Koester began collecting records in high school, but due to the particular type of music he favored he couldn't just go to the local record store and pick up a few discs. To find them he searched secondhand stores and the back rooms of juke box operators.

"A lot of the music I liked was out of print. In those terribly barren years right after World War II the major labels had satisfied the demand for phonograph records by reissues. During the war there was a ban, and after the war the ban was over and there was a big boom and they all jumped on Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, all that shitty pop music of the late forties. It was a vocalist thing so instrumental music was very much out of favor with the American public, the young people particularly. By this time I really zeroed in on twenties' jazz and you just couldn't find it, there was little or nothing in print. I loved jazz, but the blues was part of it. Jazz fans start buying blues records because Louie Armstrong is on this Bessie Smith record, Coleman Hawkins is on this Ida Cox record and eventually the blues gets next to you. To me it was all the same, it was all important."

Because of the mix between the two genres Koester began trading one disc for another. This was the start of a razor sharp business sense. He developed serious skills while on his hunt for out of print records. But an inclination for music was not his only love, he also had a passion for film. In an attempt to further his business skills he based his educational plan accordingly. He enrolled at St. Louis University to study cinematography and business; later he was to go to UCLA or USC for their cinematography programs.

"My purpose for going to St. Louis U. was to take some business courses because I had decided to become a movie camera man, that was my first love. I would go to Hollywood and I would make a little money and in the back of my mind I thought I would, eventually, do a little syndicated series of jazz TV shows and that I would be successful and I would have a jazz label and a jazz record store. I went to St. Louis U. and I just sort of got seduced by the music. My experiences in selling Glen Miller 78s expanded to selling the stuff that I had found in second hand stores."

Koester began selling music out of his dormitory and he joined a newly formed jazz club that boasted as members some of the most talented musicians in and around the St. Louis area. Alas, the lure of the music and a chance meeting gave his life's plan a twist only fate can deliver.

"A jazz club was being organized at the time in St. Louis and I went to the founding meeting. I was a founding member of the group. I remember the first meeting where I heard a hell of a lot of good music. I later found out that some of the best musicians in town were there. Bob Graf was there. Clark Terry was there. Through the St. Louis Jazz Club I was able to do a certain amount of promotion for my business. Eventually I was chairman of the program committee; as soon as I was able to go into bars, I wasn't old enough at first. At the second meeting of the jazz club I met a guy named Ron Fister."