Dobell's & Ray's

[Jazzjet]

Those who remember shopping for jazz in London from the 60s onwards will appreciate these memories.

First, Dobell's in Charing Cross Road. Loads of great photos and comments:

Dobell's

And a site dedicated to Ray's Jazz Shop, with loads of memories. Even a video of Ray doing the twist with lots of 60s art luminaries, Peter Blake, Pauline Boty etc ;

Ray's

[BillF]

I first shopped in Dobell's in 1957 when I was a 17-year-old schoolboy. 78s were still prominent in the stock at that time and I was chased out of the listening booth for taking too long to decide between half a dozen piano boogie 78s. I came out with Meade Lux Lewis's "Honky Tonk Train Blues" and Pinetop Smith's "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie", so I must have made a good choice!

My last visit was about 30 years later to their final premises in Covent Garden - I could never find it again on subsequent intended visits! - and I came out with a Japanese LP re-issue of Herb Ellis's Nothing But the Blues.

I still have many vinyl albums with Dobell's price tags - some of them in £sd!

I knew Johnny Kendal quite well. He was always an agreeable bloke - he wouldn't have chased me out of the booth as a kid, as the hatchet men upstairs had done. His basement was very damp though. Second-hand albums bought there are nowadays even pongier than my other old LPs!

I never managed to catch any of the jazz greats in the shop, though I once heard that in the previous week Roland Kirk had blocked the (very small) store by gathering an audience as he leaned on the counter and demanded to hear record after record by Fats Waller. 

 

Edited November 24, 2015 by BillF

[sidewinder]

We need a Mole Jazz tribute site to round it off !

[Jazzjet]

I certainly remember those damp walls in Johnny Kendall's basement! My abiding memory though is of the turntables in the listening booths. They looked as if they had been sourced from the Flintstones, with an incredibly heavy tone arm which can't have done the LPs any good.

[Big Beat Steve]

I was sort of late to the game (born in 1960) but when our school arranged for 14-day stays in Croydon in the 70s I joined the trip in 1975, 76 and 77 and as I had started buying (collecting, in fact) records a bit earlier in 1975 I already was aware of Dobell's through a pretty up-to-date tourist guide by our 1975 trip and went to Charing Cross Rod each time but of course funds were VERY tight so I wasn't able to buy much but rather gaze in amazement at the incredible choice. The small, overfilled, dingy shop at a sort of semi-basement level still lingers in my memories! I remember I bought both at the "Jazz" shop and at the "Folk" shop next door, though. What I remember I did buy there was rather an eclectic mix including a Memphis Slim double LP from the "special offers" bin, some old-time country music (Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers) and one of Dobell's own productions, "Cyril Davies All Stars" on the Folklore lable (a followup to his 77 label, as far as I can tell). I don't remember any partiuclar details about the staff by others in the above-linked blog, except that they all were very patient with me (sensind the newbie, maybe) and let me browse for quite a while.

Too bad I was so short on funds at that age - there were so many other great shops in London and the suburbs at that time (particularly to me from the Continent, though ours at home were nothing to sneer at either if you look at it objectively), including several well-stocked secondhand record shops on Portobello Road (no, I don't think I went to Honest Jon's then - these shops were further towards the other end) or e.g. the Bloomsbury Book Shop run by John Chilton's wife (a connection I was unaware of then) where I bought the 3-LPs set with Clifford Brown's Paris sessions from the record bin (or was it around the corner in another shop?) and my long-searched-for copy of Leadbitter's blues discography as well as a book on collecting rare rock'n'roll (particularly doo-wop) 45s and "Catalyst" , the first book on Sun Records (yes, she did stock that wide a field of books!). I received her periodical stocklists for some time thereafter and remember when I once asked about the huge "To Bird with Love" book I duly received the next list with a handwritten notice from her on it: "Can get "To Bird with Love: 56 Pounds - UGH!!"

After 1977 it took me 15 years to get back to London and when I was back for the first time in 1992 I duly went to Mole Jazz (from whom I had VERY cocasionally bought by mail order before) as well as to Ray's Jazz Shop, spending LOTS of money at both shops (particularly at Mole, though) each time I went to London up to 2000 (sometimes several times a year). I also remember in 1992 I tried to locate Dobell's but not only found that the shop was gone (I was unaware of his previous move) but also that the Charing Cross Road area where his shop was had been redeveloped beyond recognition. Needless to say that the Dobell's price stickers (and John Kendall's too - there were some) remaining on some of the secondhand vinyls I bought from Mole and Ray's have been kept on the records to this day ...

