Buying Music

The first form of music listening came from our earliest groups of people. This music was not considered organized as we might call the music we listen to today, rather, it used forms of clapping, drumming, and oral music with varying types of singing. 

Later, some of the more popular music appeared in churches. Many musical artists and writers began to write music as a response to God and to the church. It was used as a tool to unite people. 

Throughout the centuries, people have enjoyed making and listening to music. Singing in the home was popular, often around a piano. With the coming of the music halls in Victorian Britain, popular songs were becoming well known and sung. The first form of bought music was sheet music. As the popular songs of the day became known people would buy the sheet music and play in groups in homes, pubs and community spaces.

In the late 1800s, Thomas Edison invented the first record player known as a phonograph. By the 20s and 30s gramophones, later known as record players, and the black discs revolving at 78 rpm became more readily accessible to the public. The record player and records themselves evolved through several different stages from the 78’s to the newer, smaller 45’s (singles) and the 33rpm LPs later known as albums.

We always had a record player at home and one of my siblings still has our parents’ wonderful collection of 78’s. In our village there was a ‘big house’ where the local gentry had lived for generations. The little boy from the house went to our village school for a few years until he went away to boarding school at 7. While he was in our school I remember going to his birthday parties. His mum used to play music for us for the game of musical chairs on a wind-up gramophone with one of those brass horns as a speaker. A bit like the one below. This was in the mid 50s and none of us had seen one of those before, apart from on the HMV labels.

In the early 60s my parents bought a combined radio/ record player known as a radiogram which was housed in a wooden casing like a sideboard. We thought it was very sophisticated!

In the mid 60s my mum and dad bought a reel to reel tape recorder. I can still remember that it was a make called the Grundig TK14. My brother, sister and I had so much fun recording music from the radio. We were teenagers by then and into pop music. We couldn’t afford to buy all the records we would have liked to so this was a great way to save our favourite songs to play again and again. We had to hold the microphone next to the radio and be very nifty about pressing STOP just before the presenter started talking again.

Then along came cassettes. Oh, the joy of swapping albums with friends and recording them onto a C90 or C60. Once I was able to have a cassette player in my car I could listen to my favourite albums as I drove. We’d come a long way from the 78’s and 45’s of my childhood.

I am now into the eras you will all remember very well. So I will skim through and just mention a few stages which come to mind – The Walkman, the iPod, CD’s and eventually streaming.

Credit to Google Images and Wikipedia. If anyone objects to the inclusion of any images in this post please contact me and it will be removed. Facts are checked but I apologise for any errors you might spot!

21 thoughts on “Buying Music”

  1. Those old 78s, being graphite, were easily breakable. The first ones I recall seeing were recorded on just one side; the reverse being smooth and with a decorative swirl pattern in the graphite.

    Apart from their fragility, they had a fairly limited lifespan in terms of their reproductive quality. But, they enabled us to buy and collect the songs we liked and play them to our heart’s content.

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      • That’s right – those paper sleeves, and they offered no protection at all. Actually, I’m surprised more of them did not get broken; mind you, I remember being extremely careful with them – perhaps because they represented OUR music for the very first time.

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  3. What a wonderful story about your village and how you listened to music in your family when you were young in the 50s. I was bought up in a musical family with my Dad playing the harmonica and I learned singing and ballet, not at the same time i might add and i remember my parents had a ‘radiogram’ no not insta but a unit that was blonde coloured timber with two panels on each side with a sort of woven design on each panel and it was used to play great tunes like Patience and Prudence’s Tonight you belong to me, True love from High society, Vera Lynn songs, and wartime songs like hang out the washing on the zeigfried line and I remember one ANZAC day in NZ where my uncle and aunt all stood around the radiogram for a sing song, it was so good and we sometimes stood around the pianola and sang. Do you remember Discotrons that you carried around while 45s played ,lol that was more in the 60s and I remember how excited I was when I bought my first LP and that was a double album of Peter, Paul and Mary then it was Dusty Springfield, those certainly were the days lol.Connie Frances was another all time fave. Then those 4 boys from Liverpool visited ,whoar the streets were chokka with those boys around.

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    • What lovely memories, many of them so similar to mine. Except the Discatron which I’d never heard of. I have just spent an enjoyable ten minutes or so searching online and reading the history of this amazing gadget. I would have loved one! Perhaps they never made it to the UK? Or, more likely, didn’t get as far as the hills of Wales. I must ask some of my same aged friends if they ever came across them. I still have all my LPs and 45s from the 60s.

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    • We didn’t have a radiogram but a red-letter day came when we bought a new record player which played 78, 45 and 33 1/3. Putting a stack of records on was great feature and the reproduction was great. It was a big step up from the old wind-up gramophone, made of wood and with a huge dome of a lid. It played only 78s, of course.

      Strangely, I don’t recall seeing many radiograms but certainly knew what they were.

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  6. I stumbled on this blog while trying to remind myself what my childhood Liberty Bodice actually was. All I remember was rubber buttons and displeasure at being confined into one.

    I’ve consumed a couple of hours of my life recalling the black and white era of my 60s childhood. Thanks for the memories.

    Especially ‘gumption’ & Liquid Gumption. That always made me smile as a kid.

    Things I recall: my Nana always used “blue bags” for washing whites, mangles, twin tubs, Huntley and Palmers biscuits, semolina pudding, PlayHour & Pippin comic/magazines, arrow bars, ski yoghurt & going to Widnes Market where a guy called Ron sold the most amazing and bizarre items from high up on a stage like stall with all the added theatricals and flirtatious charm. Lol- what a strange world we lived in & a stranger one we’ve inherited.

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