Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

BENJI B

[applause] So Gerald, for those people not familiar with what you do for a living, could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah. It’s hard to make a living in music so I do three different things basically. One is DJing, second is running Jazzman Records record label, and third one is selling old records mostly via my website.

Benji B

Now, that’s a very modest way of putting it because Gerald’s known amongst crate-diggers the world over as a pretty well-known record dealer. And how long have you been doing that for?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Second-hand records about 15 years now or something. Since the early ‘90s for sure.

Benji B

And that really is a culture in itself, but from how you got into it, did you come at it from just a music fan perspective or was it a business decision? How did you find yourself being a record pimp for people, basically?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

In those days, it was hard to get records in London, which is where I’m based, and the only way you could do it really, properly, was by paying a lot of money to a lot of the record dealers and getting ripped off in the process. Or you could go to America and buy the record yourself. So basically, that’s what I ended up doing, I just went to America. I saved up some cash, went out there, and that was in the days when you could actually find a lot of records in quantity for pretty cheap. So that’s what I did. I just went out there because I really liked music and I just felt the compulsion to go out there and just do it myself and find the records. And once you find some, you see another one that’s worth some money. You might want to buy that so you can sell it and use the money to go and buy more records, it just multiplies like that.

Benji B

And when you say the music, what type of music are we talking about?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

This is mostly jazz music or funk music, or funky jazz, or Latin or fusion. Basically black American music from the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Benji B

And when you’re talking about records that you can find for cheap that are worth I mean, who decides what a record is worth? Is it you?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

That’s a good question. I suppose, in those days some of the prices were set by record dealers. They had an idea of what they were worth and there were lists because some record dealers had been doing it for quite a while, so there’s a general understanding of what certain records are worth. If you found one that had never really been listed, or people didn’t really know about, you could sort of… well, you’d listen to it and use your own ears, basically, and get an idea of how rare it was, match it up against how good the record was. If it was really rare, and it was really good, then you’d put quite a high price on it because the demand would increase. It’s literally just supply and demand. It’s a s simple as that. The demand is much higher for the good records, and if the supply is low, it means the price is high and vice versa as well. No one really wants rubbish records and no one really wants common ones because they can buy them anyway so the price is quite low. So it literally is a classic supply and demand situation.

Benji B

Now, a lot of people, and producers especially, buy records from you for breaks and stuff, but that’s not really the reason you got into the music, right? You’re more about the actual content of the record itself?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I was just purely into the music like anyone else. I just wanted to get records because I just love the music and once you’ve heard one you want to hear another one. You hear another one and you want to find out about more and you just want to get more and more records and hear more and more music, because you’re just into it so much. I wasn’t the only one, a lot of people were in that and they’re the people I ended up selling to and I did that so much that eventually I could make a living out if it.

Benji B

To people that aren’t necessarily from that culture or from that generation, it can seem like a bit of an elitist culture, this thing of selling records for 250 quid or 500 dollars or whatever, and always trying to hide the label and finding the thing that the next man’s got. To what extent is it an elitist culture or is it something that anyone can get into?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It can be elitist, yeah, and sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing. It’s good in the ways that if a certain pedigree or high value is put on a rare record, it means that people are going to value it more and therefore they’re going to go out and look for it and they’re going to make new discoveries. And they’ve got an incentive to go out and try and find new things or rare things or expensive things because they can get the money for it basically, which means that new discoveries are going to be made. But on the other hand it can be bad that people buy the records, or the expensive records, for the wrong reasons. They do it to massage their own egos or to feel good about it or show off to their friends, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. But the best thing about the fact that it could be rare or expensive is that people will take the effort to go out and find the things. Otherwise, half the records that are reissued that a lot of people really enjoy would never have been discovered.

Benji B

So let’s talk about that, the other facet to your business. What you do mainly now is a record label. How long have you been running that and what’s it called?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Jazzman Records. The label started in ‘98. So eight years now. We started off with a 7” single. I didn’t bring one here but we put it out on one of the CDs. Kathleen Emery, maybe we can play it now if you want?

Benji B

Yeah, let’s play that. This is certainly the first record that you put out but I remember when this came out. How did you come across this record and why did you decide to re-issue it on a 7”?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It was a record dealer in Boston, he’s sold everything now, his name’s Boston Bob, and I used to do a lot of trade with him and he first played it to me for the b-side which is a version of “Evil Ways,” a Santana song, and I liked the a-side a bit better and it turned out that when I brought it back, no one had ever heard of it in London. I DJed it in Munich and I remember it had a really good response, even though it’s a bit of a quirky one as you’ll hear, and I thought, “If I’m the only person who’s got this record and a lot of people really like it, then it makes sense to reissue it in such a way that everyone else who likes it will be able to hear it instead of just me in my bedroom.” So that’s why we put it out on single. And I put it out on 7” single because, one – that was the format it originally came out on and secondly, because I thought if no one wants to buy it I’m not going to lose too much money because sevens are pretty cheap to make compared to CDs and albums or 12"s or whatever.

(music: Kathleen Emery — “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”)

Benji B

So that’s Kathleen Emery “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” right? And also you decided to do CDs as well?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I didn’t do any CDs to start off with, but once I’d done ten or so 7” singles, it just made sense to put some on CD because not everyone’s got a record player, simple as that. And also it makes business sense because you can sell the same records all over again and I have to stay in the business. Although I’m not a CD person, I’m much more a vinyl person, it does make sense to spread the music using whatever medium it takes.

Benji B

One thing that strikes me about the way you do your stuff is completely in respect to the artist. I mean, there’s amazing sleeve notes in all of the stuff that you do and I remember you saying it takes three years to put together one of these comps.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

The funk ones take, yeah, the last one took three years to do. The one before that did. Well, the reason behind that is a lot of research is original. We don’t look on the internet to get the information that we put about the artist on there, we have to meet each artist individually and interview them to get the information, and that takes a long time. Not just to find them but to go to America to meet them and do the interview, too. We see that as being really important because it’s the type of music that we’re putting out, it’d otherwise be forgotten about because a lot of it is so obscure and so rare that people otherwise would never know about it, so we take a lot of time and effort. One, to find out about it in the first place; two, to actually go and reissue the stuff properly because otherwise it would just never get known about it’d just get forgotten about completely and the only people that would know about it would be the collectors and the DJs. But we see the music that we’re doing as being of proper historical significance for the history of music in the States, not just in the States but the whole world, especially the funk stuff we’re doing because that’s the basis of a lot of modern music. It’s not just James Brown or Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin, there’s a lot of local artists that never got it big and we see it as being very important that they get some of the limelight that they deserve, that they never got in the first place. And that’s one of the main reasons why we do it. If you go to a record store and you get a CD on rockabilly or doo wop or reggae, you can get thousands of them and all the liner notes, it’s all been documented and you can read all about it. But the funk stuff was very, very little [documented until] a few years ago. If you bought a funk CD it’d just have Earth, Wind & Fire on it or Stevie Wonder or something, which is all very well but there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that and that’s what we’re trying to show by putting out the CDs that we do.

