It was Glasgow's best-known music store where generations of aspiring young guitarists flocked to pick up their first real six string.
For decades, McCormack's led the way as the city's number one supplier of musical instruments, amplifiers, audio equipment, sheet music, and other music accessories.
A rite of passage that catered for musicians of all abilities and styles, the legendary store attracted customers from far and wide and was even a favourite of the stars.
READ MORE: Remembering when The Rolling Stones accidentally shut down McCormack's Music shop
It was also a place responsible for the formation of countless local bands thanks to its famous in-store notice board that allowed budding musos the opportunity to link up with like-minded souls.
Established by John McCormack, the family-run business began life in Cowcaddens in 1940, but it was in the Swinging Sixties when the electric guitar took hold that the music shop really started to hit the high notes.
In October 1963, Britain's hottest new group the Rolling Stones were in town to perform shows at the city's Odeon cinema in Renfield Street - but not before they cut the ribbon on McCormack's new store in nearby Bath Street.
The appearance of band members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and the late Charlie Watts and Brian Jones drew such huge crowds that McCormack's had to barricade the doors and lock the up-and-coming five-piece inside.
But the Stones were not the only link McCormack's had with the rich and famous.
Over the years everyone from The Eagles to Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac shopped at the store. In 1964, when The Beatles played the Odeon, their amps came from McCormack's.
It's even said that Status Quo duo Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt picked up what would become their trademark guitars second hand from McCormack's in 1968, Rossi forking out £75 for his Fender Telecaster.
It was just one of hundreds of Fender guitars that McCormack's featured over the years. They sold so many, in fact, that, during the 1970s that owner John McCormack, who was a master pianist and played with luminaries such as jazz legend Ronnie Scott, received an invite from Leo Fender himself to tour the company's factory in Fullerton outside Los Angeles.
Sign up to our Glasgow Live nostalgia newsletters for more local history and heritage content straight to your inbox
Simple Minds guitarist Charlie Burchill is one of many successful Glasgow musicians who credits McCormack's with putting him on the road to success.
He told the Daily Record in 2019: “My first-ever gig was Led Zeppelin at Green’s Playhouse. That and Jim [Kerr] seeing Queen definitely inspired us to form our early bands and go on to form Simple Minds.
“The next day, I went to McCormack’s music shop on Bath Street. There was a Les Paul guitar in the window and I thought, ‘I’ve got to get that guitar, like Jimmy Page.’”
Fellow city rockers Del Amitri have previously revealed how McCormack's was responsible for the recruitment of their guitarist Iain Harvie. Back in the '80s lead singer and band founder Justin Currie put up a notice in the Bath Street shop - although it didn't bear fruit right away.
He told writer Rhiannon Holly in 2018: “For two weeks we just met all these really rubbish people and then Iain came in and it was just a completely different ballgame – a proper person who was interested in music and really into writing as well.”
Teenage Fanclub frontman Norman Blake even worked at McCormack's for a spell when he was 17, and had the privilege of serving folk legend John Martyn.
"McCormack’s was a Glasgow institution," he told the Guardian last year. "I got to meet the artists that came in when they were playing Glasgow. I was told that John Martyn never paid for his guitar strings so I handed them over and he went: 'Thanks, wee man!'
"I got to test the latest synthesisers and the reason I’m good at tuning guitars is because I did it 5,000 times in McCormack’s."
Sadly, McCormack's, like so many of Glasgow's great institutions from down the years, is no more. In 2011, with debts mounting, the family took the difficult decision to close their Bath Street store.
The premises are now occupied by the Tron Church Glasgow.
READ NEXT
Remembering Glasgow's slightly bonkers street market Schipka Pass
What the cast of 1999 Glasgow cult classic Ratcatcher are up to now
19 things that ruined your day if you were a Glasgow teen in the noughties
Recalling Buchanan Street's NAAFI that became Glasgow's first casino
Glasgow's great department stores of yesteryear that are gone but not forgotten
