Casa Cassettes

Name: Kay Jay.
Comment: Casa in Sauchiehall Street. Opened IIRC in the early 1970s specialising in the then high-tech cassette tape format. In later years specialised in Scottish, folk, classical and opera.

Name: Buzby
Comment: When Casa opened, it was called Casa Cassettes, and as you can imagine it didn't sell vinyl. The owner (as I recall) was a Mrs Findlay, and she went on to open a further two outlets, in Oswald Street (next to what was the Green Shield Stamps showroom then AA), and up at Sauchiehall Street, across from the Eye Infirmary. After a time only the Sauchiehall Street shop remained and eventually closed. (It's now a tobacconists.)

Incidentally, HMV in Union Street was two stores in one - I worked there from prior to its opening to the public (1971?), and was a single shop unit in what was originally Union Street's Woolworths, which had been vacated, split into 3 (or 4) with street frontage. This was the time preceding CDs, so live stock with vinyl in browser bars adorned the walls and centre aisle downstairs, whilst upstairs was the classical section. Cassettes were displayed individually in locked wall-mounted racks which had to be unlocked by staff. When the store opened, I'm told there was a piper and Andy Stewart (an EMI stalwart) cut the ribbon, but I never saw him.

Three or four years after that, the next-door unit (to the south) became free and the ground floor doubled in size. The manager at opeming was a tall chap called Paul, and he had an Indonesian wife called Inez who helped set up, as I recall this was the first Scottish branch opened by the company.
(21 February 2008)