Benji B

The business side of it’s important as well because there’s a lot of comps out there putting out rare stuff and funk and soul, and it’s all from the perspective of wanting to share it with people, but I know that sometimes not everyone’s business is straight and sometimes it’s very hard to track down the original artist, especially in the case of people that have only cut one 45 or a couple of singles or whatever. And that’s quite important to you isn’t it, to make sure all of that is good?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It is hard. It took us five years to find one guy called Arthur Monday, for instance. He made a couple of records released on a small Californian label, we tracked him down to a nursing home in Louisiana. I don’t do a lot of the tracking down, I’ve got to give credit to Malcolm Catto who does most of the work. It means staying up until the early hours of the morning and ringing 50 people with the same name in the phone book and finding out that even though you spoke to 50 people, none of them happen to be that person. It really is painstaking work, but he does do it. But it’s worth it in the end because when you actually do come across that guy and you go and meet him and you do the interview, it’s really good to meet someone who appreciates the fact that you spent all that time and effort to find them and they made a record, say, 30 years ago that they never ever thought would see the light of day again and you’re telling them that they’re going to get paid for it. Sometimes they think that they have to pay you to get it put on a CD but you say, “No, we pay you to put it on CD,” and they get royalties from it. And they actually get recognition for the first time in all that time because even at the time, when they released it, it may never have got a proper release, they might have got ripped off or whatever. So it’s very satisfying and fulfilling to meet these old guys, even if it takes a lot of work and effort to go and meet them. Like I say, I see it as an important part of documenting the musical history of the States. If we don’t do it, no one else will and I think there’s Stones Throw in the States and there’s another company, I forget the name, who take the effort to do it. Not many people do. But I suppose you could say there’s a gap in the market as well because we’re the only ones that can be bothered to do it like that. Soul Jazz do it as well to a certain extent.

Benji B

Have you got any particular good stories or any particular case studies of people that you’ve tracked down?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Well, that Arthur Monday one was pretty good after five years looking for him and being at the nursing home where he was and then he suddenly appeared in his wheelchair, and it was good to see the grin on his face. It was good meeting James Dole from the Highlighters because he did a song called “Funky 16 Corners” and he started doing a dance in his living room. It’s good meeting people like Billy Larkin whose Hammond organ was on the porch and it was all covered in dust and cobwebs and covered in tarpaulin and he ripped that off and started playing on it for us even though it wasn’t plugged in. If I think of one that springs to mind, I’ll let you know in a sec, but basically it’s great meeting those old guys who after having mostly had very little success and someone coming out of the woodwork and traveling from England they’re really pretty chuffed that someone has taken an interest in them again. Especially because the music they make, it’s actually properly good stuff a lot of the funk stuff they did. I mean, a lot of the funk music that was made in them days, a lot of it was pretty bad. A lot of it deserves never to be heard because it’s not really that good. But we just look for the really properly good ones and I think it’s a shame that a lot of them never got the success that they could have had or deserved back when it was first released. And a lot of the guys, they know it was good but for one reason or another the stories of which we put in the CDs, they never actually got the dues they deserved.

Benji B

Have you got an example of one of those type records we could play?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

We could play this one, Fred Williams. Some people might recognize this because Talib Kweli sampled it recently. Track number seven.

(music: Fred Williams — “Tell Her”)

Anyone recognize that? [Talib Kweli] used it recently, I can’t remember the song. [inaudible suggestion off camera] That’s the one.

Benji B

This is from an album called Midwest Funk 45s From Tornado Alley. I mean, all these CDs, there’s so much care and love gone into each one there’s almost a mini essay on each one, it must take you years to do these things.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, that one took us two or three years to do as well. That’s the American issue. Stones Throw released it in the States, but yeah, it takes ages. Like I say, we have to meet each of the artists or producers in their own right to get an interview with them and get the story from them, because there’s no information otherwise, there’s nothing on the internet, there’s nothing at all. We try and do it properly, otherwise the story never gets told.

Benji B

Now, in here there’s all of the pictures of all of the records, they’re all 45s, they’re all 7” records and people pay a lot of money for albums but the real money that people spend is always 45s, that’s where the real super-expensive buying market is.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It does tend to be that way actually, yeah.

Benji B

Why is that?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Probably because if you’re looking at a 7” single, there’s just one song on it and it’s three minutes long. And a lot of these things are independently made, they’re quite rare. They probably only made a few hundred at the time, the band probably only made that one single. So that 7” single that’s rare and expensive probably encapsulates the sole artistic output of that band. It’s just been condensed into that one 7” single. They didn’t do any other singles, they didn’t do an album, they didn’t do anything else, just that one thing. So the concentration of that musical legacy is in that one little three minute song, and because it’s concentrated into that one little thing I think that has a lot to do with the value of the art that’s gone into it. If it’s a whole album or it’s loads and loads of albums, then it’s spread across a lot of output. So it means that I think the value of the artisticness is being spread over more, it’s more diluted. I think that’s why people value 7” singles a lot more, because of the concentration of the output into one specific little thing that’s just three minutes long. It’s a concentrated thing.

Benji B

What’s the most expensive song you’ve heard of?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Well, northern soul records tend to sell for more money than most things. Then garage records as well. There’s garage records and northern soul records, wouldn’t bat an eyelid spending thousands and thousands of pounds.

Benji B

Like for one song? For example?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I couldn’t tell you about northern or garage, but I know collectors and stories and look on those high prices on eBay. The funk things they don’t sell for that many, but it’s not uncommon to see a four figure for a seven inch single of funk music, which is the kind of thing I’m dealingwith. Fornorthern there’s a lot less recordsandmore people so the demand is a lot higher. And the supply is low, so it’s assimple as that. Supply and demand.

Benji B

You might not want to answer this but what’s the most you’ve ever paid for a record?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I’ll pay a lot of money for a record that I really want it, but I can make excuses by saying I want to reissue it or something, so I’m allowed.

Benji B

What’s the most that anyone’s ever paid you for one record?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I’ve been paid a couple of thousand pounds for a single before, on a couple occasions. Which, you know, it’s, that’s what the guy wanted to pay and that’s pretty much what it’s worth, there’s only one or two known copies in the world. That’s the price.

