Bob Koester in the stacks at the Jazz Record Mart in 2009
Michael Jackson
Bob Koester, who died May 12 at age 88, knew what he liked—and what you should like too. For nearly 70 years, he owned Chicago's Jazz Record Mart (and the Delmark label), and it was completely in character for him to snatch an album from the hands of an earnest young shopper.
In 1968, that shopper was me—I'd picked up a copy of Muhal Richard Abrams's debut LP,
Levels and Degrees of Light, whose surreal cover painting and saturated colors promised something exotic and strange made right here. I was more than eager to hear it, but Koester—still black-haired, wearing glasses, not graceful, not yet 40—had other ideas. "You can't understand