My first record shop was a counter in a shop owned by two brothers called The Beesley Brothers. They had two shops on the same street, one a TV/electricals repair place the other a bike shop with the aforementioned counter, and some racks for albums. I used to buy my singles from there, but they would only order singles from the top 75. 99p a single!!

They closed the bike shop in 1984 and because I was a regular customer they gave me first look at their stock of singles. The shop it turned out had opened in 1969 and they still had singles sitting there that had never sold since then. Over the course of about 5 months I cleared out their back stock, 25p a single!! Booker T & The MGs 'The Horse' in a natty purple Stax sleeve, the first Clash singles, Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, Madness, The Jam, Gen X, Blondie, The Pretenders, The Equals, Siouxsie, T-Rex, The Police, and a pile of old soul and reggae tunes too.

Absolutely class!

They, like several others of their type, had a revolving rack of cheap but new vinyl LPs. A pretty random mix, as I recall - and I suspect not handpicked by the shopkeeper. For ages they had a copy of Funhouse by The Stooges (this would be 1978-ish), which I was foolish enough not to buy.

You've forgotten the reprehensible WH Smith who decided in the early 80's that they wouldn't stock any records that had sleeves with pictures or titles that might possibly offend anyone - I haven't bought anything there since.

Point of order - Boots in Newcastle Under Lyme had their records on the ground floor (but then again I don't think it had an upstairs!).

I always thought that pubs would be a good place to sell records (or CDs).

I would guess that, in the 70's and early 80's (before the rise of our price), the majority of records were sold in places other than record stores.

Department stores (like Grace Brothers!) always had a record section, normally poorly laid out and very dark, often being in or near the basement, but often quite cheap.
Clothes shops, newsagents, hardware stores, bike shops and market stalls.......indeed, might I suggest that records were far more prominent in people's lives in the 50s and 60s than they are now.
The average high street of 1964 would have more potential vendors of vinyl than the whole of Walthamstow, Ilford, Hackney and Stratford put together in 2009.

Might this account for the abysmal taste everywhere today?
People simply don't have a choice on the high street.

Sold a selection of ex chart and presumably ex jukebox 7" singles without the centrepiece. These were, in 1979-1982, 79p each - in itself a discount on Woolies 99p - so the same price as a single download in todays money - any wonder why 70's and 80's rock stars are so rich!

Bought some cracking singles there with my pocket money - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, Gangsters, My Girl, It's A Mystery........

Had a record department called Record Fayre. I think it was a concession rather than being part of Milletts itself. It stocked a selection of German pressed vinyl. I guess the more modern term would be parallel imports.

In my teens there were four record shops in my town.
Woolworths of course, with their Embassy collection and Pick of the Pops covers. Although a stray Dr John LP once appeared there and I waited till it went in the bargain bin before buying it.
There was a electrical spares shop that had a "record bar" ran by the daughter of the owner who I suspect ran it for her own pleasure buying only the records she liked and keeping most of them. You had to fight through cleaner bags, washing machine hoses and ironing boards to get to it. Mind you it was there I got Trout Mask Replica and two days before official release.
There was always TV and radio shops to buy your records and then listen to them on their Dynatron music centre.

Slightly off my own topic - but an indie video rental shop near me offered a 'CD Bar' in the late eighties where renting CDs for period (£1 a week perhaps) - this was when CD players were rentable from Granada etc..

But back on track, the local Co-op sold albums and singles. Safeways had a spinner rack that always included Rugby Songs and 'A Tribute the Music of' albums and Elvis' Seperate Ways

Market shops - proto-Poundland style shops sold, a weird selection of kids singles with a book/sleeve combo including Woody Woodpecker and Spiderman

Was a feature of Teme Street in the late 80s / early 90s. Bought Orbital's 'Chime' and 'Belfast' 12"s from the bargain bin for a pound a piece.

'I'll have the new Ned's Atomic Dustbin and the fan belt for an Allegro please'

As well as a selection of lamps, other household appliances and electrical fittings they also had a vinyl section at the back of the store up until the early 1990s.

A chain of what were, in the main, carpet and soft-furnishing stores dotted around the North East.

