4 Discography, and a bit of fiction

During my late teens and early twenties, I’d been deeply engrossed in discog- raphy. That’s like bibliography but documenting gramophone records rather than books. In my case it was blues and gospel recordings made by African- American artists for an African-American audience up until the beginning of the Second World War. How, you may ask, did a boy from Nottingham get involved in this? Well, it was through an initial interest in jazz, which moved on to blues and gospel music. And through a systematic curiosity, which leads to a desire to have precise and thorough documentation of anything I am engaged in. The jazz bit came about by an act of dissent, which transmogrified into a passion. European classical music was all around, so I experimented with it a bit, in the same spirit in which I experimented with Christianity. Give it a go, see if there was anything there which appealed to me. Once a week, at lunchtime, a group gathered in the school library to listen to classical records, and I joined them for a few weeks. We were in the sixth form, basically doing science and mathematics but still subjected to a couple of periods of ‘English’ from an old fool of a teacher called Tubby Hardwick. ‘I’ve seen you,’ he pointed his finger at me, ‘I’ve seen you listening to classical music in the library. You can give us a talk, play some records and tell us the story behind them.’ I knew nothing about classical music, had been trying to find out whether it held any interest for me, decided it didn’t. I had no wish to talk about classi- cal music, and couldn’t. I also considered that Tubby Hardwick was intruding. Surely I should be able to do whatever I wanted at lunchtime without it being any business of his. A friend suggested taking the mickey by talking about jazz, which I also knew nothing about. The friend supplied the jazz records, brought in his portable gramophone, and told me what to say. We had a bit of a laugh. At that time, jazz was considered disreputable, especially for boys at a pub- lic school (it was even worse than soccer) and I’d never heard any before. But — the realisation came on listening to the records in Tubby Hardwick’s 68 I am a linguist

class — this was it! In 1955, the traditional jazz boom was just gathering steam. The bands of Ken Colyer, Chris Barber and many others came and played in Nottingham of a Saturday night, and a group of us would be there each week. Records of the jazz masters from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties were being reissued. I bought a 78 r.p.m. record of Potato Head Blues by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven, and then a new-fangled ten-inch LP by the greatest jazz band of all time, Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers. Thus, at the age of sixteen, my allegiance was transferred from the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground to Bill Kinnell’s Jazz Record Shop on the Wilford Road (which is only a few hundred yards from Trent Bridge). Father didn’t approve at all. ‘One of these days you’ll come to regret having wasted all this money on records,’ he muttered. Oxford colleges gave applicants a general interview, ranging beyond the purview of their subject of study. When asked what my main interests were — at Merton College, in March 1957 — I just wasn’t game to say ‘jazz and blues’, a topic on which I could have expounded at length. In retrospect, I should have told them straight. (Pathetically, I said ‘Voltaire’, having read nothing but Can- dide. It didn’t make a good impression. Well, they didn’t take me.) I always have been interested in — and had a sympathy for — minority groups. I suppose it accords with an inherent anti-establishment stance. Long before having heard a bar of jazz, I read the classic accounts by American Negroes (as they were then called) about the National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People, and the like. So it all fitted together. In the ‘fifties, some of the best early jazz and blues performances were be- ing reissued on a little English label called Jazz Collector. There werePratt City Blues and Jab Blues by Jabbo Williams (from 1930) on Jazz Collector L51, and See See Rider Blues coupled with Jealous Hearted Blues by Ma Rainey (from 1924) on L20. I made a list of everything on the Jazz Collector L-series, from L1 to L137. It was the first glimmer of discographical work. Only a small proportion of jazz and blues records from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties had been reissued at that stage, and I wanted to hear the rest. There was a wonderful magazine (which, in fact, still exists) called Vintage Jazz Mart. This came out on the fifth day of each month, and had lists of old records for sale. Each was carefully graded for condition: N, new; E, excellent; V, very good; G, good (which meant you could just hear it); and P, poor (which meant it was so worn that the surface noise was considerably louder than the music itself). Some adverts quoted a fixed price, but most were auctions. You put in bids for the items you wanted, by a closing date, and the highest bidder won.