Set up by John Abbey (Blues & Soul, Action Records), this was the place to get your soul imports. Frequented by Robert Elms and Lloyd Bradley.
'Leg it over the road to Hanway Street, a charismatic, piss-smelling dogleg alley, where up the stairs of an unmarked doorway was Contempo. Contempo Records was the epicentre of the London black music world in 1976, entirely contained in a room about eight feet square above a Spanish bar with an Irish name, in a forgotten street. On Friday afternoons it was the only place to buy the records the DJs had been spinning over the road at Crackers. So punters literally queued up the stairs, shouting out names of songs and artists, or listening intently to the sides which had arrived in crates from the States that day, deciding whether that was the one to invest in.' - from The Way We Wore; a Life In Threads by Robert Elms
Name: Brian Peters
Comment: This was the best place to get soul imports during the 1970s.
(6 March 2013)
Name: David Holder
Comment: I remember hitchhiking over 200 miles down to London just to buy a single from the shop because they didn't stock soul music in my local shop.
(8 November 2016)
Name: Rob Chambers
Comment: Recently met up in Australia with Maureen, JB's ex-wife who helped start and run the Contempo shop. This was the lady i used to write to for my records - small world!
Name: Kenny Gee
Comment: While I can't match David Holder's 400-mile round trips, I used to travel up from Croydon regularly to buy the latest import. The train fare used to cost almost as much as the import.
But, for your money, you got the full expereince... hearing great Soul music blast out of the open first-floor window as you approached the shop, on a side street just off Oxford Street... waiting your turn on the rickety (uncarpeted) wooden staircase to get into the hallowed inner sanctum above as good music blared out from above... the regular cries from behind you of "What was that? Save me a copy!"... finally getting into the shop, that was no bigger than the average family's kitchen - with three or sometimes four guys behind the counter serving a dozen or so punters and playing good music... before finally getting your turn to buy the one record you'd travelled all that way for. Ah, those were the days!
I particularly remember travelling up just before Christmas 1972 to buy Me & Mrs Jones on import - and being served by the great man, John Abbey, himself. (I was also VERY surprised to discover he doesn't have his own page on Wikipedia. He did SO MUCH for Soul music in the UK! Maybe I'll start one myself.)
(2017)
Name: Truats Heytarl
Comment: It was like the stock exchange or an auction. Someone would spin the new singles and if you wanted one you waved and then either paid or that single was added to your pile and when people had stopped waving that disc came off and the new one went on and the process was repeated. My favourite bought from there - Timmy Thomas Why Can't We Live Together on Glades. Coincidentally a few days after purchasing this disc I saw Timmy Thomas and his manager in HMV Oxford Street. Small world.
(18 March 2016)
Name: Craig
Comment: So many great memories, being a young DJ buying Blues & Soul magazine, buying my import records, James Brown on his label, all the imports (which I still have) from the guys, John Abbey, after he and the guys would track and review them for the next month's issue.
(2019)
Name: Keith Jenkins
Comment: 1973. Early Saturday morning we'd leave the south coast and drive up the A3 to get to Contempo for opening time, there was a bit of room up there first thing in the morning as people had really just got home from the Friday night bash. Yes I remember well hearing all the white labels coming from America, in fact it felt a bit like Harlem when it was full of the bros. My friend was religious and buying pretty much everything that played, fabulous days, such a high - of which Contempo was the shop at the summit! We went to Columbo's in Carnaby Street, The Kilt in Dean Street, and some place with massive gas flames outside and tropical fish under the dance floor!
(2020)
Name: Claude Van Isterdael
Comment: A piss-smelling alley indeed, Jack the Ripper territory, used to be there in 1978 and spoke with kindly people from the Blues & Soul magazine as John Abbey and David Nathan, used to be an avid reader for several years becoming a soul fan & radio DJ in the 1980s in Belgium. I used to buy a lot of import records that year in small record stores in London, what a time it was...
(2020)
Name: Keith Brocks
Comment: I went into a very empty shop one morning as a box of imports was opened and as the first record was played thought to myself I'll have that, sounds like a winner. Car Wash by Rose Royce, how right I was. Happy memories indeed.
(2020)