The days of record booths in your favourite Sunderland music stores including Blacketts and Boots
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Listening to records in a booth in a record shop
Music lovers of the 1950s and 1960s had it good in Sunderland - whether they loved The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys or some other legends,
Listening to records in a booth in a record shop, taking them home and playing them on a colourful modern record player in your own room was part of teenage life.
Today, Philip Curtis of Sunderland Antiquarian Society, takes us back to the days when record bars were all the rage.
Sunderland’s department stores, Binns, Blacketts, Boots and Woolworths all opened record bars.
In addition, Atkinsons, Bergs and Gordon Eades also specialised in the sale of records from the ‘Hit Parade’. They were to be joined later by the New Record Inn in High Street West and The Spinning Disc in Olive Street and Savilles in Holmeside (below right).
Most stores and shops had a few individual booths in which the prospective buyer could stand and listen to a record before purchasing. The early booths actually had individual record players and, later, telephones through which the record of choice could be heard.
On Saturdays, these were usually in constant use with a queue waiting. Binns initially had their record department upstairs in their original Fawcett Street premises before transferring it into the basement of their new premises which opened across the street in 1963.
A pedestrian tunnel had been constructed under Fawcett Street linking up both premises.
Blacketts’ Record Bar was on the ground floor and Boots had theirs on the first floor (left). In addition to their Athenaeum Street shop in the 60s, Atkinson’s also had a stall in Jacky White’s Market.
Bergs on the corner of Blandford Street and Maritime Terrace was also very popular.
Vinyl seems to be making a comeback in the area with Pop Recs, Hot Rats, Roker Records and Just The Sound now having records back on sale.
Our thanks go to Philip for sharing the article which is one of many excellent features in the latest Society newsletter, which is issued to all members.
You can find out more about the Antiquarian Society by getting along to its Heritage Centre which is open in Douro Terrace on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 9.30am to 12pm.
You can also visit the Antiquarian Society’s Facebook page or its website which is at http://www.sunderland-antiquarians.org
And to become a member, email [email protected]