BillF

Jeff Kline Bill Eyden Terry Shannon

Al Cohn, Nonpareil (Concord). Beautiful stuff, recorded in 1981 with perfect support by Lou Levy, Monty Budwig and Jake Hanna. This was a new one on me until a track was played the other week by Bernie Goldberg on Bebop Spoken Here from KBCS. I don't know how he does it, but Bernie has the knack of picking great records unknown to me from a field which I think I know very well!

Dick Bentley Charles Rolls Jelly Roll

Mama Yancey Pinetop Smith Speckled Red

Wee Willie Keeler Willie the Weeper Happy Rockefeller Rock Hudson Brick Big Daddy

Judy Chicago Martha Rosler Cindy Sherman

Flash Gordon Flesh Gordon Gay Gordons

Moisha Blueball Sonny the Yank Mad Frankie Fraser

Dawn French Gladys Knight and the Pips William of Orange

Lady Day Eve Boswell Mornington Lockett

I remember going to a jazz record shop in south-east London (New Cross, I think) in about 1970, but don't remember the name. The copy of Quincy Jones's This Is What I Think About Jazz I bought was in such bad condition that the guy said, "Just put a shilling in the blind box"! And it did quite nicely till I replaced it with the CD in the nineties!

Zoot Money's Big Roll Band Acker Bilk Dollar Brand

Oh yes I remember James Asman's shop. He was very much a specialist in New Orleans and nothing much beyond the 30s. He did carry some modern jazz however, although he gave the impression that this was with some reluctance! I remember buying 'Miles In The Sky' in there for some reason and I still remember the rather pitying look he gave me when he passed it over. He also had another branch in the City somewhere and I remember there being some good second hand stuff in yet another damp basement. Some of these record shop proprieters make the Jack Black character in High Fidelity look like a pussycat. Ah, yes! That takes me back to another war: the trad v. modern war! How crazy we were in those days!

That's interesting! Never heard about that! After Dobells had to move from Charing Cross Road because of the demolition of "the buildings" for redevelopment (and what a monstrous collection of tourist traps it is now!) they survived for a brief time in a quiet street in Covent Garden before their final collapse. It's interesting to speculate that John continued in the record trade in some way.

Til Eulenspeigel Fritz Spiegl Steve Voce

Much longer and better videos from the Stars of Jazz show (and it was Stan Levey...) Many thanks for posting those! I have quite a few records by very similar groups (often on VSOP/Mode) and they were steaming there in a way they don't quite manage in the recording studio.

Good stuff, Real Player! Also gets you Night Lights.

Stratford Johns W C Handy Andy Pandy

I can still get it to play, but only after checking the box that I'm over 16!!!

Good for you! (I guess I never got over those jazz v. folk wars of the early sixties!)

Arthur Rimbaud Sylvester Stallone Tweetie Pie

Yes, I think they did, but being of an older generation than Bev ("if you owned a jazz record you automatically owned a folk record"), I never went in there!

Yes I believe the folk section did transfer to Rays basement in Shaftesbury Ave ( now I think about, I'm sure that Ray's shop in Shaftesbury Ave started off as Colletts ). It gradually evolved to concentrate more on blues and world music. Used to be some lethal spiral staircase down to the basement. Speaking of basements, does anyone remember the damp, smelly basement at Dobells in Charing Cross Road? It was run as a second hand shop and run by ( I think ) a chap called John Kendall who always reminded me of Tubby Hayes. I still have several Johnny Kendal used items, still harboring that authentic Dobell's basement damp pong, which has definitely matured over the years!

Boris Horace Joris

And from my postman: Bob Florence Limited Edition, Treasure Chest (USA).