NH Daddy's Junky Music Stores Close

Daddy's Junky Music store in Portsmouth closed on Wednesday night along with the company's other New Hampshire stores.

The store, located on 1465 Woodbury Ave. in the K-Mart plaza, officially closed its doors on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. and left an undisclosed number of full- and part-time employees out of work.

On Wednesday afternoon, three Atlas Van Lines trucks were parked outside the store as crews loaded up the store's contents. A sign on the front door simply read, "This Daddy's store is now closed. Thank you for your patronage."

Daddy's Junky Music founder Fred Bramante said the seeds were sown in the basement of his mother's Salem home in 1966.

The lead guitarist of his band, which practiced there, needed bail money for a friend. He wanted to sell his guitar, but Bramante said he was selling it for less than what it was worth.

"It was the first time I bought a guitar with the intention of re-selling it," Bramante said Thursday. "I put an ad in one of those bargain papers and made $50. From there the clouds parted and the sun shined through."

He operated out of his home until the first Daddy's location in Salem was operated out of "half a gas station" at the Salem Depot in 1973, Bramante said.

According to Bramante, the downfall of the company began with a lawsuit in Massachusetts in 2008. Two former employees and a manager who was with the company alleged Daddy's compensation system was not legal and "managers weren't actually managers."

"It was a semantic issue," Bramante said. "If this had happened in New Hampshire would have been no big deal."

In saying that the company couldn't afford to find out they were wrong in their position, Bramante paid damages to all the managers of the company at the time and any who'd been employed in even the previous two years.

"I didn't want anyone to think they'd been cheated," he said. "It cost us between $600,000 and $700,000. It cleared my conscience."

Although the company had virtually no cash, Bramante thought a couple of good years for Daddy's would return it to its previous prowess as the 14th-largest music retailer in the country.

"Then the recession hit," Bramante said.

He couldn't get into specifics, but Bramante said the company's financier "shut it off" and forced Daddy's to close. He expects the entire situation will end up in court.

"It's a miracle we got this far," he said. "Ultimately this didn't need to happen. But everyone went beyond the call of duty to keep this thing going."

According to this WMUR report, Daddy's customers with items that had been brought in for service should contact Daddy's headquarters in Manchester. Their phone number is (603) 623-7900.

EARLIER REPORT:

According to the Union Leader, the struggling economy and other factors forced Daddy's Junky Music to close all of its stores on Wednesday.

Founder Fred Bramante told the paper 12 locations have closed, including those in Salem, Manchester, Portsmouth and Nashua. The four New Hampshire stores employed 52 people full-time and 14 part-time, according the Union Leader. 

Bramante told the paper that Internet sales impacted the chain's ability to stay competitive over the last few years.

The Union Leader reported a message on the Daddy's website announced the company had ceased operations and thank customers for a wonderful 39 years. On Thursday, the website appeared to have been taken down.

Daddy's Junky Music got its start in Salem and Bramante explained its origins in this FOX 25 feature from 2010.

Bramante said the first store was located in a half-gas station in Salem.

Bramante did not immediately return a call placed to the Daddy's corporate office in Manchester for comment Thursday.