Rock and roll back the years

11:33am Thursday 8th May 2008

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LOOKING Back is rocking round the clock this week, all the way back to 1949/50.

For following the news that Reidy's music shop, Blackburn, is to stop selling records, we heard from 76-year-old Maureen Holden, of Accrington, who introduced vinyl to the Penny Street store nearly 60 years ago!

She said: "I worked as a shop assistant and when records were just coming in, I asked if we could start selling them.

"I was given £100 to buy a big selection and so we opened a record department in a small room and things went from there "They were exciting times for a teenager and I remember the place being packed out on a Saturday. We used to order a lot of records, but there was never enough."

Rock n' Roll was just coming into vogue and the big names at the time included Frankie Laine, Billy Cotton, Nat King Cole, Nelson Eddy and Billy Eckstine.

Records at the time were the old 12ins LPs played at 33 and a third, which has been introduced by Columbia in 1948 and the single' played at 45 rpm, brought in a by RCA Victor a year later.

Reidy's first opened on Salford in 1922 and is today owned by Paul Nuttall, grandson of founder Fred Reidy.

The shop moved to Penny Street in 1965, when Blackburn band, The Four Pennies, managed by Paul's mum was high in the charts.