Record and music shops in the city

A guest has asked if anyone remembers where he worked - Payne's in Fairfax St? I do, for a very particular reason. When the shop closed we bought the old shop safe to keep our business records safely stored in the office at my old home in Kenilworth. It's probably still there as it took 4 removal men to get it upstairs and into the office! We renovated it, repainted it scarlet inside and shiny black outside. Magnificent! And it stored all of our records and valuable items, jewellery etc for many years. I do hope the chap who worked there finds this nugget interesting. Does he remember the safe? I do also remember the shop clearly with all of its clarinets, cymbals etc in the window. Yet another bit of old Coventry gone for good!

Is it possible you mean Ford Street rather than Fairfax Street? Payne's of Ford Street

No it was definitely in Fairfax St, near to Fishy Moore's, now also gone.

1970 Telephone Directory shows it at 14 Fairfax Street

Got several music sheets from there early 80's, did it become Tandy's music store

checkout this link British Record Shop Archive Edited by TonyS, 20th Nov 2013 10:13 am (Links clarified)

Does anyone recall the record shop within Owen Owen? I don't know if it was run by the store or an outside concession, but my mother who worked elsewhere in Owens would get a discount when she bought records for me. She also picked up leaflets from there that showed all the weeks new single releases. This would be late 60s and early 70s.

I remember buying LPs from Carpenters when I worked just down the road at Courtaulds

The shop just seen on the left in this picture of Spon Street says "Coventry's leading record stockists" You can just see the end of the shop sign which says ON'S so I assume it is Jill Hanson's but I don't think anyone has mentioned the shop being in Spon Street, Does anyone remember it being there?

No, Anne, it's J Fennell (Coventry) Ltd (see photo here)

I have a better quality copy of the image Anne. The sign reads SPON ST.

Thank you both

I remember Paynes in Fairfax Street, I once bought a guitar from them and often went there for sheet music. I seem to remember that they got into trouble for not have a license to play music in the shop. A colleague of mine worked in the record shop in Owen Owen for a while, they were a good source of obsolete styli

This was an implant of that great Coventry record store, Fennells, who's main store was of course in the Lower Precinct. A close friend of mine from Woodlands, Mark Rainbow (yes, of Cresswell Wearethemods and Kimbo) worked here in the early 70's, and if I remember rightly, he only worked Monday to Friday. However it was a long time ago now so I might be wrong on that one. Without doubt I, along with many others, found the staff at the Lower Precinct branch of Fennells fantastic for help in finding long deleted singles. My great love is Motown. Mark at the Owens branch put on one side a copy of every single as it was released on Fridays for me. He also scoured the stock to make sure that nothing was hidden away that was needed for my collection. The Lower Precinct branch always held much larger stocks of releases than Owens (which mainly stocked records that were currently in the LP and single charts), making Fennells a favourite for DJ's and the ardent collector. The last copy of both single and LP's in stock at Fennells was always stored in a brown cardboard sleeve. This was put on one side when that copy was sold, and at the end of that day, someone had the job of going through the brown sleeves and deciding on whether to recorder that title or not. A lot of money depended on that decision - buy insufficient copies and sales were lost to other record stores in the city; buy too many and unsold stocks eventually made their way into the discounted bin. This is what made Fennells stand way above the other stores in city - very rarely were stocks discounted and so copies of that elusive title could most likely be found on the shelves at Fennells long after they normally where elsewhere. Having said that, I also found Paynes in Fairfax Street to be a hive of deleted treasures in the early 70's. There was a young lad there who did a fantastic job for me in finding deleted Motown singles. He went through their entire stock for me after discovering a number of mistakes in their stocking system, putting everything found on one side for when I could call in next. I forget his name now, but Thanks ! You did a great job !.

That would be the incredible Derek Fennell, whose memory for artists' records was simply incredible - ask for something you'd feel was obscure, and he'd walk over to the wall of records at back of the counter and simply pick it off the shelf - amazing to watch such an unassuming man working at a job he clearly loved