Benji B

And after 15 years or 20 years of buying records, do you still have that buzz of when you hear a record that you’ve got to have, that nothing’s going to stand in your way?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a copy of that Fred Williams you just played. I don’t have a copy of that. Sometimes if a record gets under your skin, it’s inside you, you can’t get it out your head, you just gotta have it. Having the CD isn’t the same, you gotta have the original artifact. It can take months or years to find it. If you’ve missed that opportunity you may never see it again, so you just gotta bite the bullet. There’s one thing about spending all that money on records, some people balk about paying those sort of prices, but if you don’t see it… Anyone can do it. Anyone can find some cheap records, sell them on eBay, put enough money on your PayPal account, do that enough times and eventually you’ve got enough money on your PayPal account to buy the records you want. It’s just a matter of do you want to do the work to find the records, and can you be bothered to do all that buying and selling stuff to get the money. It’s all about, you do need a certain amount of dedication, a certain manpower to do it. But the real trick, like I was saying earlier, is not to spend a lot of money on records. The trick is to find it cheap. There’s nothing clever about spending a thousand pounds on a record. If you can find that record for fifty cents or a dollar, then that’s where the cleverness is. That’s the way to do it. But having said that I must emphasize that, uh, it’s all very well finding a record like that for a dollar, a really rare one, but if we meet the office and they’ve got a rare record. One example for instance is James Bell guy I was talking about, he had this copy of “Funky 16 Corners” and it’s worth a thousand pounds or whatever. We said, “Do you want to sell it?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, you can have it for ten bucks.” And, um, I couldn’t take it for ten dollars because sooner or later he’d find out it was worth a lot of money, and then he’d start hating us, and we’d be taking advantage of him. We couldn’t do anything like that. Some people would but that’s not the idea. We do pay the artists a proper price for the records we get off them so that we’re not taking advantage of them.

Benji B

What do you say to people who say you might as well be collecting stamps or marbles or something? I mean, to some people that obsessive culture just seems like hoarding.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Well, for a stamp collector, they’ve got their reasons for collecting stamps. Everyone’s got their own reasons for doing stuff. With music I believe that the musicians created the records in the first place and the music in the first place to be able to express themselves, to get people to listen to it and enjoy it and dance to it. For a record collector to buy it and keep it for themselves or for a DJ to cover it up and not tell anyone what it is, I think that’s being disrespectful to the very essence of why the music was made in the first place. So I don’t cover any of my records up. Another reason why I do the reissues is to spread the music because otherwise it would not get the opportunity to be spread in the first place. That’s one reason why, you know, I do do the reissues. If I do anything with it. Everyone’s got their reasons for doing things but I believe in spreading it, that’s one of the main reasons and philosophies behind the label I do.

Benji B

I must say that 90 percent of the stuff I hear on your reissues I’ve never, ever heard before. Can we play a couple of things just to give an idea of what you do? How long has it been since ’98 and how many 7"s have you put out?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I think we’re just about starting on 53 or 54, what’s that, seven or eight per year or something? We’re trying to do one every month, but it’s not easy. This is a song called New Generation by the Universals, another funk one.

(music: The Universals — “New Generation”)

Benji B

Now a lot of the beatmakers that are sitting in this room hear that record in a very particular way and certain bits of that record spring out. I know a lot of producers over the years always traditionally come see you when they’re in London. What are some of hte people who’ve bought breaks from you?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

They don’t really buy breaks from me anymore, they used to in the ’90s. It’s sort of changed a lot in the last few years. But hip-hop producers, a lot of them buy drums or have in the past rather. PM:Gong. He’s one of those guys who wants every single record that’s got a drum break. Even if it’s really rubbish record. Otherwise he’ll just pay whatever it takes for it. Pete Rock bought some records. Um, 45 King. I haven’t seen a lot of these people for quite a while now, you know. The guy from Public Enemy, I forgot his name, whose record collection burned up. It’s a bit grim, but anyway. Like the guy who was here before said, a lot of people don’t sample records anymore, they make their own beats.

Benji B

Are you into contemporary music?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I don’t really have much time to get into it. I’m stuck in the past basically. Generally not so much. Like I say, I really am stuck in the old days. I’m much more traditional in the sense that I like a band, I like to feel a big combination of a group of people playing together, musical instruments. Because I’m so busy researching, I just don’t have the time to get into new stuff. But I think my current favorite band is Broadcast, from Birmingham, England.

Benji B

It’s just interesting because a lot of people into the type of music you were playing come to it from a b-boy angle as well, a breaks angle. But that’s not a big thing for you is it? You’re into the record in its entirety?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, I can understand why people like things for reasons like that, but everyone comes at music from a different angle. Everyone’s got their own agenda. Me personally, it just depends whether you feel it inside or not, whether it gets under your skin. That’s the criteria for a good record to me, whether it’s new or old. Whether it gets inside of you and you can’t get it out of your head then you have to have it. That’s where I’m concerned.

Benji B

Do you just strictly play old music?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I only play 7"s, mostly because I can’t be bothered to lug LPs and 12s around. I only play old music. There’s some new things, but only if it comes out on 7” single. Mostly because I like to fit it in my box. That’s basically why I get booked, because people want to hear the 7"s, they want to hear the old music that I’ve got. They wouldn’t book me otherwise.

Benji B

How is the development of technology, MP3, people buying their stuff online, has that affected your business?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Um, I think it may have done, you know. Some of the records we have got, we have got the copyright to be downloadable, there is that element. But I think with most downloadable music they’re looking for modern things. It’s a more recent concept. I think people like the old music in a manner that we’re talking about here, people do like to hear it on an old format, a seven-inch single or an LP or even a CD. you can call that old now, can’t you? I”m doing OK still manufacturing 7"s. A lot of people buy them simply because they are different. Because it is, you know, a change from the norm if you like. People may seem them as novelty things. But I still make enough and sell enough to make it worthwhile, so I must be doing something right and people must still like them,otherwise no one would buy them.

Benji B

I mean obviously DJs have played a big part in keeping vinyl culture alive and healthy. As even DJing starts to move more in the realm of Serato and computer DJing, will there always be a community of people looking to buy rare records? Will that ever die, or will they become like 78s?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I think they will die, eventually, sooner or later, but there’s so many records out there, you know, there must be billions of the things and they can’t just disappear overnight. There’s literally so many of them, and even if most people do move onto computers or onto more modern forms of music storage, there’s always going to be people who like music regardless of the format. If it means they have to listen to it on a single, then they will. You can’t deny the fact that they’re on the decrease, but that doesn’t mean to say that they’re going to be gone forever. There’s too many for them around for that to happen.

