Step inside Liverpool's oldest record shop

National World - LocalTV

The Musical Box Record Shop has a vast history spanning eight decades. It's been with the same family this entire time who have so many stories to tell.

Transcript

00:00I've never really had a proper job. You know, there's nothing nicer than selling records. It's

00:06great. The Musical Box record shop has a vast history spanning eight decades. It's been with

00:12the same family this entire time, who have so many stories to tell. And I used to help out back in the

00:19around Christmas, I think about 1975. So I would have been probably 14. I used to help in the shop

00:26when it was Christmas Eve, because that was the busiest day of the year. And so I remember selling

00:32loads of Elton John's greatest hits. You do meet some really nice people. I've got lots of friends

00:37who are just people who come in the shop and talk and they'll talk about records all day long,

00:41talk about music, who they went to see the other day. I'd say it's great. The upstairs was the

00:47family's former living room. They've since renovated this into a mini museum. It still

00:52has its original furniture and is decorated with the shop's history. My nan died, I think, in 92.

00:58So it means she used to live here. So this was her living room. She had a water telly in here.

01:03I think I even lived here for a bit back in the day. During the renovation, historical documentation

01:09was unearthed. The logs of the records that had been sold in the shop from the 1950s onwards.

01:1427 books were found in total. This included logs of Beatles records that had been released on that

01:21day. The family loaned several of these to the Liverpool Beatles Museum, detailing local sales

01:27of hits, including I Feel Fine, Penny Lane and The White Album. The museum has exhibited these books

01:34to provide a unique insight into local reaction to the Fab Four's releases. We get kids coming in

01:40with their grandparents and parents buying LPs. And I think with LPs, you feel like you've got

01:46to listen to it all. You don't. Bit of foam, flip. I don't like this stuff. Don't like this

01:51stuff. But LPs, you put it on, you play side one, flip it over, play side two. The museum on Matthew

01:57Street also helped the family solve a 60-year-old mystery. Dorothy, who ran the shop in the 60s,

02:02recalled a group of teenagers saying, that was the Beatles, as two young men exited the shop.

02:08The family have wondered ever since who it might have been. Well, now the mystery has been solved.

02:14As Pete Best recalled, he and John Lennon often visited the shop to check out new record releases.

02:20The shop's not far from Best's family home in West Derby, where Lennon would often stay

02:26overnight. But they're not the only famous faces who visited the shop over the years.

02:31Mr Shankly came in and bought his copy of Amazing Grace by the Scots Dragoon Guards.

02:37And he used to come in and talk to my granddad about football. And my granddad couldn't understand

02:41a word he said, because he was this really broad Scottish accent. My granddad used to just nod his

02:46head. But my granddad used to take photographs of people. So he took pictures of Joe Royal,

02:52when he was a player for Everton, Jimmy Husbands. But he never took a photograph of Bill Shankly.

02:58That would have been lovely.

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