About

Hello! My name is Martin and I’m addicted to old jazz records. They say that the first step to curing an addiction is to admit you’ve got one. The trouble is that it won’t work in my case because I’ve no intention of being “cured”.

I first encountered jazz as a child through my father’s enthusiasm for the music. He likes a broad range of styles from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis and I think my earliest listening memory is his copy of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. As a British teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, you can imagine how the post-punk and alternative scene of the time was a far greater musical attraction to me than crackly old records in musty sleeves. But as we grow older, our tastes evolve and mature, so by the time I was at university, I was ready to open my ears receptively to jazz.

My first period of serious collecting was in the late 1980s/early 1990s and it was a different pre-eBay world back then! I have fond memories of day trips to London that were focussed on visits to record shops like Mole Jazz on Pentonville Road and Ray’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. But collecting was curtailed when my wife and I took up a different expensive hobby: raising a family. In recent times, though, I’ve been able to return to collecting in a modest way. So, inspired by some other blogging jazz collectors, I’ve decide to document and share my experiences here.