Ray Smith

Ray Smith, who died on April 17 aged 76, was the proprietor of Ray’s Jazz Shop, a gathering place for the London jazz world during the 1980s and 1990s. 

To stroll through Soho in those years, sporting the shop’s carrier bag with its distinctive black cat logo, was to feel like one of the elect. Georgie Fame wrote and recorded a song, Vinyl, in celebration of the place, and it was the first port of call for Slim Gaillard, the granddaddy of hip, when he landed in England.

Raymond Smith was born in Ealing on September 9 1934. From the mid-1950s he was a fixture of what would nowadays be called the “alternative” arts scene. He worked at Collett’s International Bookshop, which had outgrown various premises in Charing Cross Road before settling in New Oxford Street, selling books, jazz and folk records (the latter, Ray recalled, being “mainly Russian 78s”).

In 1976 the jazz and folk shops were hived off into curious, back-to-back premises where Shaftesbury Avenue and Monmouth Street converge, jazz facing the former and folk the latter. Collett’s gave up selling records in 1983 and Ray Smith bought the jazz business.

Among them, Smith and his managers (Matthew Wright, followed by Glyn Callingham) possessed a formidable store of expertise in an art notorious for the pedantry of its followers; but they managed to avoid the condescending attitude which marked some of their competitors. One product of their combined know-how was a special box, labelled Hens’ Teeth, containing rarities of great price, which sat on the counter under close surveillance.

Away from the shop, Ray Smith was a very respectable, semi-professional drummer. In the Fifties and Sixties he was a member of the band led by Humphrey Lyttelton’s former clarinettist, Wally Fawkes, although his own tastes tended towards more modern styles of jazz.

He enjoyed a long friendship with the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. “Charlie used to come in the shop when he was 16 or 17 and buy records,” he recalled in an interview. “Then he’d trade them back again to buy bits for his drum kit.” Smith even lent Watts his own kit on occasion. There is a brief clip on You Tube of them in the shop celebrating Ray’s 40 years in the jazz business.
Ray Smith’s other passion was for cricket. He was a member of The Ravers, a side originally composed entirely of jazz people, although it now embraces showbusiness in general. He was a good enough spin bowler to be asked on several occasions to show some tricks of the trade to budding cricketers at Lord’s.
In 2002 an enormous increase in the rent at 180 Shaftesbury Avenue, together with a loss of trade to internet sales, forced him to close the shop. He sold the business to Foyle’s, the bookshop, where “Ray’s Jazz at Foyle’s” now occupies space on the third floor. It is no criticism of Foyle’s to note that it is not the same thing at all.
There are now no specialist jazz shops in central London, where there were once half a dozen. At their height they served as informal colleges of jazz appreciation, where lifelong friendships were formed, based on a love of the music. For some reason, they all had the same smell, redolent of dust, stale tobacco, and the interior of a very old and well-used trumpet case.
Ray Smith is survived by his wife, Wendy. There were no children.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8467378/Ray-Smith.html