Shays House of Music in Melvidale/Allen Park always carried a lot of Motown/R&B. He was great guy.
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Shays House of Music in Melvidale/Allen Park always carried a lot of Motown/R&B. He was great guy.
That's one I wasn't familiar with. Strange as much as I have been to Allen Park. There was Kendricks records in the city. Another one on Linwood that I can't remember the name of now, but I think it was owned by Donnie Simpson's family. Donnie "The Luv Bug" from radio and from Video Soul on BET.
"Up the Ladder to the Roof" got a lot of radio airplay in early 1970. Locally, some DJ's flipped it over and started playing "Bill, When Are You Coming Back" after a number of weeks.
He would display the new albums on the walls so that the record buyer knew immediately what artist had a new release out. He was very personable and could spend hours talking to him about various artists.
And Crazy Eddie and Disco Mat and others that got big too fast, over extended themselves with credit and then shriveled up and disappeared. They never really were competition to the efficiently run little record store where everyone knew your name and when the person behind the counter was the human equivalent of Shazam. The big box stores could never compete with that. And their "sales" were fake too. They had a limited amount of sale product, so if someone really wanted to get their music the day it dropped, after being burned once or twice by the big box stores by wasting gas money to get there only to find out that they were out of it; they came back to their little mama papa store. As a kid, my best times was time spent in one of these stores. And when those big box stores kept on expanding only to eventually fail and go out of business, we used to smile and sing ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST.
Of course, eventually, downloading and digital music also made the little store extinct, but none of them will be forgotten. I am sure that all of us have fond memories of our favorite little store.
The big box store was never the competition of the little store.
There was a little store in NYC that had everything. It was called King Karol. Paraphrasing , there motto was "What competition? We are the competition"
And we used to test the knowledge of the salespeople in King Karol. Once we asked a clerk if he had any albums by Sonja Henie , an ice skater who also appeared in movies. He recommended a soundtrack and said "If you listen carefully, you can hear her skating in the background". Can't get that kind of feedback in a big box store.
Remember Harmony House? I never cared for that place other than buying concert tix.
Remember Federal's and Arlan's? I know Kenneth remembers.
Sure do. It is funny, sometimes I think I know Kenneth because of similar experiences living in the Detroit area. Detroit had the best of everything.
Anyway, after church my dad used to drive us to Korvettes to buy our albums for approx. $3.33. The advertisement would come out in Saturday's paper and we would make our list. Great selection and ample stock. I bought many Motown "cutouts" for $1.00 - $2.00 at Spartan Atlantic on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn. A lot of Gladys, Diana, and the Miracles for $1.00.
I use to ride my bike miles to the Woolco store to buy cut out albums. I use to also get them at Rink's [[Bargain City), Woolworths and K-Mart.
LOL! made me remember something funny....we had a luncheonette at a major bus change intersection that had a double row 6 bin [[3 rows top, 3 bottom) floor display of cut outs & discounted records right across from the cash register in the front. Got many LPS there over the years....[[I remember getting Floy Joy)
We were grade school/Jr Hs at the time....If the owner saw you browsing the first bin on the top he would yell at you...that was only stocked with Adult Party records. There were dozens of Redd Foxx LPS....most had 50% the same cover art, a cartoon/photo of Redd with a cigar, just different color graphics and titles for different LPS.
I got mine at Woolworth’s
Created in 2020. Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEgK...85487335332690
50 years later, kids all over this country are still singing this great Supremes classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN11G1ntiJ0