Benji B

You hear of a lot of people who have hundreds of thousands of records and legendary collections but I know that a lot of serious collectors just have the what and no chaff. How many records do you have at home?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Um, singles, I’ve got about a thousand. Albums, probably three thousand or something like that. That’s enough. If I get more, then I’ll probably get rid of some. You hear of some people who have 30, 40, 50-odd thousand or more. In my head, where do you keep them? How do you know where everything is? I think I’ve got the right sort of size to manage.

Benji B

So people can do mail order off the Internet for the 7"s right? And the CDs.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, we’ve got distribution as well. They do get sold all over the world. We do have our own website where we sell them about a month before you can get them in the shop, a marketing issue we’ve got which works pretty well because you can get full value for them and you can get them a month before the shops sell it. They can have it before everyone else sort of thing. Yeah, we’ve been doing that since the late ’90s as well. It works out pretty good.

Benji B

And you’re DJing regularly?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Mostly gigs in Europe, yeah. Mostly clubs in Spain, Germany, France, Italy. Wherever. Not very much in England.

Benji B

Talk us through a couple of the projects that you did, like the Florida Funk because there’s different themes, isn’t there?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah. What happened was a few years ago DJ Shadow was around and he was playing lots of singles that he’d found in Texas and it suddenly dawned on me that we should maybe do a collection of them. So we did this album called Texas Funk, which is made of funk 45s from the state of Texas. And it wasn’t a great leap of knowledge to realize that we could do that for other states in America as well. So we did the Midwest one, which was the next one on the agenda, and we did the Florida one which isn’t released yet and that’s this one here [holds up CD cover], and these are the ones we saved for quite a long time. It took several years to get the copyrights for them and do the interviews and find the artists and everything. So this Florida one is the latest one and we’re pretty chuffed to be able to put this one out because that’s taken ages to get that together. Some of the other ones we’ve done, this one here is one of the compilations that Quantic endorsed for us, which is the World’s Rarest Funk 45s and this has got a lot of 45s on there which are really rare, where there’s one known copy in the world, or just a handful or something like that, and we put the best of those onto this CD. Like I was saying earlier, a lot of rare funk 45s or whatever 45s for that matter, they can be rubbish. There can be one known copy but if it’s no good, there’s no point in valuing it or putting it onto a CD. So these ones we take the best ones and the rarest at the same time and put them on to the CD and again we find the artist and get the photographs of them and do interviews with them so that the story is told. But that’s just one aspect of the stuff. We don’t just do the funk things, we basically try and represent a lot of that because no one else is doing it, but on the Jazzman label we try and put a variety of music in that label. It’s not just funk singers, we put some jazzy ones, some fusion ones, some disco-type ones, some ‘60s mod ones, some weird things that are pretty much uncategorizable and just put a massive variety of things on that label. So on that label we’ve got some CDs that we’ve done that compile the various a-sides and b-sides of the singles. So we’ve got this one, Soul Freedom, in fact I’ll read the blurb on it. “Madcap live records, breathtaking female songs, spaced-out cosmic jazz, heavy, deep funk and rarest of rare groove.” So it’s got a wide variety of stuff on there but the common denominator with all the singles is that they are all pretty obscure, they are all hard to find but they are all good. They are all worthy of being taken out of obscurity and released for the first time in a proper context in that sense. This is an example, this is some Egyptian music that was recorded in 1972 and this one is the next thing we are putting out. A whole album of this stuff has come out recently and this is a classic example of what I’m talking about where… what the hell is Egyptian jazz music doing? Who even thought that such a thing existed, especially stuff that is pretty listenable and danceable even? Let’s play this.

(music: Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band — “Egypt Strut”)

So there’s some Egyptian jazz for you. That was Salah Ragab from Egypt, and like I was saying, if obscure records like that never get reissued, then they’re never going to get heard and I think that musically is valid for a lot of people who are listening to music, not just American stuff but European stuff and stuff from all over the world. Because there’s good music from all over the world, it just takes a bit of time to dig the stuff out. The stuff we do it’s not just oddball stuff like that, we do some straight-ahead stuff too. This thing, “Hercules” by Aaron Neville, is definitely worth putting out on 7" again.

(music: Aaron Neville — “Hercules”)

I’ll stick something else on. This is another one. That was an example of some soul music, this is some New York Latin from Ricardo Marrero.

(music: Ricardo Marrero — “Babalonia”)

Latin funk from New York. One thing about that guy Ricardo Marrero, his master tapes were stolen from one of the employees in the studio and the whole thing was released without his knowing. It’s funny little stories like that that I find really interesting and they’re the sort of things we write about in the booklets. Otherwise, if you did hear the record you’d just hear the record, you wouldn’t know anything about the producer, the musician at all, and I think it’s pretty valid to hear the stories of the musician and what they say about the music they made as well rather than purely just the music that they made and not knowing anything about them. So it’s pretty important for us to write about this stuff on the CDs.

Benji B

When you find the music do they have the masters still or are you mastering off the seven?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

A bit of both. A lot of the time we have to take off vinyl. The tapes that they originally recorded on, they deteriorate or just get lost over the years. Once the records been pressed the tape’s superfluous, a lot of the time they’ve got rid of it or lost it for whatever reason. Bit of a shame, but anyway…

Benji B

You wanted to play this Letta Mbulu track, which we don’t have on vinyl but it’s off the CD, right?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, but I don’t know how to work that thing, you’ll have to do it for me.

Benji B

It was bootlegged quite a lot in the ‘90s but then you put it out legitimately towards the end, right?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah. We flipped it with Lorez Alexandria, we try and make a theme of the singles that we put out so that there’s… That particular one has got two female vocals on each side. The Ricardo Marrero one, we had a different version of that song on the other side so you get two songs on each side rather than most b-sides of singles where they just put on a filler track. Pretty popular one this Letta Mbulu, we sold quite a few copies of this.

(music: Letta Mbulu — “What’s Wrong With Groovin’”)

Benji B

Question time. Any questions? Straight away. Have we got a mic?

Audience Member

Hello.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Hello.