As for Ray's Jazz Shop, they always were my second stop AFTER Mole (Mole had more to choose from and better prices) and sometimes James Asman's but I always found some select stuff there, including in the "printed matter" sectio that yielded several Metronome yearbooks as well as Delaunay's and Jepsen's discographies at affordable (though not cheap) prices. Heaven-sent in those pre-internet days ... Their "Rare as hens' teeth" and "Rare as rocking horse manure" bins had tempting items too but usually were out of my price range. Though maybe I ought to have picked up the Prestige 16rpm LPs they had one time I dropped in there.

The discount for buyers paying cash was always appreciated, and the personnel at Ray's always was very obliging too. I particularly remember a somewhat short, stocky, bearded and bespectacled fellow whom I always tried to deal with. Funny thing about the downstairs blues and roots section one time ... in 1998 I went there with a girl I knew who was more into rockabilly and they in fact stocked some bootleg vinyls current on the circuit then (compiled by London rockab' DJs) so she picked one and asked to listen in to this or that track upstairs. They obliged but after not much more than one track one of the other staff - a long, thin, grey-haired fellow (I think Ray himself, according ot the pics on the blog linked above ;)) - pulled the needle off the record in dismay as he apparently had had enough for his sensitive ears .... (or was it the photomontage of Margaret Thatcher in domina posture on the cover that was too much?) Well, whaddaya want? The record came from their own stocks ... (Yes, the girl did take the record ;))

And re- the Ray's blog above, that cache of 78s brought in via Chris Barber in 1974 must indeed have been huge. I bought some mint DeeGees And Savoys from a stash of 78s in a corner of their blues & roots basement in the late 90s! Must have come from that very source.

Ah, those were the days ...

 

 

Edited November 24, 2015 by Big Beat Steve

[Jazzjet]

Great memories, Big Beat Steve. I had forgotten about the Chilton's book shop, oddly because I used to work just around the corner. I grabbed some wonderful bargains there including some discographies which I still have and a battered,original copy of Leonard Feather's 'Inside Bebop'. Plus I used to buy my copy of Jazz Monthly there - always used to prefer JM to Jazz Journal.

And, of course, the 'Rare As Hen's Teeth' rack in Ray's. Even further back there was Collet's on New Oxford Street, where Ray ran the basement. I have fond memories of that basement as it was there that I did that rare thing - buying an LP on hearing it over the P.A. Twice in fact - Charles Lloyd's 'Forest Flower' and Don Ellis's 'Live at Monterey'.

Back to Ray's and those great window posters - 'From Bunk to Monk', 'From Barry Harris to Harry Barris'.

[A Lark Ascending]

I went into Dobell's a few times when it was on Charing Cross Road. Didn't it get absorbed into Colletts for a time - the left-wing bookshop where you could buy the complete works of Marx and Lenin? I seem to recall going downstairs to a music section.

Visited Ray's many times and still pop into the bit it occupies in Foyles though I rarely buy anything. 

Both had very good folk/blues/world music sections too.

Mole was my main London visit (apart from the big stores - Virgin, HMV, Tower which had great stocks up to just after 2000). Most of the recordings we take for granted now, orderable or downloadable at a keystroke, were not in print in the UK and you had to head for these shops. There was virtually nothing by Miles between KofB and Silent Way available...I started picking some of those up on my infrequent London trips from the late 70s onwards. 

Edited November 24, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[Big Beat Steve]

6 minutes ago, Jazzjet said:

Great memories, Big Beat Steve. I had forgotten about the Chilton's book shop, oddly because I used to work just around the corner. I grabbed some wonderful bargains there including some discographies which I still have and a battered,original copy of Leonard Feather's 'Inside Bebop'. Plus I used to buy my copy of Jazz Monthly there - always used to prefer JM to Jazz Journal.

And, of course, the 'Rare As Hen's Teeth' rack in Ray's. Even further back there was Collet's on New Oxford Street, where Ray ran the basement. I have fond memories of that basement as it was there that I did that rare thing - buying an LP on hearing it over the P.A. Twice in fact - Charles Lloyd's 'Forest Flower' and Don Ellis's 'Live at Monterey'.

 

That happened to me once at Mole's: Erroll Garner's "Concert By The Sea". A recording that somehow sounded much better through that P.A. than the individual tracks I must have heard on the radio LONG before.

As for Dobell's, the above-linked blog has a picture of a Dobell's corner shop front that I cannot recall at all (though I do remember a record shop like this under a different name at a streetcorner just a few steps from Foyle's from the 70s). When did Dobell occupy those premises?

The Dobell's I remember from my visits in '75, 76 and 77 was this:

 

 

's

[BillF]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

That happened to me once at Mole's: Erroll Garner's "Concert By The Sea". A recording that somehow sounded much better through that P.A. than the individual tracks I must have heard on the radio LONG before.

As for Dobell's, the above-linked blog has a picture of a Dobell's corner shop front that I cannot recall at all (though I do remember a record shop like this under a different name at a streetcorner just a few steps from Foyle's from the 70s). When did Dobell occupy those premises?

The Dobell's I remember from my visits in '75, 76 and 77 was this:

 

 

's

The picture in the blog is of Dobell's in its short-lived final resting place in Covent Garden which, as I've reported above, I visited only once. A misleading and unrepresentative picture for a blog about Dobell's, I'd say. The picture you've posted is of the Dobell's I knew from the fifties till the eighties. Certainly looked like that in its heyday in the jazz boom of the late fifties and early sixties.

[sidewinder]

I sort of vaguely recognise that picture of the 'later' Dobells but must only have ever gone in there once or twice and never bought anything. Having said that I have a fair number of LPs with Dobells stickers still on them.

Mole was more my place, specially as being a student at the establishment in Bloomsbury I could sneak up there for a shuffle in the racks between lectures.

Edited November 25, 2015 by sidewinder

[medjuck]

I remember Dobell's from the summer of 1964.  IIRC  I went upstairs there and found piles of Dial 78s on the floor.  I don't think they were vintage. 

[A Lark Ascending]

I was getting utterly muddled by Collets. It seems as if it had its own record shop and when that closed the folk part went into the main book shop just north of Foyles. 

I can't for the life of me remember going into a discrete Collets record shop - but I must have done. 

http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/collets.html

[Big Beat Steve]

Re- this statement on the blog linked above ...

Dealing mainly in jazz, folk, blues and world music they had, as indicated in the flyer  on the left, a shop in New Oxford Street and also the basement of a bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. During the 1970's, they moved to bigger premises in Charing Cross Road, close to the Astoria.

... could it be that the record shop I remember visiting on the ground floor of a corner building a few steps away from Foyle's books in 1976-77 was Collet's?

Edited November 25, 2015 by Big Beat Steve

[A Lark Ascending]

Am I right in remembering Dobell's in the mid 70s as being on Charing Cross Road near Cambridge Circus (where Shaftesbury Avenue meets it). I can't recall if it was above or below the circus. My memory tells me that was the one in BBS's photo above. 

No wonder you get so many variations in historical events, even before you take the historians interpretations into account. I can't even remember a few record shops in an age when more information is available than any time in history. And I wasn't being shot at when I leafed through the racks.  

(Completely off topic but that site revealed to me the name of the record shop I bought most of my early records from along with my first record player -  Newquay Electrical & Record Centre on East Street, Newquay, Cornwall (what a name, nowadays it would be called something like "Yo!"). Sadly no photo - we wouldn't have even have thought of taking a photo of a shop then).

There's a bit about Mole here:

http://www.london-rip.com/places/mole-jazz

Edited November 25, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[BillF]

7 hours ago, medjuck said:

I remember Dobell's from the summer of 1964.  IIRC  I went upstairs there and found piles of Dial 78s on the floor.  I don't think they were vintage. 

Dobell's didn't have an upstairs. Must have been somewhere else. The main store (new discs) was at street level, with Doug Dobell's office at the back of the shop. John Kendal's used record section was downstairs in the basement.

Dobell's was in an elderly block (now demolished and replaced) on the west side of Charing Cross Road south of Cambridge Circus known as "The Buildings". The ultimate in cool was to have a cold water pad in the Buildings (a horn the only possession) "within the sound of Dobell's". (The true mark of a Londoner (Cockney) was that s/he was born "within the sound of Bow Bells", Bow Church being in London's East End.)

1 hour ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Am I right in remembering Dobell's in the mid 70s as being on Charing Cross Road near Cambridge Circus (where Shaftesbury Avenue meets it). I can't recall if it was above or below the circus. My memory tells me that was the one in BBS's photo above. 

