Percy Phillips

Percy Phillips was born in December 1895, in Warrington, Lancashire. He was a veteran of the First World War, and left the British Army (Loyal North Lancashire Regiment) at the rank of Corporal in 1918, since he was wounded before the war ended.

After the war, he started selling bicycles and motorbikes in a small shop in Brunswick Street, in the Kensington Fields area of Liverpool. He began selling and recharging batteries in 1925, opening a shop in the front room of his family's three-storey Georgian terraced house, called Phillips’ Battery Charging Depot, and had to install large accumulators in the cellar. Phillips ran the business for 30 years, even during WWII, but due to a decline in demand for batteries in the early 1950s (most people having electricity by then) he started selling household electrical goods. By late 1954, the shop was only selling records and record players; customers would buy recordings of American Country and Western, and Big Band music. As Phillips had supplied batteries to the Burtonwood air base during the war, he could buy and sell the latest records from America via his contacts there.

In 1955 Phillips set up a sound recording studio in the family home at 38 Kensington, Liverpool. Between the years of 1955 and 1969, he recorded numerous tapes and acetate discs there for Liverpool acts, people and businesses. In 1958, The Quarrymen (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John 'Duff' Lowe and Colin Hanton) recorded "That'll Be The Day", and "In Spite of All the Danger" in the studio. Other clients included Billy Fury, Ken Dodd, and Marty Wilde.

Phillips closed the studio in 1969, the record shop in 1974, and died in 1984, at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.