All you lucky people who were given record players…I had a Dansette too but had to work in a fruit and veg shop every Saturday for months before I had enough to pay for it. As for my first record, it was Stranger in the Shore by Acker Bilk. I was 13.
Simon and Garfunkles Wednesday Morning 3AM ,when I was 12 in 1966 swiftly followed by Parsley Sage Rosemary and Time the same year all because our music teacher was a fan and introduced them to us in class I believe the album was a rerelease as it hadn't been popular a couple of years earlier .I still have the albums and still occasionally play them .I had my first part time job at 12 so was able to buy books and music I liked .I also got a reel to reel tape recorder for my birthday that year and we had great fun with it as well as recording records so we didn't have to keep changing them .
I didn’t have a record player of my own until I left home. Before that I used my parents’ massive radiogram, and a large mahogany gramophone which lived in the dining room and was largely mine.
My brother and I passed the 11 plus within one year of each other and our parents bought us a record player between us . The first record I bought was 54321 by Manfred Mann , can’t remember what my brother bought .
I can’t say I remember what happened to my Dansette record player. Same with my Grundig reel to reel tape recorder thingy. I wonder if they were just given away to make room for bigger better machines?
My first concert was to see The Small Faces in the ‘60 at The City Hall in Newcastle.
The first record I bought was Tears of a clown by Smokey Robinson with some birthday money. I also vaguely remember getting a single called Grocer Jack not sure who it was by.
Another one who got a dansette for Christmas and I also got the single I hear you knocking by Dave Edmunds.
A record of piano music requested by my father but he was disappointed when I did not return with one played by Winifred Atwell. He liked Pat Boone, Adam Faith etc though.
I was doing O and A level music, so my first record was an EP of choruses from Handel's Messiah.... When I got to college I got into folk music, so I bought albums by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. Never bought singles.
My first record, and I didn`t have a record player, played it on my friend`s, was the Woolworths cover version of Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, by Paul Rich. That would have been around 1960. The next record I bought, this time as the owner of a Fidelity record player, was around 1961, Cliff Richard singing When the Girl in Your Arms is the Girl in Your Heart, from the film The Young Ones.
Mine was 'The Story of my Life' by Michael Holiday. It was a wax 78 and l played it a lot until my brother stepped on it and broke it into pieces. I suspect deliberately!
The first record I bought with my own money was Where Do You Go To My Lovely? Peter Sarstedt. It was my 13th birthday and I had received a 10 shilling note from my aunt. I had been given a Dansette by my parents but for a while it was the only record I had and played it incessantly. I only have to hear the accordion music at the beginning to be transported to that time. music.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XQZYIiNgo&si=OClOJnvdlSaOpIZ3
All or Nothing single by the Small Faces Keep on Running single by Spencer Davis group. Around 1966 I think.
You have good taste! Those were two very good classic 1960s records I can still listen to now. You know it's a good record when you can still enjoy it 50 plus years later.
I had a Dansette for my 13th birthday in 1963 and somehow had quite a few records all at once. There was an LP with Swan Lake/Sleeping Beauty, an EP of Brahms Hungarian Dances/Strauss Blue Danube, but they all took a back seat when the first two Beatle LPs arrived at Christmas, Please Please Me and With the Beatles. They were played until the grooves were worn out.
The very first record I bought with my own money was Buddy Holly, 'Think it over'. My friend and I queued for hours to be the first in line to buy it. I still have the 45 rpm to this day. I was 15 years old and had just started work and bought it with my first wage packet.
I don’t think I bought records for myself when I was a child, but the first ones I remember being specifically mine (though bought by my mother) were extracts from Swan Lake, and the music for Giselle. Much later I bought records by Dave King, and later still my one Beatles record, Penny Lane (because I lived near there at the time). Otherwise my records were still ballet music and opera - and the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten.