Becoming a record dealer.

At the time, I was living in Bournemouth and working contentedly as a bus driver, which left me plenty of free time to trawl the local junk shops at least two or three times a week. I could continue on the buses, while accumulating interesting old records and hopefully selling them at a profit via adverts in Record Mart and elsewhere.
NB: At this time, record collecting was in its infancy, especially collecting 7” records. For many years, there had been a thriving market for old Jazz & Blues 78s, in fact EMI [or rather its forerunners] had been reissuing ‘in demand’ pre-war jazz records of both New Orleans and Mainstream Jazz on 78s since the 1930s.
Record Mart magazine was started in 1967 by Frank Bailey, the publisher of Vintage Record Mart Monthly, a 78 listing magazine. Frank [later assisted by local collector Derek Glenister], perceived a growing interest in 7” records and so Record Mart was born. Up to that time a few dealers were sending out mimieographed record listings of what they had for sale. Finding interested customers, through small ads in NME, Melody Maker, Disc & Record Mirror as well as in Exchange & Mart, a kind of printed equivalent of EBay with a huge weekly circulation.
Prior to placing my first advert in Record Mart, I had already dipped my toes into the mail-order business, selling rare(ish) British coins. Working on the buses with decimalisation looming, put me in the ideal position to accumulate a stock of unusual UK coinage. A lot of older people were panicking and getting rid of their old coins, especially Edwardian & Victorian ones and many of these ended up being used to pay bus fares. I had a deal going with quite a few drivers & conductors, paying them 5 or 10 times face value for specific coins.
Coin collectors were ahead of the game, when compared to record collectors as there was a an established magazine COIN MONTHLY, which apart from editorial had lists of records for sale and also published an annual price guide. This was an immense help in figuring out what to charge for any of the coins that I managed to sell.
After “Mr Lee”, it was a no brainer to switch to dealing in records instead of coins which was of course much more stimulating. I placed my first advert in Record Mart sometime in the Autumn of 1969 and got encouraging results. I figured out appropriate prices by comparing my records for sale, with what other dealers were charging for similar records. From the 2 lists below, you can see that I was keeping things on the low side.
In June 1970, I quit my job with Bournemouth Corporation Transport and moved to to London to accept a job as tour manager with the leading Irish rock band SKID ROW [Gary Moore, Brush Shiels & Nollaig Bridgeman] all first class musicians. The band had just been taken under the wing of a leading UK management company fronted by Clifford Davis, who already managed Fleetwood Mac and Duster Bennett. The band had a record deal with CBS and had recorded their first album. Skid Row moved from Dublin to London to commence undertaking UK dates in support of the first album, which was due for release in September.
I found the band a 4 bedroomed house to rent for £10 a week at 55 Plashet Grove, East Ham. Skid rehearsed 2 or 3 days a week mostly in the house and undertook an average of 3 or 4 gigs a week throughout England, as well as a short Scandinavian tour in October.
What we were all really looking forward to was a one month tour of the USA in November. Actually, this was the reason that I had taken the job with Skid Row. While the band was rehearsing, I had plenty of time to troll around many of the junk shops of East London, gradually accumulating stocks of interesting old 45s as well as expanding my personal collection.
One day, while browsing a table outside a junk shop in Newham, I engaged in conversation with a guy several years younger than myself who was wearing a shabby drape jacket. He told me about the Black Raven, a pub in Bishopsgate where the customers were all Teda and the jukebox contained only Fifties rock’n’roll records. This encouraged me that I was on the right track focusing mainly on records from the 1950s.
I sent out 2 more [hand lettered / photocopied] mail-order lists and by then we were Heathrow bound, next stop L.A.X.
America was a blast, Skid Row, went down pretty well at all gigs, supporting
A] Jazz/ Soul/ Rock group Pollution for 3 nights at The Whiskey A Go-Go on Sunset Strip. Actually Pollution who had 2 great lead singers, Dobie Gray and Tata Vega, (as well as the legendary New Orleans pianist Ronnie Baron) supported Skid Row at the Whiskey.
Then it was off to San Francisco for 4 nights at the legendary Fillmore West.
[B] Supporting Boz Scaggs and The Mothers of Invention, next to
[C} Chicago supporting several US bands whose names I can’t remember with Ten Years After headlining. On our first night in Chicago, I telephoned the legendary ‘Smitty’s Corner’ where Muddy Waters often played, unfortunately he had an out-of-town gig that night.
Then to
[D] Detroit, where the band supported the Allman Brothers Band with hometown boys the Stooges, headlining for 3 nights at the East Town Theatre.
[E] Cleveland was next on our itinerary, supporting Jethro Tull at a high school way out in the suburbs.
There weren’t any gigs the following weekend, so we hightailed it to Boston, where The Allmans were headling at the Boston TeaParty. We enjoyed another 3 night from one of the best bands that ever played in the USA. We hung out in Boston, for a week, rehearsing at the Tea Party everyday and having fun with the young backing band for the Showmen, who were staying in adjoining rooms at The Holiday Inn.
Everyone was getting a bit tired and homesick, so we finally decided to blow out our final gigs at Filmore East in New York, so our final gigs were at the Boston Tea Party supporting the very loud supergroup Mountain.