Author Topic: Poplar Road, Kings Heath  (Read 7786 times)

9teen48

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2017, 08:36:54 PM »
Hi Newbie,


Very interested in your comment about supplying weekly singles charts for the Mail.  Can you tell us more about that. 


Incidentally, I first knew Hobdays shop in Poplar Road as a child in the early 1950s. In the 1970s/80s I used to buy guitar strings from the Music Centre at Oak Tree Lane.


Recently I came across a 78 rpm record in a charity shop which was in a cardboard sleeve carrying the name Alfred Hobday with two addresses: High Street, Kings Heath and Woodbridge Road, Moseley.  A bit of research confirmed that Alfred Hobday 'piano dealer' was at 20 High Street in the 1932 Kelly's Directory, prior to their Poplar Road location.


Brian

hobdays

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #12 on: September 07, 2017, 12:00:07 AM »
Alfred Hobday was long gone before i worked at Hobdays from 1967 to1970ish. I  would have been 16.  Austin Greenstone owned the 2 shops as well as a shoe wholesalers in Digbeth.
The Birmingham chart was a very local thing. I think they used to call us on a Tuesday to  print the chart on Thursday. Later we became one of the national shops that was used to compile the charts. I remember we had to write every sale in a book and send it off. At busy times some sales weren't always recorded so we just used to add what we thought was about right... it was all a bit slap dash really i guess .It wasn't a big secret, the shops that compiled the chart .hence the fact that bands would often come in and buy several copies to make them count.
We used to sell guitars and strings . sheet music books and mouth organs,  I saw a film recently set in a record shop and on the counter they had a mini bellows thing that mouth organs were tested on so that customers could hear the tone without actually breathing on them... we had one of them too.
CBS records and PYE records used to call every week in a transit van to keep us stocked up with their product

9teen48

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2017, 02:40:32 PM »
Thanks for the details on the sales reporting for the charts, that was very interesting.  I also remember seeing those record company delivery vans around.

I had forgotten about the bellows used to demonstrate the mouth organs, we used to buy Echo Super Vampers back then.  I often bought records from the Poplar Road shop during the time that you worked there.  I think there was a staircase going up from the shop, to an upper sales room for instruments.

hobdays

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2017, 03:55:54 PM »
The upstairs used to be for classical records at one time , then we tried guitars up there. it also had a massive glass counter that we used to display cases and smaller items. It was always difficult to get people up the stairs and when we did it was difficult to keep an eye on things downstairs so we gave up on the idea eventually and just used it as office space ie; somewhere to dump stuff.
There used to be a sweet shop next door (now the bakery)and the china shop across the road which became Frank Nutt's sewing shop before they moved up the street

MoEv

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #15 on: September 19, 2019, 01:46:48 PM »
Was Baby Land in Poplar Road the toyshop that sold Sindy  and Dolly Darling dolls? I had a feeling it was in York Road, but I may well be wrong!  ::)

Phil

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Re: Poplar Road, Kings Heath
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2019, 02:37:03 PM »
MoEv,


Babyland was in Popular Road, the building is still there but I think the shop has closed down now,
Phil died in 2020. RIP.


 

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