Jon Gallant excited my interest:

>A few of the older campers may remember, if they still remember anything
>at all, the classical music LP retail market of the 50s, 60s, and early
>70s (I refer to the 1950s etc., not the 1850s).

He recommended:

>...Matt Lasar's reminiscences about working at the old Sam Goody store
>on 49th St. in New York

As one of the "older campers" whose memory is still in reasonable shape, I
found Matt Lasar's reminiscences quite captivating.  As an aside, there was
something quite soothing about the susurration of LP covers being flipped
in a store rack that I don't find with the more intrusive clatter of jewel
cases.  That's progress.

The shop that I remember from that time, when I was at university, would
sell you a Bosendorfer piano, a bassoon reed, some sheet music, a Zildjian
cymbal and, in the back of the shop, almost as if the department was only
there under sufferance, records.  It was during my early forays there that
I entered to find a pair of speakers being installed to allow customers to
hear stereo for the first time, and stood with a small crowd listening to
passing trains, tennis matches and other such delights from the
demonstration record.

The record department was presided over by Doug, who used to audition
records by randomly dropping (and I mean dropping) the stylus at random,
listening for a few seconds, and repeating the process several times before
doing the same with the other side.  I don't remember what his specialty
was, or even if he had one.  There was Rhonda, who had probably been hired
because she was drop-dead gorgeous, but knew her way around the current
jazz (Dave Brubeck, Shelly Manne, MJQ, etc).  Then there was Dennis, who
had an engaging Sarf Lunnon accent, eyes that sparkled when he was talking
about one of his many musical enthusiasms, and a habit of rubbing his hands
together, usually, I think, when he knew he'd sold you something.  I was
buying jazz records at the time and nearly all of them involved a long wait
from the time they were ordered (still true over forty years later).
Dennis could wax lyrical and authoritatively on, say, Kid Ory or Charlie
Parker, or distinguish between the seemingly dozens of West Coast jazz
pianists of the time.

I think it started one day when I went into the shop and by chance Dennis
was playing the Farandole from Bizet's L'Arlesienne (come to think of it,
are there any other farandoles?) I walked out with the record.  About the
same time, a friend had bought The Planets and some excerpts from Swan
Lake.  We boarded at the same house and our landlady used to retire early
and remove her hearing aid, so these and later additions were played as
loudly as we liked.  We discovered that Dennis knew even more about CM than
he did about jazz, and could advise on this or that record truthfully and
without any sense of hype.  His favourite composer was Vaughan Williams.

I remember considering a sale copy of The Rite of Spring (Dorati's mono
version on Mercury, with one of the worst covers in history).  Dennis said
I probably wouldn't like it but would come to do so in time, and played me
about ten minutes of it in their listening room - sensibly, he wound the
volume up to just below the threshold of pain, and I was sufficiently
intrigued to buy it, as he knew I would be.  I think it was the same
day I unaccountably bought Shostakovich's 1st, coupled with a suite
from Kabalevsky's Colas Breugnon.  Several years later, after I'd moved
elsewhere, I called in and told him I'd recently discovered Mahler's 1st.
He reached under the counter and offered me Klemperer's version of Mahler's
2nd.  It was his own copy that had come in that day, he'd waited months for
it to arrive and hadn't heard it, but he let me have it.  I appreciated his
sacrifice even more when I played those glorious records!

It was several years before I visited the shop again.  The record
department had run down, the staff were all new to me.  "Dennis? No,
he left before I came, don't know where he is." When I look back on the
many conversations about music I had with him, I realise that I owe him
a hell of a lot as a mentor.  Having spent my working life as a teacher,
I sometimes meet former students who will happily remember some minor
incident that helped them in some way, and remind me of it.  I feel a
similar sense of gratitude to Dennis, wherever he may be.

People who work in record stores are sometimes disparaged on the list, and
sometimes with good reason, but there are people like Dennis who care about
what they do, and whose expertise and influence may extend far beyond the
choice of this or that purchase.  Would that there were more of them!

Richard Pennycuick
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