Simon usually toots into a hand me down shop in Tooting Bec and invariably emerges with the complete works of John Coltrane for a fiver. He's probably got half-a-dozen Buddy Bolden cylinders awaiting to be transferred to stereo.
Now, had I been a collector of Jim Reeves albums I'd have been, like Jim, in, metaphorically speaking, Heaven. In Jarrow's charity shops Reeves outnumbers even Sinatra by a hundred to one although Elvis does run him close.
Reeves and Presley's albums were released on RCA and, back in the day, RCA had a pressing plant in nearby Washington which begs the question as to whether this preponderance of Jim and Elvis LPs were originally sold or did they come out of the factory's back door?
However, that is mere supposition and digression, the point I'm eventually getting to is that in the Marie Curie Shop I hit pay dirt!
No, I didn't find a recording of Bud Freeman jamming with Albert Ayler on Blue Note but I did come across a pristine copy of the book pictured above and whilst, at £1.25, It seemed to be slightly over the top for a charity shop, I felt it would be uncharitable not to buy it.
I've got Ray Celestin's earlier book The Axeman's Jazz and I'm almost three quarters of the way through it (why do current novelists make their books so long? Raymond Chandler and Grahame Greene could tell more in half as many words and their novels could fit into your pocket/handbag! Presumably writers today are paid by the word rather than by the writer's ability to hold the reader's interest - I hope I'm not shooting myself in the foot here!)
Nevertheless, Deadman's Blues looks promising opening as it does with a young Louis Armstrong, cornet case, suitcase and tickets to Chicago in hand running to jump on the train to meet up with King Oliver in the Windy City. The rest is history merged with fiction - time to go to bed with a good book! Lance
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