Ahh. Aldridges. My first record shop, they used to order Stax, Atlantic and Motown records for me from their catalogues and keep them in a drawer for me to buy as my pocket money would allow...Brilliant!
This advert is from 1928 (long before I ever went there I must add!)
Aldridges, Houghton Street
I remember walking through the instrument display on the ground floor of Aldridges to get to the back of the shop to the staircase.
Upstairs, my school friends and I used to ask for different records to be played. We would be told to go to one of several listening booths to check the record for any scratches, before buying it. We would seldom buy a record as only one of our friends owned a record player in the late 50s. We used to leave by saying that we'd have to think about which record to buy.
It was a big day when a friend bought her first record...It was called On the street where you live by Vic Damone...It was number 1 in the charts in 1958.
I also used to buy my piano sheet music at Aldridges. They used to store the music in tubes.
I bought my first record in Aldridges: "Cool Water" by Frankie Lane. In the 60s, a chap called Alan Appleby ran the record department, and he advised me on purchases when I was getting into modern jazz. I also bought my first steel-string acoustic guitar there - a Levin.
I still have sheet music I bought there. Buddy Holly' s "Peggy Sue". If we were short of cash, we used to go into the store with a small piece of cardboard and pencil stub in a trouser pocket. As we browsed through the sheet music we would write down the chords of the songs then go home and learn the song on piano or guitar.