Audience Member

Actually I also have the disease as you, but for disco records. Original disco records. I used to collect a little bit of funk also and Kapp Dodge is one of the real men who is very special in the area of funk collectors and disco lovers. There is a rumor that he with his biggest collection has started to sell his records because he got fed up with it. He said something like, “it’s time for me to get my living out of these records. I’m tired of it.” I think it would be great because he can sell every record and just go to Miami every week.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

He sold them already. He sold a lot of his records already, because I don’t know, I think he needed the money. He had just certain personal problems so he’s put a lot of his records on a new type of dubplate where it’s etched into plastic rub then lacquer. So a lot of his records he’s already gotten rid of and used the money to put the money to put his records onto these plastic vinyl dubplate things. So he DJs mostly off those now. He doesn’t really buy or spend his money like he used to. [He has a] notorious reputation for having raised the prices of a lot of records by just proclaiming to everyone, “I’ll pay more money than anyone else on rare records.” That’s one reason why he’s got the big collection and the rarities that he did. He was probably responsible for the huge price rise in funk records in the nineties. It’s all Kapp Dodge’s fault. And he’ll admit it. It’s all his fault.

Benji B

Is there amongst the community of record dealers and record collectors, do you help each other out or is it competitive?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It used to be competitive. We help each other out now a lot more. There’s one time for instance when Kapp used to cover records up so that no one else would know what they were. So he could be the only person able to DJ it. Like ‘Jazzman’ was saying earlier. Then Malcolm Catto who also had a lot of rare records as well, went down to South and said, “Oh, what are they?” And he kept saying, “I’m not going to tell you.” Then Malcolm said, “Well then I’m not going to tell you what mine are either then.” So when you get two doing that you might as well, so they both took off their covers and revealed to each other what they were. They both win because they can both go out and get those records. The thing is because they are rare you can’t just walk to your local shop and just buy them. You have to hunt them down. It’s self-defeating really, covering things up, because if you do that and everyone else does that you are never going to learn. No one is ever going to make new discoveries. No one is ever going to find out everything. No one is ever going to play any new records. So by aiding people and showing people what you’ve got, it will help you as well. If you show one person your rare record or if you show ten people then ten people will show you, and you end up getting ten new pieces of information if you like. As opposed to none at all. It’s so much more sensible to share the knowledge. It really is and like I was saying before it’s the decent thing if you like. Like they say the artist didn’t make the music in the first place to give to one person so they could keep it a secret. It’s not really very respectful I don’t think.

Audience Member

With the settings that you are reissuing now what sort of run would you do with those? How many would you sell?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I would start off with a thousand now. A few years ago they were a lot more popular. I was doing two thousand. Now I just do one thousand and if I need to repress I’ve got an option to do that.

Audience Member

And of what proportion of those would you actually go into repress on?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Every three or four records I’ll put something out that’s blatantly commercial to pay for the ones which every three or four ones aren’t commercial. So, for instance, I deliberately did Marlena Shaw “California Soul” because I knew I would sell lots of copies. On the other hand soon after that I did some folky ones from Canada that I thought no one was going to buy this. I knew that the people that would buy it would be really, really grateful they had done it because they would be really into it. It’s just that they’re in the minority. The minority records are paid for by the majority ones. So I deliberately do some that I know I’m going to sell a lot of to pay for the ones that I know I’m not going to sell a lot of, but nevertheless still deserve to get released. I got the idea of that from Blue Note Records actually. They used to do the same. They would deliberately do something like “Sidewinder” or “Song for My Father” knowing they would sell loads and then use the money from that in order to pay for Ornette Coleman and the free jazz things that they knew wouldn’t sell hardly any, but they nevertheless thought deserved a place in the market. Because they were still valid pieces of music. It’s just that they weren’t going to sell those and those are copies.

Audience Member

I’ve just got one more as well. When you were going through mastering process, mastering to release it, how much or how often would you go through any kind of restoration sort of process off of the recording?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

If we take it from a tape it’s a lot easier than taking it from vinyl. If we take it from vinyl that can be difficult. Technology is pretty good now. Just program this to get rid of crackle. Program to get rid of hiss. Programs that get rid of pops. You can, if you’ve got a good engineer with a good ear, then you can get rid of all of that noise. A few years ago it was a lot more difficult, but it’s a lot better now. Once you got rid of that you can cue it to make it sound half-decent. There’s one issue of contention and that’s if you’ve got a record that originally sounded really bad because it was mastered badly or mixed badly, the question now is what do I do? Do I make it sound as true to the original as it was, even if it sounded rubbish, or do I try and change it now with the use of modern technology and make it sound how they would have liked it to sound back in those days? That’s an issue that I’m always trying to contend with. I never really get to grips with that. I never get a proper answer for myself. What would you do?

Audience Member

I don’t know.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Everyone’s got different ideas. I don’t know. You just, there’s no real answer for that, is there?

Audience Member

Official. Thank you.

Audience Member

Hi, thank you. I have a couple of questions. I heard a rumor when I first started collecting records just from thrift shops and stuff that if something says it’s an original release, but there is print through at the beginning, do you know what I mean? Does that mean is actually not the original release? It has been reprinted from the tape after it sat for a while.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

How do you mean print through?

Audience Member

Print through when you hear a tape has been wrapped the wrong way and a little bit of the original audio signal has been pressed onto the beginning of the vinyl. You know how sometimes you hear? Does that mean that that is not the original pressing?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Are you talking about singles or LPs?

Audience Member

Just anything that is pressed or recorded.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I think that happens just as a matter of the way the tape has been rolled up. Sometimes it doesn’t go through.

Audience Member

Doesn’t it take time for that to happen? Say something says it’s an original release or is that a second release of something.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Not necessarily because something could have been recorded and not actually mastered or cut until months after it was recorded. The tape could have sat on the shelf. I’ve come across records where it was recorded in ’72, but only released in ’76. That’s four years difference. In four years that may have had that print through time that you are talking about. On the other hand it could just be down to the conditions that the tape was stored in. I don’t think it really, I don’t think you can infer that something has been repressed just because you have that little bit of sound at the beginning on and off. Usually, things, especially singles, were never really repressed and if they did they would be done with a different color label or something or a different matrix number. You can look on the internet or look in various books. There is a Swiss book called Funk Lexicon written by a guy called Peter Wermelinger. You know that? He’s written actual matrix numbers around the labels so you can tell what the original pressing is of a lot of these records.

Audience Member

Thank you. Have you also started, do you go to record labels and stuff and go into the storage and go through their old tape and print?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Usually the people we are dealing with a lot of time are just individuals. They just happened to have been in a band 30 odd years ago and they’re usually private individuals today rather than record companies. Because the records we are interested in would be small labels. Independents that may have only had one or two releases. They aren’t really like record companies any more. Occasionally record companies will have archives of tapes, but they’re pretty rare. A lot of the singles we are interested in by their very nature of being obscure means that there’s only a handful of releases on the label. Because of that, they just never developed into fully-fledged record companies that have got a huge back catalog. If they did they would have been eaten up by someone like Universal by now.