They all had a record and tape section on their upper floor.

I never thought this in any way odd at the time. I don't suppose it was that particularly odd really, but that sort of retail diversity has been swept away since the '80's.

At my decrepit local newsagent's, my mate and I used to say chirpily "We'll just put it down on the floor here, Mrs Weesmell - you know, so we don't hog all the counter and that." Then, once safely out of sight, we'd have a sly shufti at Health & Efficiency.

In the seventies I remember having a choice of the following. Carlows, who were an electrical goods retailer,Harlequin which was managed by a Ziggy wannabe in outrageous platforms,W.H.Smiths,Braggins which was a department store, a small selection at Debenhams and Woolies.
Now it's just the paltry selection of chart albums at Smiths.
There were also as other contributors have noted any number of newsagents who appeared to be able to get hold of the most obscure singles and then sell them at ridiculously low prices. Many's the time in those halcyon days when I would arrive at work with the morning paper, a packet of gaspers and a couple of old Medecine Head singles on the Dandelion label or something similar.

Up here in Guisborough - caught on the long running border dispute between North Yorkshire and Teesside - we had 5 outlets for records. 2 newsagents selling mfp and Arcade LPs like the Elvis Separate Ways and Jose Feliciano, Rock n Roller Disco compilations and, rather wonderfully the Undertones LP which cost me £1.49. These were stored on rickety wire carousels in the corner near the greeting cards. Next a general store, Boyes which sold yards of cloth, safety pins, low quality toys and ex-jukebox singles in paper sleeves for 49p. Still there but no singles and you don't see ex-jukebox CDs do you?

Then an actual record shop, Tonys, which was dark and a bit forbidding when you are only 12 and your Dad won't go in with you. And best of all a shop called Gaye Days. This sold the kind of stuff you see now in Collectables. Figurines, glassware, nick-nacks, wax fruit, scented drawer liners - you get the idea. But out the back was about 5 racks of LPs and singles, and then latterly 12 inch singles. I don't know what their buying policy was but they regularly had The Fall, The Damned, New Order all sharing the racks with Val Doonican and Foster & Allen.

Now the town has nowt except charity shops selling the same 5 Harry Secombe LPs and No Parlez. I'm more concerned now though that we don't have a greengrocers.

In August 1977 I went on a one-week summer residential course playing squash. It was at Stowe, a famous public school in Buckinghamshire, which people like Richard Branson had attended. There are two things I vividly recall from the week:

1) I heard the news that Elvis Presley had died.

2) The school had a RECORD SHOP as one of its permanent facilities. No, really, it did. Incredible. All the boarding public schoolboys didn't have to cadge a lift into Buckingham or somewhere to buy their favourite LPs, no sir! They could just wander downstairs before prep and snap up the latest rockin' sounds. The only album I actually remember seeing in there was "Peter Gabriel I" - you know, the one with him in a car on the front cover. A record I still rather like, come to think of it.

All through my teens my big bro would give me "record tokens" for Boots every birthday and christmas, which was brilliant and I had to buy a record they were'nt valid for deodorant or cheap aftershave.
In Kilmarnock the record shops were Boots ,John Menzies , W.H Smith and eventually there was an Our Price.
There was one independent retailer (the name of which i've forgotten much to my shame)that opened up too which was brilliant but before that John Menzies was the main record shop.

for the first 12 years of my life the only record outlet was the local jeweller. They had a very small selection of chart singles and albums, but would order you in anything you liked. We had to head into the bright lights of Falkirk to visit Bruces (later Sleeves) if we wanted anything more exotic...

played an indelible role in my musical development. For there it was in 1975 - at the age of 9 - I bought Led Zeppelin Vol II.

Life was never really quite the same again

to the 1920s, 30s and 40s and you find that records (78s of course) were available in your local household/hardware shop, alongside wind-up gramophones of varying standards of deluxe-ness, mangles, pushbikes and prams and similar. The discs were often sold in sleeves advertising the shop: "Gubbins Hardware - 23 High Street - Everything For The Home - Tel No: 32" etc, the better-designed of which are all rather charming when reviewed from 70-80 years on.