Guiding Star Records was one of Sheffield’s best-known reggae record shops, serving the city’s Afro-Caribbean community from its premises on Spital Hill. Under the ownership of Rasta Elder Byron Fitz Allison, the shop became a focal point for reggae culture in Sheffield, selling imported Jamaican records alongside lovers rock, dancehall, dub and other Black music genres.
Born in 1947, Allison’s story began on one shore and continued on another. At the tender age of 15, he arrived in England in 1962 part of a generation that crossed waters with hope stitched into their skin and survival carved into their names. He first made his mark in Birmingham, but it was Sheffield, from 1970 onward, that would become the ground he helped shape both as an engineer and as a cultural anchor. Byron was more than his profession. He was a builder of bridges between past and present.
An electronics engineer by trade, yes—but also a maestro of rhythm and resonance. He crafted amplifiers, programmed computers with precision, and poured his spirit into sound systems that lifted voices when the world tried to drown them out. He was the quiet current behind Guiding Star Records. He was a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather. To those who knew him, he was a mentor until his passing in 2025. Allison also made amplifiers for local sounds. Before Guiding Star Records he ran a record shop called Roots Den Records on Infirmary Road on the corner of Lock Street with Jah Wimpey RIP and Dextor.
Active by at least the late 1980s and definitely trading in 1993. the shop was listed as a ticket outlet for the British Caribbean Splash festival in 1993. Like many specialist reggae shops of the period, Guiding Star was much more than a retailer. It acted as:
The shop is remembered in the Sheffield Museums’ Burngreave Voices project, which notes that the upper floors of what had once been “The Guiding Star” music shop were later demolished during the expansion of the neighbouring (and hugely popular) Kashmir Curry House.
Guiding Star was still registered for PPL in 2021, so my continue to broadcast somewhere!
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