and tells the story of her life selling music to the West Side. Henderson and her late husband, Charles, opened their first music store in 1966. Charles also sold clothes, LPs, cassettes and 8-tracks at the old Maxwell Street market. 

They moved into their current location at 4407 W. Madison St. in 1986, and the records have been accumulating ever since. They’re stuffed into bins. They stand on the floor in piles about to topple. They’re filed away in back rooms and on shelves that customers can’t reach. When Henderson first started selling records, “there were old 78s. We were into 45s and LPs. Then came the 8-tracks. Everybody was in love with 8-tracks. But I always knew records were going to come back. If you get a record that’s got a little bit of grit on it, you’ve got a record. I’m glad, ’cause I can sell some records. I got 10 rooms of records here.” 

Henderson’s granddaughter, Annisa Gooden, who’s 36, handles the phone calls and most of the transactions. It’s a family business. Annisa gives tours of the store to first-time customers, guiding them through a living archive that composes a history of American music: blues, jazz, funk, R&B, soundtracks, pop/rock, hip hop. Most of the records are neatly labeled. The blues section is heavy on B.B. King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Little Milton, and Johnnie Taylor. Electric blues. Chicago style. The 45s, though, are stacked haphazardly in boxes.

“I’m gonna tell you now, you just have to dig when you come in for 45s,” Gooden says.

(Dig through the 45s. Here’s “Chuck E’s in Love,” by Rickie Lee Jones and “Nowhere to Run,” by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, on the Gordy label.)

How much does everything cost? That’s negotiable. None of the records have prices, because “this store is entirely too big to be priced. If it’s not priced, we’ll look up the price.” But just like at Maxwell Street, customers can haggle. 

“They’ll say, ‘I know this 10, can we do 7 or 8,’” Gooden says. “A lot of times, if they buy a couple of albums, I’ll throw something in.”

There’s not much business on this stretch of Madison Street, so Out of the Past sells a little bit of everything — hats and t-shirts inside, food outside. Henderson’s daughter, Kim, stands behind a display case containing encased meat on rollers. A Polish is $4, a hot dog $2.50. Kim also sells homemade cookies, gift baskets and “Kool Aid Pickles” — pickles marinated in the summer drink. Surrounding the front door is a “Hall of Fame:” photos of regular customers, hundreds of them (plus a line drawing of Harriet Tubman).

Lloyd Johnson is in the Hall of Fame. He’s been coming to Out of the Past for 20 years, looking for obscure R&B and gospel records that the store records to a flash drive, so he can listen to it in his car. 

“They provide the music I can’t find anymore,” says Johnson. “This is probably the best spot in the city to frequent. It’s family oriented.”

Another Hall of Famer is Vernon Bush. He grew up on the West Side, but now lives South. Still, he makes it back to Out of the Past a couple times a month.

“They got all kinds of music — blues, jazz, hip hop,” Bush says. “This is where everybody come and get their music. I’m gonna get jazz, the old school. I come up in the ’70s. I ain’t much into hip hop.”

Henderson is out on the sidewalk, talking to someone parked at the curb. It’s a florist who brings her flowers when he has too many to sell. Henderson then distributes them to people in the neighborhood. That’s why, she says, so many people think of Out of the Past as a second home.

“People call it home because every time they come out here they see somebody they know they haven’t seen in many years. Some Saturdays when they come in, they been talking to people they haven’t seen a long time.”

Likewise, they’ll find a record by an artist they haven’t heard in a long time.

“The blues in our area is a priority, because everybody loves the blues,” Henderson says. “We get Asians, Whites, people from India, France, Germany, Japan, Holland. The old artists always sell.”