Dallas: Top Ten Records

Every city that takes its music seriously has one record store that refuses to close. Top Ten Records in Oak Cliff, Dallas, has been that store since 1956 — and it shows no signs of stopping.

Top Ten Records Dallas opened on West Jefferson Boulevard the same year Elvis Presley played the Cotton Bowl and Dallas woke up to what rock and roll was going to do. Founder J.W. “Dub” Stark didn’t just sell records — he also sold tickets to every show that came through town. In that first year alone, Top Ten moved more Cotton Bowl Elvis tickets than any other outlet in Dallas. The store became the place where Oak Cliff came for music. It hasn’t stopped since.

From Record Store to Music Archive

Stark sold Top Ten to his employee Mike Polk in 1977. Polk kept it running for forty more years — long past the era when record stores closed by the hundreds across America. When Polk retired in 2017, the question wasn’t whether to close Top Ten. It was how to preserve what it had become. The answer was a nonprofit. Top Ten transformed into Oak Cliff Records & Library, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to preserving Texas music and film. The shop now runs a lending library on a membership basis. It also hosts concerts, film screenings, poetry workshops, music lessons, art shows, and zine events throughout the year.

No other record store in Dallas has stayed open this long. No other one in Texas decided the right response to sixty years of history was to become its caretaker. Fort Worth’s Record Town opened just a year later, in 1957, and it knows something about that same kind of staying power.

The record bins at 338 West Jefferson still turn over. But what Top Ten really stocks now is context.