Do you remember the first record you bought?
This was the topic under discussion at Themed Thursday on 24th June.
A couple of people had some of their records with them. One had a large collection of Beatles 45s. She had been a member of the Beatles Fan Club and showed us the floppy disc Christmas gift she received from he fan club which had songs, poems and messages from the group. She thought that the first record she bought was Help!, 1965, and told us of the time her father had seen The Beatles getting out of a van and running into an alleyway near the Odeon in Glasgow. Another participant recalled seeing The Beatles live in Edinburgh - but their memory of the concert was the screaming of the fans and the Jelly Babies thrown at Ringo rather than the music!
Being influenced by an older cousin had prompted another participant to purchase Bachelor Boy, 1963, by Cliff Richard. This led to further recollections of playing 'Summer Holiday’ with friends on a building site where planks of woods and stacks of bricks were rearranged to make an imaginary London bus.
Other ‘firsts’ included the singles The Deadwood Stage, 1953, from the film Calamity Jane sung by Doris Day and Venus in Blue Jeans, 1962, by Mark Wynter while Puff, 1963, was the oldest record in one collection.
One of the first LPs bought was Bridge Over Troubled Waters, 1970, by Simon and Garfunkel, the favourite track then and now being The Boxer. Another was Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Limited, 1967, by The Monkees from which the single Pleasant Valley Sunday invoked memories of playing crazy golf in Brodick.
Before having a record player, one person recalled that her father had an old wind up gramophone and a few shellac 78s. One such was The Wedding of the Painted Doll which had been a song in the 1929 film The Broadway Melody which won the an Oscar for best picture. The highest-grossing film of the year, it included a ground breaking Technicolor sequence. It was also the first full-length talking film and MGM’s first musical. The oddest record in this collection was a recording of the 1936 Abdication Speech of King Edward VII.
Interestingly, there was no mention of Elvis.
Records had been bought in Dunbars in Port Glasgow, and Sargents and Caulders in Greenock. Was there a record shop in Gourock? Those were the days when you could go into a record shop and ask to listen to the latest releases of your favourite singer or group in a sound booth to help you decide if you wanted to buy the record. The shop assistant would put the record on a turntable which was wired to the booth. By 1967, Radio 1 was available to hear pop music and the booths would have been less important in shops.
For one, having grown up on a farm away from easy access to public transport, meant that she had only been able to buy records when old enough to drive to the nearest train station and travel to Glasgow. Listen was a chain record store in Glasgow where another participant bought most of her LPs when a student: 45s were not seen as value for money.
Needless to say, it was not possible to have a discussion on such a topic without some of the participants breaking out into song…..
If you have memories of first records or favourite records, you can share them in the comments box below.