WESTWOOD—How about this blast from the past! We go back 45 years to the holiday season of 1977, when this advertisement for Town & Country Music came out.
It was an era when enjoying music meant visiting a record shop, handing over actual money, and taking home a physical copy of an album in your hand—an experience that cannot be replicated by streaming music online. As the music filled your room, or your headphones, you might lounge on your bed reading the liner notes. The songs were like a soundtrack for the album’s artwork, and together they told a complete story.
Owner J. Albert Meyer’s shop called Town & Country Music opened at 320 Kinderkamack Road, at Five Corners, in 1950. Meyers was a musician, and the store offered music lessons in addition to record albums and phonographs.
A special offer for Christmas of 1952 had an RCA Victor player with record changer, plus $6 worth of 45s, for $16.75. The ad promises that RCA’s product “loads in a flash and plays up to 50 minutes at one push of a button! Sounds so lifelike you can’t tell the record from the original performance.”
“Why travel to the highways when you can get it right here for the same price or less?” asks a 1960 Town & Country ad. “We have the largest selection of records in Bergen County.”
Our readers might be more inclined to remember Town & County’s second location. In 1964 Meyer made the move to a better spot for business—the building on the corner of Westwood and Center avenues, now a Starbucks. The shop operated there through the 1960s and 1970s, selling music (records and later also cassettes), players, musical instruments, and sheet music. It closed at the beginning of the 1980s and a children’s store moved in.
DO YOU REMEMBER? “Star Trek”’s Leonard Nimoy visited Town & Country Music in 1967. He was there to meet fans and sign autographs to promote his album “Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space.” The original “Star Trek” television series on NBC had just wrapped up its first season.
— Kristin Beuscher is president of the Pascack Historical Society.