Audience Member

Does the tape actually follow… Sorry I’m asking a lot of questions. Do you have a one-shot deal where the tape is going to fall apart by the end of it? Is it stressful?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, that’s happened. Where they snap or they stretch. They are very fragile. They haven’t been used in years and years. It’s actually tapes in the ’80s are the worse. The ’60s and ’70s ones are all right. It’s the tapes in the late ’70s or the ’80s that are worst for shedding. Having said that, there’s a process where you put them into an oven and you bake them in special places that do that. They bake the adhesive that sticks the actual metal particles to the actual base of the tape that comes apart. It bakes it so that it sticks it back together again. It can be pretty effective. You get a pretty good sound out of it in the end.

Audience Member

You have to cook reel-to-reel tape basically.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Not in your oven at home. There’s special places that do it. It can only be done once. Once it is done you have and you’ve done the transfer, it’s knackered. You can’t really use it again after that. Once it’s been done and digitized then it’s kept forever. It’s permanent.

Audience Member

Have you ever come across anything like a fake? Somebody’s just released something just recently, but they’ve tried to make out like it’s some really rare record?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

You mean like someone’s just released something now? Recorded now and pretended it was done years ago? I don’t think you’d be able to because you can just tell by the sound quality. The stuff that was recorded say 30 years ago was done on analog equipment with old microphones, old techniques. You can, I can tell a mile off if it’s been done now. I’ve heard so many old records. Occasionally I might get tricked a bit, but it would be pretty difficult I think now. At least, you’d have to record it in the, not just with the old equipment, but in the old manner, in the old techniques as well. It would have to be mastered and pressed in the old way. The sound you get now of doing things is totally different to the sound of how things recorded were done in the old days. A lot different.

Audience Member

Do you ever find that you hear a sample in a song that you know hasn’t been cleared and have you ever gotten into the legalities of that? Have people ever called you up and be like... Do you know what I mean? Because being with your incredible wealth of knowledge I’m sure you recognize samples a lot more than most people would.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Kind of. I mean, not that many people use samples now. They people that do are quite high profile and they’ll clear it. Like the Talib Kweli one we mentioned earlier. That was cleared through us. If he used that and sold a hell of a lot of records as a result of not having cleared it then I would’ve obviously done something about it, because it means that there’s people down the line that are being exploited for the music that released, that they’re not getting compensated for. If it’s just a local record or someone doing a mixtape or something that’s not really, in the great scheme of things, of huge significance, then it doesn’t really matter, does it? I don’t really think it’s an issue.

Audience Member

You’ve never sort of caught someone or anything like that?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

There’s some issues that we’ve had where people have bootlegged things that we’ve got an interest in the copyright in, and we have to call them up and tell them off. That sort of thing, yeah. There’s a few things where it’s gone a bit further than that. Generally, it’s in the past, those things. A lot of people that do a little bootlegs like that, they’re just small, fly-by operations or so, like 500 or 1,000 copies, you don’t know who did it. There’s nothing you can do about it. But people who try and sell thousands and thousands of copies and try and pass their reissues off as being legal, there’s not very many of them left, but they’re people that I’m not too keen on. I’ll try and do something if I can. Generally you can’t find out who they are, and if you can, there’s not a lot you can do about it anyway. I have actually had to do a few things like that, yeah.

You’ve got to protect your copyrights, it’s as simple as that. I’m sure that everyone out there who makes music, if you’d release something on a CD and someone else put out without your permission, you wouldn’t be too happy about it. Especially if they’re making a lot of money out of it. You wouldn’t be happy about it at all. Regardless of how old it is. Even in 20 years’ time. If you hear your music that you made now in 20 years time being used by someone else, sampled or reissued, and you hadn’t heard about it and someone just told you, and you hadn’t been told, notified, or paid, then you’re not really too happy.

Audience Member

What about with someone who’s bought a really rare record from you that’s then put it onto the internet or something like that, made it available for download.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I know a couple of sites have done that anyway, and again, you know, it depends on the scale. If it’s a small scale, or it’s not making a hell of a lot of money out of it, then it doesn’t really matter. It’s just for the fun. Some of the artists, for instance, we’ve met, have pointed out the fact that there’s a site called funk45.com, and on it is just a database with lots and lots of sound clips. Some of them have said, “Look, we don’t like the fact that our record is being represented on this, but we’re not getting paid for it and everything.” We’re like, it’s just a one minute clip, and the guy’s doing it... He actually has to pay to do it, he’s not making any money out of it. He’s just spreading to the world the fact that this record is out there, and that it exists. It’s not doing any harm, it’s just like a library. That’s one end of the spectrum, where I find it doing more good than harm. But on the other hand, if someone’s literally done it just to make money out of it, without having paid any copyright fees or anything like that, and doing it on quite a large scale, then that’s the other end of this thing. That’s where I don’t think it should be allowed.

Audience Member

Are you pretty near and dear to the exclusivity of having these records be rare? Would you ever put them on the internet as a means to make money?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

You mean me put them on the internet?

Audience Member

Yeah, as opposed to selling records. Add to a part on your shop, like I saw on your website you can add to cart or whatever, would you ever consider selling singles as MP3s that are records?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Some of them we have got the copyright where they’re available for download on some service, but I can’t remember which one it is. The idea really is to make sure that the music that we’ve spent a lot of time to uncover is basically represented properly in the media, whether it’s on a record, or on a CD, or on a download, and the appropriate royalties filter down to whoever owns the copyright. The money that we get from making these CDs and the 45s is contractually obliged to filter down as proper royalties, the people that actually made the music, or producers, or the record company. Whoever owns it in the first place, regardless of whether it’s released on the internet or on a CD, or on a 45, makes no difference of the format, really. As long as they get their royalties and what to do to be paid at the end of the day, that’s the important thing.

Audience Member

Actually, I would like to put a small command. You’ve mentioned that maybe it’s not that smart to pay a lot of money for one certain particular record, just because you like it and you have to maybe try to find another place where you can buy it for two dollars. But you know what, just five years ago, I met those British guys, Karminsky Experience, maybe you know them?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah.

