BillF

Socrates Bobby Shew Big Foot

Al Haig Trio, One-Day Session (Fresh Sound)

Clare Fischer Big Band, Thesaurus (Koch)

Hank Cinq Dick Diver Mobley Dick

Gerry Mulligan, The Concert Jazz Band (HMV/Verve) Beautiful stuff!

Herman's Hermits J C Heard The Preacher

Tim Breslin Phil Latimer Pilar Bocks

César Franck Emily Post Norman Mailer

Karla George Smiley Sir Robert Smirke

Earl Miner Minor Hall Hall Overton

W C Handy Dr John Blue Lou

The Garden Gnomes John Major Terry Major-Ball

Swiss Tony Lord Gnome The Poison Dwarfs

Whispering Bob Harris Vernon Croker Teddy the Toad

Arthur Askey Arthur Ashe Cinderella

Yard Dingle Foot The Inchworm

As the meaning of "obscure" gets more and more all-embracing as this thread develops, the way is now open for me to mention that I've placed an order for the 1954 Al Haig Trio date which is now available on One Day Session (Fresh Sound). Curiously, although I've been aware of these sides for fifty years, I've never heard them, but I've a feeling I'm not going to be disappointed.

Mel B Bea Campbell Andy Warhol

Introducing Carl Perkins is a great favorite. (Don't know if he passes the obscurity test, though!)

Sounds like you have my problem! The Prostate Society can help. Their email address is desperate4a/@wc//

Gayle Hunnicut Cecil B DeMille Sting

Gorky Park Max Wall Wally Fawkes

Scrapper Blackwell Fred Iron Tommy Steele

Mezz Prez Lady

As I was born a few weeks before the beginning of 1940 (i.e. when boogie woogie was in the ascendant and Muggsy Spanier's Ragtime Band and Goodman and Charlie Christian were recording), the decades and I have run in parallel, so that the noughties has been the decade of my 60s. As I finished work on my 60th birthday, it's also been a decade of retirement. I was a higher education lecturer, which is not supposed to be a bad job, but am I pleased to be no longer working! It's not that I disliked the students or the academic work - they were fine - it's just that in the nineties "management structures" were put in place, which meant that I was told how to do my job by people who'd never heard of Clifford Brown! So I'm pleased now to be at home where I can devote my time to Clifford and the others and to sharing that experience via the internet with people who've actually heard of Clifford!