Name: David Wilkinson
Comment: In the seventies Rayford Electrics in Sydney Street sold brand-new but deleted LPs. They had shelves along one wall on which LPs were stored vertically like books, so you could only read spines - and get a crick in your neck. I found a lot of gems though at good prices.
Name: Michael Bradshaw.
Comment: This was on the corner of Sydney Street and Trafalgar Street, where Forfars is now. Rayfords were an old-style electrical shop that also sold vinyl. That was how a lot of records were sold back then. I went to their closing down sale... probably around 1978 or 1979 and bought a copy of Lucky Lief & the Longships by Robert Calvert for about a pound. It wasn't as good as his other album, Captain Lockheed, so I sold it quite quickly to Vinyl Demand who were just over the road.
(29 February 2016)
Comment: Barry Page
Comment: Rayfords Records ran from 8 & 9 Sydney Street, Brighton from 1972, and was managed by John Russel who previously ran the record department at Hanningtons in North Street. I was his assistant manager and for a time I helped run three shops which were situated in Brighton, Worthing and Eastbourne. The three shops carried a total stock of around 30,000 records, a lot of which were multiple copies of a title. The shop was double-fronted, with one side dedicated to electrical goods and the other side records. The records were filed alphabetically and by category, unusually the records could be accessed directly by the customer and taken to a cashier for bagging. Every record contained a security tag, which at the time was a completely innovative approach to selling records.
(2021)