Packages are sent to customers as far away as Japan.

Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Barry Lesch of Albany, Calif., shops at County Records. "Your mind goes to mush" from the huge selection, he said.

The entrance to County Records is down an alley just a few steps from downtown Floyd.

ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Merita Hylton works at County Sales in Floyd, where the business has been located in a basement since 1975.

FLOYD -- The hub of a bluegrass and old-time music mini-empire thrives in a building where legendary performers played and sang decades ago.

For more than 35 years, County Sales has operated out of a rambling portion of what was once called the Pix Theater, on West Main Street in Floyd. In its day, 1935-1936, such entertainers as The Monroe Brothers (Bill and Charlie) and Roy Hall put on shows there, according to the Floyd Historical Society.

These days, you can still find recordings featuring those players, along with at least 4,500 other titles from musicians both famous and obscure. People from all over the country, even the world, can be found milling through the bins at County Sales.

Last week, a family from northern California wandered around with a purpose.

Barry Lesch and his wife, Jo, of Albany, Calif., were in town as part of a visit to Roanoke, where daughter Emily Lesch is a third-year OB/GYN resident at Carilion Clinic. Every time they come to Southwest Virginia, they have to stop at County Sales, Barry Lesch said. The 65-year-old lawyer held a compilation of early Southern black music as he discussed the place's appeal.

"It's a quite amazing, unpretentious place," he said. "You wouldn't even know it's here, it's so modest. Your mind goes to mush [from the selection of records]. It's like a shrine."

This shrine is not even officially a store. Its main purpose has been fulfilling mail orders -- and nowadays, of course, Internet orders -- for Rebel Records, County Records and other bluegrass and old-time labels, along with books and DVDs.

"But anybody's welcome to come in and buy," said Cindy Salyer, whose 32 years at County Sales make her the longest-tenured employee.

Lately, a historically significant CD reissue of "U.S. Senator Robert Byrd: Mountain Fiddler," a 1977 record that features the late Byrd's playing, singing and recollections, has kept Salyer and her fellow employees busy.

"Everybody in the state of West Virginia, I believe, owns a copy," Salyer said, half-joking.

Here is the story of how County Sales wound up at the bottom of a downtown Floyd alley, and why it will likely remain there for years to come.

Bluegrass history

County Sales is in Floyd because of David Freeman, a transplanted New Yorker who is a member of the International Bluegrass Music Museum's Hall of Fame. Freeman, a tireless music collector, first came to Southwest Virginia and other old-time and bluegrass meccas around 1960.

"Things were a little different then, obviously, but I came to like the place," Freeman said in a phone interview from his most recent home, Chapel Hill, N.C.

By 1964, Freeman had started County Sales, based out of the New York metro area. But he and his wife, Andrea, also a big bluegrass fan, kept coming to Southwest Virginia and central North Carolina -- Galax, Hillsville, Mount Airy, N.C. During a 1970 trip to the Old Fiddlers Convention, in Galax, they saw an ad in The Roanoke Times & World News for a property in Fries.

The couple had a young family and had been considering a move to the South, but now they were getting serious. Contacts in the region sent them leads, and they settled on a 40-acre property in Floyd County, with a house.

Thanks in part to a County Sales customer, Maurice Slusher, Freeman found a building to rent -- the old movie and music theater on Main Street. And Slusher helped set him up with his first employees. County Sales began its Floyd operations in 1975 and still rents from the building's owner, Charles Kingery.

About four years later, the homesick family moved back to New York. But after two years and too many Piedmont Airlines flights back and forth to manage County Sales, Freeman and his family packed up again and moved to Roanoke.

Meanwhile, Freeman had lots of other stuff going on. County Records, his old-time music label, was in full swing while the genre was experiencing one of its peaks. And about 1980, he bought the bluegrass label Rebel Records from a Maryland man, Dick Freeland.