 

Charing Cross Road below the Circus. Yes, that's it in BBS's photo.

Edited November 25, 2015 by BillF

[A Lark Ascending]

Thanks, Bill. 

Reading the site on Rays it appears Ray started in Collets. All very confusing.

There's a Cold War thriller to be written about dead record drops in these places.  

[BillF]

11 minutes ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Thanks, Bill. 

Reading the site on Rays it appears Ray started in Collets. All very confusing.

There's a Cold War thriller to be written about dead record drops in these places.  

Re Cold War thriller: Le Carré's Circus was of course located above Cambridge Circus, though I never heard of any of the spooks dropping out for a couple of Blue Notes. 

[Jazzjet]

1 hour ago, A Lark Ascending said:

I was getting utterly muddled by Collets. It seems as if it had its own record shop and when that closed the folk part went into the main book shop just north of Foyles. 

I can't for the life of me remember going into a discrete Collets record shop - but I must have done. 

http://www.britishrecordshoparchive.org/collets.html

The Collets I remember in New Oxford Street had the ground floor dedicated to folk and blues while the basement was Ray's jazz domain (what is it about jazz and basements). I recall the folk section was managed by a fairly fearsome woman named Gill Cook (you can see her in the photo on the blog). Actually, rather than fearsome she reminded me most of Candice Marie in Mike Leigh's 'Nuts In May' (now there's an obscure cultural reference for you!).

Just down New Oxford Street from Collett's was Imhof's which was more a competitor to HMV but also sold equipment, styli etc. They had an incredibly relaxed listening policy in the basement record shop. I used to go there before I got into jazz and bought mostly comedy LPs as I recall. Things like 'Songs For Swinging Sellers', Victor Borge, 'Not Only But Also', The Goons, Hancock etc. The comedy market must have been been quite big then, something that seems to have pretty much disappeared today. The internet is a wonderful thing but it certainly seems to have destroyed the rich culture in cities like London of small, independent book and record shops.

Imhofs

 

 

[A Lark Ascending]

I have the dimmest of memories of going to a specialist record shop on New Oxford Street...but I could well have dreamed that up from reading so much about places there (in folk as well as jazz publications). To be honest I rarely ventured into New Oxford Street. 

21 minutes ago, Jazzjet said:

The internet is a wonderful thing but it certainly seems to have destroyed the rich culture in cities like London of small, independent book and record shops.

I used to love visiting record shops in different cities - they all tended to reflect the individual interests of the owners or the local preferences (until the chains took over with their central stocking systems). You could come across very different things in the racks of different record shops.

Today on the rare occasions I go into a record/CD shop I get bored quickly. I popped into Rays and Fopp in London last week and lasted 5 minutes in each. Nothing like the range I'm now used to on the net and more expensive. 

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes you can get mixed up in your memories about those shopping places you visited (musing about missed opportunities ..). One place I cannot recall exactly but which left a deep impression on me at the time (1977) was a book shop that was a bit outside the inner city streets "littered" with record shops. IIRC it was one of the major north-south streets runnig off Oxford Street - possibly Regent Street or New Bond Street. I think it had a record corner (though no jazz or blues I remember) and also music instruments but a huge section of music books (second only - probably - to the Bloomsbury Book Shop or - later on - the Compendium Bookstore in Camden Town where I regularly left money in the 90s until unaffordable leases forced them to close).

What I remember about that bookstore I visited in 1977 was not only the huge range of (for the time and for me) "esoteric" specialist books on blues and roots music (and jazz too, I think). I bought two of the Studio Vista paperback blues books (series edited by Paul Oliver, I think) on Tommy Johnson and Charley Patton (which I still have today) though I did not get any number of their recordings until quite a few years later. And this shop also had loads of different music magazines, starting with Blues Unlimited and the like but also including what would best be described as "under the counter fanzines" such as the legendary early rockabilly mag "Not Fade Away". Incredible to me as a 17-year old non-Brit that such specialist publications existed at all, and too bad I visited that place during the final days of my stay there, so not much money left ...

Anybody remember what this place might possibly have been?

[JohnS]

Don't forget Honest Jon''s shop just opposite Rays in St Martins Lane.   South Londoners will also recall Chris Wellard's shop in New Cross.

