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oug launched the 77 record label in 1957 (to avoid the luxury tax that used to apply to UK record releases, only 99 copies were initially pressed)
releasing new recordings by British jazz and blues musicians, licensing American blues and folk recordings and welcoming visiting musicians: Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, fresh with tales of Woody and Cisco, cut a notable session while exiled South African jazz musicians also recorded for Doug.
In November 1960 British jazz saxo- phonist John Dankworth officially opened Dobell’s Folk & Blues Shop, at 10 Rathbone Place, W1. Doug also used Rathbone Place as a base for Agate & Co (the mail order company that han- dled Dobell’s many UK and interna- tional orders) and Central Record Distributors (distributors of 77 and specialist US record labels). During this time the iconic Dobell’s record bag was created (alongside the slo- gan ‘every true jazz fan is born with- in the sound of Dobell’s’) by 77 employee Dave Davies.
75 Charing Cross Road became available in 1965 and Doug relocated Rathbone Place’s stock here. Jesse Fuller, the African-American one- man-blues-band, played at the open- ing of what would be known as the ‘Folk-Blues’ shop. Together the two shops served as a musical Mecca and, on any given day Dobell’s clientele might include local and international musicians eyeing one another up, anarchists rubbing shoulders with cabinet ministers as they dug through orange crates full of rare 78s, fresh-faced students and grizzled war vet- erans discussing the merits of recent releases on Blue Note or Savoy.
Dobell’s reputation had ensured that,
when skiffle awoke British youths to the delight of bashing away on washboards and string bass, Doug served up generous helpings of blues and country records to the teenage skifflers who came in search of songs to add to their skiffle repertoire. Imports of American blues and R&B also found Dobell’s helping to kickstart the UK’s nascent blues scene: Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, the godfathers of Lon- don’s blues bands, learned much of their repertoire via Dobell’s and both would record for 77.
As the 1960s got underway, long- haired youths would enter to soak up the
The first release on Dobell’s 77 label: 99 copies of Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.
atmosphere, hoping not to get a tongue- lashing from some of the fiercer denizens behind the counter. A teenage Charlie Watts hunted for jazz 78s here. Watts’ soon-to-be-bandmate Brian Jones arrived in London from Cheltenham and headed straight for Dobell’s. Not long after, a fey folkie from St Albans, Donovan Leitch, also arrived in London and headed to Doug’s shop, having heard about it from the older youths he met in pubs and folk clubs. Brian Case, later one of the UK’s foremost jazz critics, hitched from Hull to Dobell’s as a teen simply to buy Johnny Griffin’s The Congregation LP. What they all recall is a sense of excitement, wild possibilities, under way in this jewel of a shop overseen by a prince of a man.
Owl’ Wilson and Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite: these two youths were leading the popu- lar blues-rock band Canned Heat and, they informed Colyer, had been purchas- ing blues records by mail from Dobell’s for several years. As with BB King, Canned Heat found the Soho shop’s stock of rare 78s superior to those of most American stores. Janis Joplin arrived at Dobell’s on her sole visit to London and presented the staff with a bottle of Southern Comfort. What, I wonder, did Doug Dobell make of these American rock stars – ragged, hairy, wasted – who came to pay tribute to his enterprise? I imagine he smiled and pon- dered on music’s magical qualities and how it managed to inspire and unite all manner of people.
The two adjacent shops on Charing Cross Rd. “I discovered Dobell’s in 1964,” says
Dave Peabody, then a Southall schoolboy, now one of Europe’s foremost acoustic blues musicians. “Back then I had a week- end job in an ice-cream parlour and all the money I earned got spent at Dobell’s. Once you discovered Dobell’s you really didn’t need anywhere else. It fulfilled every wish, every need. I got to know the little guy behind the counter, Ray Bolden, and he always pretended to be grumpy but you’d pull out a Blind Blake LP and ask him to play a track and he would. I got the basis of my record collection – blues, jazz and folk – from Dobell’s.”
It wasn’t just suburban British boys who frequented Dobell’s: Mississippi blues seer BB King recognised Dobell’s as the oracle, visiting the shop every time he was in London. In a Melody Maker fea- ture on King in June 1971 the journalist Max Jones wrote “I was surprised to find him [King] almost literally knee-deep in books and records. It was the result of a shopping expedition.” “Well I took some time off and went to see Ray [Bolden] in Dobell’s shop,” said King to Jones when quizzed on what he was doing in the Charing Cross Road store. “I remember him from before and it’s always nice to talk to him. Whilst I was there I bought some books and records.”
Over the years many a Dobell’s cus- tomer would be pleasantly surprised to enter and find BB there, chatting or browsing. Jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins would sit, sip Scotch and tell tall stories of sessions he had blown on. By the late 1960s Bill Colyer was managing the blues section and, upon returning from the pub one afternoon, he found two hairy young Americans waiting for him. They announced themselves as Alan ‘Blind
Think about it: in the pre-internet era record shops like Dobell’s acted as a one-stop search engine for anyone with the slightest interest in music beyond the Top 40. As Londoners min- gled with those from distant lands the shops functioned as epicentres for news and knowledge, a place where, amidst the fog of cigarette smoke and loud voices and louder jazz, teaching in the Sufi sense of the term went on. That such American icons as Louis Armstrong, Ben Webster, Slim Gail- lard, Stan Kenton, Horace Silver, Errol Garner, Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley, Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters (with his guitarist Jimmy Rogers) and Stan Getz dropped in when they were in town suggests the totemic energies the Charing Cross Road shop exuded.
Alongside the US heavyweights many aspiring British and Irish musicians, both celebrated and unsung, proclaimed Doug’s shop as somewhere special. Lonnie Done- gan, jazz drummer John Stevens, youthful folkies Wizz Jones, Bert Jansch and Martin Carthy, and a fresh-faced Irish teenager called Rory Gallagher were regulars in both the jazz and folk shops. Gallagher first came across Dobell’s when in London as a teenager playing with the Fontana Show Band. Coming from Cork – not a city noted for its record shops – Gallagher inhaled the sound of Dobell’s and smiled that gentlest of smiles. A similar epiphany engulfed the teenager who would become David Bowie.
Amongst the many Dobell’s stories, none matches the time a young Bob Dylan, who sought out the shop during his first visit to the UK, joined a recording session in the basement. This came about on January 14 1963 when American folk musicians Eric Von Schmidt and Richard Fariña agreed to record an album for the 77 label.
January 14 1963 was, even by the fierce standards of that winter, a bitter night. Yet four young Americans didn’t let the elements concern them as they gath- ered for a recording session in Dobell’s basement. The sessions found Fariña and Von Schmidt, then touring UK folk clubs, taking advantage of Doug’s offer to cut an album in London. They were joined by Ethan Signer, a US fiddle player then living in Cambridge, and Bob Dylan. Dylan’s debut album had got good notices in the US yet he remained largely unknown in the UK; his London sojourn had come when
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