Audience Member

They are collecting ’60s strange, weird sounds, this incredible strange music. We went to the store in Moscow, and they actually found five records that they really liked, but the store was quite expensive. They didn’t buy it, because they said, “Wow, you know, I think I wouldn’t buy it for 50 dollars,” or something. I think, why actually you cannot pay some kind of a price for the record you really like, and you know that the record is very rare, and it is very difficult to evaluate actually the sound, the cost of the sound. I believe that if you really like something, if you really need it, and actually the sound is very rare, there’s a certain quantity of copies, why can’t you? This, I think, is not smart. Just to forget about the record just because it costs more than you expected.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

That’s true. Maybe they didn’t have much money with them at the time or something. Everyone’s got a limit for a record. Some people specifically say, “Right, I will not pay more than ten pounds or twenty pounds, or a hundred pounds for any record, no matter how much you like.” It’s just a means of keeping control of their finances. Everyone’s got a limit on what they want to spend on something. They may really, really like that record, but, like I said, it may have been over that limit. Or they may have liked another record just as much that cost half the price. Everyone’s different, everyone’s got their own means of assessing the value of how much they want to pay for something, even if something’s below market value. Supposing that record was a hundred pounds, but everyone in the world sells it for five hundred, that means what they’re getting is a bargain, in essence. It’s like four hundred pounds cheaper than what the going rate is. But they may still not have bought it because of the fact that it’s above their limit. On the other hand, they might have bought it knowing they could sell it for five hundred. Everyone’s got their own reasons for wanting to buy stuff at a certain price or not.

Usually if people say they’ve got a limit, say a hundred pounds, whatever, to buy a record, then it doesn’t really mean much. You only have to offer them something that they really, really, really, really want for 103 pounds, and they’ll probably buy it for three pounds more than their limit. Then it just never stops, and it could be 110, it just goes on forever. Especially if it’s worth a lot more, and then they could buy it, justifying it by saying they could sell it for a lot more. Everyone says they’ve got limits, but I don’t believe it really, for that reason.

Audience Member

Last thing, I actually have to thank you for putting Marlena Shaw “California Soul” on your label because now all my friends are so into this tune. It’s incredible.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

It is a good one, that’s for sure.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Audience Member

Question, while you were researching the music of this time frame, did you discover anything about studio techniques or micing techniques?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, Malcolm, who works with me, he’s a drummer. He did one of the Red Bull workshops a couple of years ago. He’s actually built himself a studio using a lot of old gear from the ‘60s and the ‘50s. Whenever we go together to meet a lot of the guys, especially the producers, he asks a lot about the techniques. Sometimes he’s bought some equipment from them and found out about how to do it. Personally I don’t have too much of an interest in it, because I’m too busy doing other stuff as well. But he’s learned quite a bit about it. Especially about drum placement, mic placement for drums, because there’s definitely an art in it that is being lost I think over the years. Just because basically people don’t record bands so much in studios like they did in the past. People obviously don’t use tape these days like they used to, and a lot of the other equipment, whether it’s compressors or RDQs, or whatever. There’s so much stuff now that it’s all done on computers, so a lot of the techniques are being lost these days definitely, yeah. I wish I knew a bit more about it myself, but I never really need to know it myself, so I just sort of gone a bit over my head when they’re talking about it together.

Audience Member

With this whole resurgence with Quantic and stuff like that now, coming out with that sort of ... Trying to trace back that sort of sound, do you think it’s renewed interest in 7”s again? I know a lot of friends who maybe in the last two to four years started going back to seven inches because they sort of learned to discover true music by Quantic and Tru Thoughts, stuff like that.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I think there is, to a certain extent. A lot of people maybe have heard a seven inch for the first time, or an old funk single for the first time, and they’re captivated by... Because it is a different sound. You don’t get the dynamics that you get on a digital sound, or a CD. To some people, they may not like it as much. Other people, they’re like, “Wow, I’ve never heard anything like that before,” it sounds really fresh to their ears. They’re really keen on it and they’ll start looking into trying to get that sort of sound and trying to record like that now. I think that a lot of the benefits of that sound have been lost over the years. I don’t know, in a lot of ways it sounds quite authentic and...

Audience Member

Nostalgic?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Nostalgic, in a way. It’s only nostalgic if you’ve heard it before. If you never heard it before, then you’ve got nothing to compare it to. It just sounds new in a way, because a lot of people now they’ve only heard music that’s been done digitally or through a computer. If you’re hearing an analog recording for the very first time, hearing it on vinyl, then it sounds totally different to you, and it does sound fresh, it does sound new. Even though it is being done before, it’s been done for years and years before. It just hasn’t been done in a modern context. It’s the old, from the ’60s, ’70s, being played now and coming into for now.

Audience Member

I wonder how it for you, when you listen to all of this at home, the sound quality of all of this and then when you switch on radio and you hear all this digital stuff, how does it feel? For your ears maybe?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

A lot of it sounds really, really good, but it doesn’t get inside me. A lot of it, I think... I listened ... A friend of mine, he’s put this new system in his car. The bass is so deep, it’s like under the ground. The treble is, it sounds awesome. But it doesn’t... For my ears, it doesn’t get inside my bones. I don’t feel it as much. I just think, “That’s technically pretty good.” But I don’t feel it in terms of I would do normal music, where I try and imagine the band playing. I can’t imagine a drummer playing a kick drum or a bass player playing the bass so low that it’s like that. It doesn’t seem real to me. For me personally to appreciate music properly, I’ve got to imagine it being real, played by people. That’s just my personal viewpoint. The music that I really like and enjoy, and feel passionate about, is the human touch of music like that. Music that is artificially created, if you like, I just don’t... It sounds nice and everything, but I just don’t feel it.

Audience Member

It’s obviously very important for you to give back to the artists, their dues and everything. Has there ever been a situation where you may have sort of reopened some old wound or something like that? For example, some artist is being ripped off by their label, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, something like that, and when you’ve come along and re-released their stuff, and the label owner says, “Hey, I want my cut of that,” or whatever?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, it can be tricky sometimes, because on some occasions you do open up a can of worms, where you’re talking to someone who says, “Oh, I’m the copyright owner,” and, “Pay me the money.” Then you talk to the guitarist, and they say, “Oh no, it was me,” and you talk to the drummer and they say, “No, it was me.” They all start arguing and everything. On other occasions, for instance the record we played earlier, the Universals, the “New Generation” one, what happened with them is they saved up the money together, they made the records, and the records got sent from the distributor to the stores, but somewhere along the line they got lost. The records never actually turned up, so they spent all this money for nothing. They just disappeared somewhere. They don’t even know if they were properly pressed. That’s a band that didn’t have a hell of a lot of money to start off with and wasn’t really commercially successful, and they put all their money into this venture for nothing. They, in effect, got completely stitched up and ripped off by whoever was making their records for them. They’re pretty tough for 30 years on to actually get released again properly. Like I was saying earlier as well, some people expect that they are thinking I’m trying to get them to pay me to be able to have record put on a CD. They just appreciate to have had it put out in the first place.

