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I guess I’ve been aware of Dorothy Squires ever since she had a hit back in 1969 with her recording of For Once In My Life. My tastes in music were always quite eclectic and this mystified a lot of my pals at school! We had a ‘Music Club’ at lunchtimes, where we were encouraged to bring in selections from our record collections to share with our schoolmates. Whilst most of my friends brought in albums by The Rolling Stones, the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart, I offered up Lena Horne, Dusty Springfield, Barbra Streisand, Dorothy Squires etc … needless to say, in the face of such competition, my albums nearly always ended up at the bottom of the pile! But there was something rather magical to me about performers like Dot Squires … artists who never gave less than one hundred percent, no matter what traumas were happening in their lives. I first met Dot in 1969 when she was promoting For Once In My Life. In Leyton, East London, where I grew up, the DJ Alan Freeman had a record shop and Dot appeared at the opening of the store. I’ll always remember how she breezed into that shop, big fur hat, dark glasses, looking every inch a star … I was totally in awe! She signed my copy of the single and made a big fuss of the fact that I, a 15-year-old teenager, was buying her version in favour of Stevie Wonder’s! Bobby Crush

The premises served as a secondhand record shop right into the eighties, nineties and noughties and was barely changed from the sixties, fixtures and fittings and all. A right little time warp! I think it was called something like 'Sounds Good' and was run by a DJ (actually, I think the shop pretty much served as a promotional vehicle for his mobile sound system). Comment: Mark Griffiths

( Jan 19, 2016) ALAN FREEMAN'S RECORD CENTRE. was one of four outlets. St Puals shopping precinct being one site. The Wood Green one being the busiest. Alan rarely made an appearance. My sister Cindy Scott was the manageress. I was one of four partners involved in the enterprise. Comment: Ted Scott.

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Sticker Steve Richards


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