In an age when retail music sales have been taken over mostly by megastores, mail-order vendors, and Internet conglomerates, walking into Little Nells Records, at 711 N. Monroe, is like stepping backward in time.


What decade you feel like youve been transported into may depend on whether, upon entering the store, you first notice the James Dean figurine sitting on a cluttered desk, the $300 limited-edition Elvis Presley wall hanging, the original-looking Janis Joplin concert placard, or perhaps the Kiss, Prince, and Meatloaf posters.


More central to this musical flashback, though, are the thousands of vinyl record albums, both LPs and 45s, jammed onto tables that run nearly the full length of the quaint little shop. Pre-recorded cassette tapes, eight-track tapes, and even the increasingly popular compact discs all occupy secondary shelf space here.


Eloise Moeller, 76, who owns the business with her daughter, Marlene Moeller, and who possesses the familiar, grandmotherly face that most regular customers see when they visit the store, says, Both of us still love records a lot more than CDs.


Apparently, many of Little Nells customers feel the same way. Little Nells has survived for more than two decades, and although probably 70 percent of its sales revenue now comes from CDs, it still caters to a loyal clientele of vinyl lovers.


A lot of people are coming back to records, which amazes me. A lot of people like the old, mellow sound of the vinyl, compared with the crisper, butsome saymore sterile sound of CDs, Moeller asserts.


For that crowd, there likely are few, if any, places in the Spokane area that can match the size and diversity of Little Nells inventory. Looking for a vintage, well-preserved Lawrence Welk album to drop on someone for his or her 50th birthday? Its here. How about a collector-quality The Best of Rickie Nelson playable picture disc with a color photo of Rickie embedded into the wax? Thats here, too.


Moeller doesnt know exactly how many records there are in Little Nells inventory, but says, Im sure theres over 100,000. That includes everything from rock-and-roll and country to jazz and classical music.


Little Nells customers tend to be as diverse as the music the shop carries, ranging from people in their 20s to senior citizens, she says. We dont get a lot of real young people because we dont deal in rap. Thats off our list, she says pointedly.


The neatly categorized assemblage of records that takes up most of Little Nells display floor is impressive enough by itself, but Moeller says that many more records are stored away in the businesss basement and are used to replenish the stock on the shelves upstairs.


Whats most interesting about that massive inventory is that it all sprang out of Marlene Moellers own, comparatively modest record collection. She and her mother first went into business together in the fall of 1974 when they opened an antique store called The Old Curiosity Shop, named after a Charles Dickens book, in a space two doors south of where Little Nells is located now.


I had always been interested in records, and I found a book on record collecting. I started bringing records in to sell at the antique store, initially from her own collection and later from thrift stores, yard sales, and the like, Marlene says. I kept bringing them in and bringing them in, and pretty soon it was like a landslide, she says.


About two years after the antique stores opening, when it became clear that the records were selling better than the antiques, she and her mother moved the business to its present location, got out of antiques entirely, and renamed the business Little Nells, after a character in the same Charles Dickens book.


In the years since then, the business has come to resemble a time capsule of 20th century popular music, with brightly colored vinyl albums and posters featuring a myriad of artists from various eras covering much of the wall space and providing a decorative backdrop for the albums, tapes, and CDs laid out below.


On many items, the stores prices also are low enough to seem nostalgic. Record albums sell mostly for $4 to $8 apiece, 45s for $1 to $3.50, cassettes for $2 to $3, eight-track tapes for 50 cents, and CDs for $5 to $15, depending on whether theyre used or new.


Marlene Moeller now is taking computer classes that she hopes will provide her with enough expertise to develop an Internet site for Little Nells, with the goal of getting into on-line sales, and is working at the store in the afternoons.


Her mother is continuing to operate the store by herself most of the time, and has established such a natural presence there over the years that customers often mistakenly assume her name is Nell. She has a reputation among the stores faithful of knowing exactly where to find almost any piece of obscure music amid the stores massive inventory, or how to order it in quickly from an outside distributor if its not in stock.


Also, despite her grandmotherly looks, and the natural assumption that she might be locked into an earlier musical era, Eloise Moellers devotion to her work has given her a young persons knowledge of contemporary music, including the hottest current performers and releases. Although well past the typical retirement age, she shows no signs of cutting back or calling it quits.


I enjoy the people too much to retire, she says.