Audience Member

Is that maybe indicative of more of a Wild West attitude back in the day?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Yeah, it was pretty bad back in the day. There was just no rules back in those days. The music business, it really was a tricky industry to be in. There’s a lot of sharks out there. I mean, it’s still bad now, obviously, but in those days there were a lot less collection societies, and there’s a lot less regulation going on. It was normal to pay the DJ backhanded to play your record on the radio. You had to use your wit and imagination, hustling skill, whatever, to get your record out there. Or to get pressed in the first place. It’s a tricky business. Just like it is now, to get your record heard as opposed to someone else’s. A lot of hustling going on.

Audience Member

Sorry I’m hogging the mic, sorry people. Just another question, have any of the artists that you’ve re-released... I know you said you found them in nursing homes and stuff like that, but has it maybe reignited an opportunity for them to tour or to come out of retirement or something like that?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I wish I could. I’ve tried to organize some things like that, there’s one band it brings to mind is the Soul Tornadoes. They were based in Akron, in Ohio, it was two brothers. One played bass, the other played organ. We said, “Look, why don’t you get together? We’ll bring you over to England and record.” I paid for some of them. One of the other guys is in California. I paid them to get together, to the hurdles and everything, but the main problem is it’s all about money. This, at the end of the day, is minority music. It’s not going to sell shitloads of copies, they’re not going to make millions of pounds doing it. To be able to get a band and afford for them to fly all the way to the UK, and get gigs there to make it cost effective, it’s not easy at all. I’ve tried to do it, but the sums don’t really add up, unfortunately. You can get maybe one person over, say a singer, but even then you’re only going to get one or two gigs. My forte is not promoting, that’s another cat and the fish altogether. I do enough as it is. To be able to promote concerts and bands and gigs and what have you, is something else entirely. So much as I’d like to get people over, a whole band or even not a band but just a singer, is quite difficult thing to do. The best I’ve been able to do is basically pass on the details of some of these people, to Adrian Gibson at the Jazz Café, because he’s one of the main people interested in doing this sort of thing and saying, “Look, if you want to get so and so over, here’s the number, give them a call and get them to come over.”

This November we’re getting Robert Moore, who’s a soul singer from Florida, he’s coming over to perform. To help pay for it, Adrian’s getting him to record with Speedometer, to actually put a single out as well, and trying to get him two gigs instead of just one. As much as the intentions are, it’s not easy, especially, you know, mostly because of the plane flights and everything, and the expense involved. Otherwise, I’d love to get more people over. Some people it has worked really well, like Marlena Shaw, she comes over regularly now. People like Spanky Wilson, that Quantic’s getting involved with. Gwen McCrae, she comes over quite a lot. So some of them do get quite a good reputation and are able to come to the UK and do a little mini-tour, or go on Europe. Like I said, it’s not something that I’ve got the time really to get involved with.

Audience Member

I’m curious to know, over the past number of years we’ve had quite a few of the mess of old jazz labels like Impulse! and Blue Note and Verve and the like, open up their back catalog for remixes and stuff. Just wondering how you are with that as a concept or are you happy to let it go, or is it sort of sacrilege?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

I haven’t actually heard any of them, so I would really... I don’t really know. If it’s anything to do with keeping the music alive, then I’m all for it. Just because the records are made 20 or 30 or 40 years ago doesn’t mean to say that they should be overlooked. If you haven’t heard it before, then it’s new, as far as I’m concerned. Whether it was recorded yesterday or 50 years ago. A lot of people complain about old music, they say, “It doesn’t sound new, it doesn’t sound modern or anything,” but if you haven’t heard it then you can’t really say that, because it’s not old music, is it? It still would be new to your ears. If it does need a modern touch to be able to get it to people’s ears, then I think it’s a good thing in the sense that it’ll certainly make people realize that there is old music out there, even if it has been modernized. It may turn people on to looking back into the past and seeing what other stuff has been back then and appreciating it for what it is as well. Especially if you hear them both side by side.

Audience Member

Have you had any situations where the material that you put out on Jazzman has come up with master tapes that people have been interested in stepping up to that?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Quantic did a remix, the very first song we played earlier, the “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Quantic did a remix of that. That’s the only thing we’ve done in that sense. Some people have asked us to do things like that. Generally I don’t really have the time to follow it through, quite honestly. There’s so many things going on, and these projects where people say, “Can I remix this?” Or what have you, is not really top of my agenda. I’ve just got too much other work to do to keep putting new things out, rather than remixing old things and I’d have to think of a whole new format and label to put it on and what have you. If they want to do it, then they can do it, but I’m not really... I don’t really have the time to go in that direction myself.

Audience Member

Cheers.

Audience Member

I imagine you’ve been involved with some pretty serious record trades over the years. Have you got any good stories?

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Record trades? Well, trades by their nature, they’re not really... There’s some good record buying stories, where you find hordes of records and they’re going really cheap because the guy doesn’t know what they are or something. But trades, most people know what they are in the sense that if you’re trading records, you pretty much know what you’re doing. You’re not going to trade a really rare record for something that’s rubbish, and vice versa. Probably the best record find ever was a master tape of Mickey & the Soul Generation, which we found in Texas. No one even knew it existed, and got pulled out and it said “complete album” on there. That was just one of those things that makes you sink to your knees and your heart start pumping, because it’s like I found a whole album by this legendary band that no one knew existed. That was a pretty good find, for digging. That’s amazing when that sort of thing happens.

Buying records and what have you, I don’t know. I’ve been ripped off, just like everyone else has been, but for every time I’ve been ripped off, I’ve had a good result myself by finding stuff, something worth a lot of money that the guy only wants five dollars for or something, too. When it comes to the ethics of that, like I was saying earlier, if the artist is selling his own records, you can’t pay them cheap money for stuff, you have to give them proper price. The way to do it is if the guy is actually in the business of selling records, like if he’s in a store or if he’s a dealer and he wants five dollars for a record that you know is worth a hundred dollars, then there’s nothing wrong with that as far as I’m concerned. That’s his business to know. But an artist, it’s not his business to know the value of his records. Most people are pretty clued up anyway, the internet has changed it. The internets and pop cycle of eBay have sort of leveled the prices up for a lot of records.

Benji B

OK, Gerald ‘Jazzman’ thank you very much.

Gerald ‘Jazzman’ Short

Thank you.