Kelly’s Records, Cardiff

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Kelly’s Records

I’ve been buying stuff from this second hand shop in Cardiff since 1975, a few months after we moved to Cardiff. In contrast to the stories about second hand record shops (and record shops, period), most recently about Lou’s records, Kelly’s are doing well. I don’t go in there often, but whenever I do, I always find something – jazz, blues, R&B, Soul, Funk or Reggae. Yesterday, I bought four, but found a lot more that were maybes (there were a whole bunch of Ahmad Jamal LPs there, including what seemed like all of his Argo albums).

And can anyone name me a record shop, anywhere in the world, where you can get a haircut!?!?!?!

Kelly’s occupies about half of one side of the upstairs of Cardiff’s covered market and the middle section is a barber shop!

Here’s a page from their website.

https://vault1.secured-url.com/kellysrecords/about.html

And here are a few photos from the same page.

The grey-haired guy in the blue shirt in picture 2 is the owner; Mr Kelly. He bought the shop from his uncle in 1991. They were packing up loads of records for mailing out yesterday, including one huge box large enough (at a guess) for about a hundred LPs! How much that would cost to send I shrink to consider.

Looking at their website, I see there is a limited number of 78s in their stock. I’ve never seen them. I’ll have to ask next time I’m in there.

Anyway, not all is going to the wall.

MG

[sidewinder]

(there were a whole bunch of Ahmad Jamal LPs there, including what seemed like all of his Argo albums).

Someone must have just bought the Mosaic set !

[BillF]

Anyway, not all is going to the wall.

MG

Very pleased to hear it!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

(there were a whole bunch of Ahmad Jamal LPs there, including what seemed like all of his Argo albums).

Someone must have just bought the Mosaic set !

No - I asked about that and Mr K said he'd bought some guy's whole collection. And there was a Ramsey Lewis from the fifties that I turned down, probably from the same source. A load of Miles Davis CDs from the same chap, Mr K said, but I didn't look at the CDs yesterday.

MG

[Cliff Englewood]

That's good to hear as most of the shops over here in Dublin look like they are just about keeping their heads above water, their stock levels are so low and their jazz/blues sections are pretty much non exsistent, in fact anything that isn't mainstream stuff is ignored.