Lonesome River Band, IIIrd Tyme Out and Blue Highway released their earliest records on Rebel, which would call Roanoke home until the mid-1990s. So would another Freeman venture, Record Depot, which capitalized on that era's retailing boom, selling indie bluegrass and Americana titles to the Record Bar and Tower Records retail chains -- all three businesses are now extinct.

With Barry Poss, Freeman founded Sugar Hill Records, an imprint meant for such Rebel Records bands as The Seldom Scene and The Country Gentlemen, acts considered progressive at the time. Sugar Hill would go on to sign Ricky Skaggs' act, Boone Creek. Later, Freeman sold his Sugar Hill interest to Poss, who had started out as a County Records employee. Sugar Hill's roster now includes such artists as Sam Bush, Marty Stuart and The Infamous Stringdusters.

"I sometimes ask my dad if he regretted giving that up," said Freeman's son, Mark Freeman, president of both the Rebel and County labels. "But he said no. At the time and still to this day, his love is more on the traditional side of bluegrass."

Poss, who produced the Byrd record in 1977, wrote the liner notes last year for the County Records re-release.

These days, Rebel is home to Franklin County's Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice, Steep Canyon Rangers (whose sales on Rebel have climbed impressively since they began working with comedian/writer/banjo man Steve Martin, Mark Freeman said), and Paul Williams & The Victory Trio. Sisk, his band and Steep Canyon Rangers are among this year's International Bluegrass Music Association awards nominees.

Moving but staying

In the mid-1990s, Dave and Andrea Freeman moved again, this time to Charlottesville, where a daughter was studying at the University of Virginia. Mark Freeman was also in college then, at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn.

Mark Freeman's years growing up around his father's work had sparked a professional interest, and he did an internship for Sony Music while in Nashville.

The Sony experience convinced the younger Freeman that he wanted to be involved in the music business. He was planning to stay in "Music City" when his father called him and said he could use an extra hand in Charlottesville. Friends in Nashville told Mark Freeman that it made sense to do it, that "the best education you can get" would come via Rebel and County.

"I love the area, and also working in an independent label as opposed to a major label," he said. The Sony internship "was fun for a while, but at the end of the day ... it was like working for any other kind of corporation."

Mark was the only one of Dave and Andrea's four children to catch the music biz bug, and now he is deeply involved with County and Rebel. It doesn't hurt that Mark Freeman, like his parents, is a bluegrass and old-time music aficionado.

"I can't tell you how much that means to me and my wife that he's involved in the business and loves it," David Freeman said. "It's been great. Now I have full confidence."

Another Freeman sibling went for post-graduate studies at the University of North Carolina. Dave and Andrea Freeman followed, after 10 years of living in Charlottesville. Rebel Records and County Records remained in Charlottesville, in Mark Freeman's hands.

And County Sales is staying right where it is, at Floyd's 117 W. Main St., Mark and David Freeman said. They feel like Floyd is like a "ground zero" for the musical genre they love. And in a bonus, the store has become a designated "venue" on The Crooked Road: Virginia's Heritage Music Trail.

But more importantly, the store's employees are invaluable, the Freemans said. Both men pointed out that Cindy Salyer has been there more than 30 years and that recently retired Wanda Dalton had been there from day one.

"I've been very lucky that way," David Freeman said. "I've had great people right from the start."

The 71-year-old rarely makes the 3¹₂-hour trip to Floyd from Chapel Hill, but works out of his home office, seeing to reissues such as the Byrd project and various compilations drawn from Rebel's rich back catalog. And he still writes the famous County Sales Newsletter, which is on its 306th issue. It is mailed to subscribers worldwide and contains capsule reviews of music on sale at the store, and not all of those reviews are glowing.

Most are positive, but David Freeman has invective in store for bigger labels whose "tribute" albums miss the mark. Of an E.C. Ball memorial release, he wrote that "there is almost nothing positive we could say about this shameful travesty, but we feel that a warning to our customers is in order" (newsletter No. 304).

He said the negative notices give his business credibility.

"My feeling has always been, if people can have faith in you, they're going to buy more stuff," he said.