Miracle Mirror
Mark VII Class
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2012
As I mentioned before, the 60's were my teen years and I lived in a town with a population of 140,000-150,000. Our downtown area was the big place for shopping or whatever. This was before there were any big malls, etc. I lived about a mile from downtown which made it convenient to walk down and back without taking too much time. Needless to say, I spent a lot of my time downtown in the 60's. There was one major record store which sold nothing but records and was a really good establishment for buying vinyl. But we had 4 big department stores which all sold records as well as clothes, shoes and the rest of it. Also, had Woolworth's and another store that was similar to Woolworth's which sold records. So there were plenty of places to buy records downtown. I remember buying 45's at Woolworth's because they used to pack 3 45's together and sell them for 99cents or something like that. You couldn't see the middle 45 because it was covered by the other two. I regularly took a chance on those and sometimes I got lucky and sometimes I didn't--kind of fun to take a chance on it though. So, I'm walking downtown one day (1964) and I walk past one of the many fine jewelry stores that were downtown (there was probably at least 5 of them) and a little sign caught my eye that said "we sell records". So I go in--it was a long narrow store with fine jewelry cases on each side of the store leaving the middle open for customers. I look toward the back of the store and could see some kind of record albums plastered on the back wall. As I enter the back 1/4 space of the store I get an overwhelming smell of vinyl--it was so thick you could almost taste it--lol. I'm thinking how cool is the owner of this fine jewelry store--fine jewelry stores do not sell records--lol. Anyway, I'll never forget looking at the back wall with The Kinks staring down at me in those maroon suits. Talk about the British Invasion--The Kinks, Peter & Gordon, The Dave Clark Five, The Beatles--all up on the wall. And the guy had 3 record players set up close to the back wall so you could listen to any 45 that you wanted to. He had a fantastic selection of Lp's & 45's. All the regular popular albums that you would expect and 45's by "teen combos" that you never heard of before. Believe me, I spent tons of time in that fine jewelry/record store over the next six years or so. We had several teen combos that released 45's in the mid-60's. All the kids heard those records too because we also had a couple of great local radio stations who played everything--known & unknown--but they really made a point of playing the local teen combo groups. Although, it always felt a little "weird"--should I say--walking into a quiet, elegant fine jewelry store past all of those jewelry cases and finally hitting the back of the store to hear rock & roll emanating from one of the record players--lol. Definitely one of the coolest record stores ever.
