A.T.Furlong & Sons

(July 25, 2013) Jess said:My bag is the same EXCEPT it says ATFurlong and not The Music Shop.

(July 25, 2013) Anonymous said:Ah, Woolwich, of course!!!

(July 25, 2013) Jess said:I have no idea where this was but I have a record bag from here so it must have been South East London. The "upload image" link isn't working otherwise I would.

Name Sophia Gilbert (nee Furlong) Comment: That was my grandfather and dad's shop. We had branches in Deptford, Bromley South, Bromley North and Woolwich. It was originally called AT Furlong and Sons then changed to The Music Shop. My piano beats the name AT Furlong. (June 1, 2017)
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​from NME.com
David Bowie behind the counter

This month on Music Recommenders, David Bowie recalls his first taste of the Rock highlife, working at Furlongs record shop in Bromley. It was here that he experienced what he calls the “intoxicating power” of recommending. “Working in a record shop was pretty much a labour of love. It’s more a vocation that a normal job and I think that holds true today,” he explains. “I’m not comparing it to nursing, but it has to be up there with teaching.” Below is an extract from the article

David Bowie: A London Boy
"So, aged thirteen, maybe fourteen, I got my first real big break. Saturday mornings and sometimes Wednesday after school, I would dress to impress and style my hair just right before making my way to Bromley South.

It was at Furlongs I got my first real taste of how things could be. Furlongs was owned and run by the pipe-smoking Vic Furlong, an intense man in his forties who was the perpetual jazzer/college type...New Orleans was his thing.

Furlongs was the record shop. For absolute integrity and a huge stock of jazz, r&b and pure blues, there was nowhere else like it until London itself.

It was here that the power of recorded music struck home. I don't mean it was where I discovered music, (I had already discovered that power through Little Richard and Elvis) no, it was more how those bits of black plastic could affect other people's behaviour.

Getting a job behind the counter at Vic's place, albeit part-time, was enough to boost my cred a hundred fold. It had an effect on the girls...an effect I liked...and, erm, another effect on the boys...quite a different effect. "

By the age of fourteen, David Jones was spending all his spare time at Medhurst's department store in the record department, checking out the latest records, and the girls. Here he developed a taste for jazz as well as rock 'n' roll. Around 1960, his father bought him a plastic alto saxophone and David got a Saturday job at Furlong's, a record and instrument store. Thanks to Christopher Marshall.

Comment
Interesting, I worked at both the Deptford shop and the one at Bromley South on Saturdays and school holidays from August 1959 to August 1962 Mrs Furlong ran the shop at Deptford which specialised in sheet music and her son Vic ran the shop at Bromley South but I don't remember another shop at Bromley North only Reids which was a rival.
Name
Celia Jupp
(2018)

Comment
Furlongs was next to Bromley South station and a Mecca for jazz and R&A fans. I spent many hours and not a few pounds there over several of my youthful years. There was an attractive female assistant that all we youths lusted after and one of my friends plucked up the courage to ask her out once and they became a couple for a few months. Never knew Bowie worked there...funnily enough I was in a group for a short while and we played local gigs and once at A hall near Cudham where, I believe, Bowie also appeared a couple of years later. He went on to more success than we had!, Happy Days
Name
Russell Page
(2020)

Comment
December 1962. I was aged 13 and My Mum took m3 down to Furlongs in Deptford. They had ordered in Bobby Vee meets the Crickets and we went to pick it up as it Was an early Christmas present. I din t remember being in a recird shop before. It was quute dark if zi remember correctly. I m sure it sold a lot of recird players. Two American sailors came in and were asking about British mysic. That eas a bonus as I d ever seen an American up close!!
Name
Maureen Cronin
(2021)
Sophie Furlong
My grandparents / dad’s shop. Sadly closed in 1980