Wellards

[BillF]

3 minutes ago, JohnS said:

Don't forget Honest Jon''s shop just opposite Rays in St Martins Lane.   South Londoners will also recall Chris Wellard's shop in New Cross.

Wellards

Yes, I used to go to Wellard's when my wife-to-be was a student at nearby Goldsmith's College. I remember buying a used copy of Quincy Jones's "This Is How I Feel About Jazz" in dreadful condition. "Just put a shilling in the blind box," came the instruction when I presented it for purchase. 

[ornette]

I was a regular visitor to the New Oxford Street basement in the middle sixties, when still at school (I was born in 1949). My best friend Tony and I would get the Central Line tube from Northolt, usually on a Saturday, get off at Tottenham Court Road and go straight there. Always something good on the PA - I remember buying loads of BYGs, JCOA box sets and, especially 'Reed Streams' by Terry Riley.

I've lost touch with Tony now but he was a decent spin bowler (as was Ray) and I know they played cricket together.

After I moved out of London I always visited Mole (both shops) whenever I wangled a trip down for a meeting or to attend a course.

Another cricket connection - being in the Gray's Inn Road shop (in 1988) with the staff listening to the radio as Graham Hick scored 405no.

 

Edited November 25, 2015 by ornette
typo

[Big Beat Steve]

Re- St. Martin's Lane:

I remember Honest Jon's only from his site far up Portobello Road.

The only record shop in St. Martin's Lane I remember was James Asman's (but that was in the 90s so I don't really know about his previous activities).

Not only judging by the shopping bags, James Asman (specializing more in oldtime jazz and early dance bands, at least in the 90s) seemed to cooperate with Mole Jazz in a way. One time I made my rounds at the London shops in the 90s I bought two of the three Hampton Hawes All Night Session LPs (having previously read about them in Ted Gioia's book) as very clean U.K. originals (on Vogue). And lo and behold, on the very same day I found the third volume of these recordings (U.K. Vogue original too) in the "mixed bag" bin at James Asman's - with a somewhat more worn cover but fine, glossy vinyl. And at one quid who was I to complain?

As if Mole had unloaded some of their "not quite good enough" stock at Asman's.

 

 

 

[Jazzjet]

James Asman did indeed specialise in New Orleans, Swing etc but I remember buying Miles' 'Miles In The Sky' there. How we remember where we bought specific LPs over 40 years later is a mystery.

8 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Yes you can get mixed up in your memories about those shopping places you visited (musing about missed opportunities ..). One place I cannot recall exactly but which left a deep impression on me at the time (1977) was a book shop that was a bit outside the inner city streets "littered" with record shops. IIRC it was one of the major north-south streets runnig off Oxford Street - possibly Regent Street or New Bond Street. I think it had a record corner (though no jazz or blues I remember) and also music instruments but a huge section of music books (second only - probably - to the Bloomsbury Book Shop or - later on - the Compendium Bookstore in Camden Town where I regularly left money in the 90s until unaffordable leases forced them to close).

What I remember about that bookstore I visited in 1977 was not only the huge range of (for the time and for me) "esoteric" specialist books on blues and roots music (and jazz too, I think). I bought two of the Studio Vista paperback blues books (series edited by Paul Oliver, I think) on Tommy Johnson and Charley Patton (which I still have today) though I did not get any number of their recordings until quite a few years later. And this shop also had loads of different music magazines, starting with Blues Unlimited and the like but also including what would best be described as "under the counter fanzines" such as the legendary early rockabilly mag "Not Fade Away". Incredible to me as a 17-year old non-Brit that such specialist publications existed at all, and too bad I visited that place during the final days of my stay there, so not much money left ...

Anybody remember what this place might possibly have been?

I'm not sure I remember that store. You're sure it wasn't Foyles? Doesn't really fit with your description but it certainly had a lot of music books. Before its makeover (1980s?) it was ruled with an eccentric rod of iron by Christina Foyle. Most bizarre was its payment system which is accurately described in Wikipedia :

'The shop operated a payment system that required customers to queue three times: to collect an invoice for a book, to pay the invoice, then to collect the book, simply because sales staff were not allowed to handle cash. Equally mystifying to customers was a shelving arrangement that categorized books by publisher, rather than by topic or author. A quote of this period is: "Imagine if Kafka had gone into the book trade." In the 1980s a rival bookshop placed an advertisement in a bus shelter opposite Foyles: "Foyled again? Try Dillons".