BillF

20th Century Fox Klaus Fuchs Jo Fooks

Yesterday I listened to Lou Levy's Solo Scene which has that quality.

Does knitwear that hurts the eyes in her spare time. Believe me, she doesn't have much spare time

Anderson Morrison Nissen (World War II structures)

Skinnay Ennis Gil Evans Jimmy Hendrix

Rudy van Gelder Rudy Blesh Ruby Braff

Really like this one (tho' on CD). Pete La Roca's "different" drumming is really something!

Yes, a firm favorite

If you like Bitches Brew you'll probably like Jack Johnson and it would take you one step further into jazz.

Little John Big Bertha Giant Haystacks Haystacks Calhoun Kingfish Huey Long Broderick Crawford Judy Holliday Billie Sol Estes Sleepy John Estes Sleepy Grumpy

Yes, Dobell's booths had a very specialized line in grafitti. Two I remember are: "Roland Kirk has two mouths" and "Gladys Pringle:" (or some such name) "best white entertainer ever" plus London suburban phone number.

The Little Rascals ("Aw, raspberries") John Littlejohn Tiny Tim Biggie Smalls Little and Large Mr High and Mighty

Bebop Spoken Here from KBCS.

Long Tall Shorty Tommy Tucker Sugar Pie DeSanto Santo Pecora Nat Peck Woody Woodpecker Steve Swallow Fats Waller Andy Razaf

I also used to go into Dobell's booths as a schoolboy - to plays 78s!! - Pinetop Smith and Meade Lux Lewis in 1957, IIRC! At a later stage I was a regular visitor to Johnny Kendall's grotto, which you so accurately describe. Quite a few of his offerings are still on my shelves and, what with the dampness and passage of years, smell a bit strange

Just finished playing it on CD! Kenny Drew smokes on this date. I thought the same thing

Heller in Pink Tights The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Shorts McConnell

Melvyn Bragg Hilary Swank Miles Gloriosus

Just finished playing it on CD!

Can't say so. My trips to Mole Jazz (between 1992 and 2000) were always exceptional not only in what I found there but also in the way the staff were helpful and obliging (to the extent possible at all). Dobell's brings back fond memories to when I was there in 1975 to 1977 during 2-week stays there while still in high school. I found the staff (both in the Jazz and the "Folk" store, one of them must have been Doug Dobell himself) always very helpful and above all patient with the young budding collector that I was, rummaging through the discs for hours on end and ending up with picking 2 or 3 LP's (from my tight 15 to 17 year-old schoolboy budget). I can't have been their best customer, and the questions I asked cannot always have been the most enlightened either (as I was really just getting started) but I was always treated with utter courtesy (OK, maybe ol' man Dobell figured I wasn't that clueless as I literally jumped on that Cyril Davies LP on the Folklore label I discovered there - a Dobell production, as I found out a bit later - and there cannot have been many school kids from abroad buying THAT one ). At any rate, I often wished I'd been able to spend much more there. It was too bad I never made it back to London until 1992, and I remember my disappointment at finding out Dobell's was long gone by then. Anyway, on record stores in general, what's been said above is what happened here too. Our equivalent of Virgin or Tower used to have good stocks in the jazz and blues departments up until the late 90s but everything has been going downhill fast ever since. Some stores got bigger but "niche" departments got smaller and smaller. Maybe they just figured they needed not bother anymore after another independent local record store that used to stock a lot of major AND minor labels (and had a firm reputation as #1 for all jazz/blues/rock collectors) went belly-up around 2000-2001. Apart from the "Special Jazz Offers" bins in one secondhand record store and the local glance at the local 2001 shop my local record/CD buying in brick-and-mortar shops has virtually stopped years ago. Sadly .... Nice to be hearing again about Mole - the late joint proprietor, Ed Dipple, was an old friend of mine - and Dobell's, about which the stories were legion; e.g. Roland Kirk leaning on the counter, surrounded by admiring fans, demanding to hear record after record by Fats Waller. Just as the real Londoner, a Cockney, was said to have been born "within the sound of Bow Bells", the true hipster was said to live in a pad "within the sound of Dobell's"; i.e. in the decrepit property called "the buildings" in which the store was located.

Jean-Paul Gaultier Jean-Paul Sartre Simone de Beauvoir

Certainly I'd put it in the top twenty.

In Britain there has been a management buy-out and the stores are now trading under the unlikely name of Zavvi. The wily Branson wasn't going to hang on to a loss-making activity like trying to sell records nowadays!

Simon Mann Mark Thatcher Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

Bucks Hants Worcs