Owner of Ray's Jazz Shop, a mecca for record collectors
At a time when the jazz avant garde of the 1960s was further dividing the eternally factional and quarrelsome world of British jazz, Ray Smith became the source from whom London's more adventurous enthusiasts acquired recordings whose limited availability only enhanced their appeal. It was in the basement of Collet's Record Shop at 70 New Oxford Street that Ray, who has died of cancer aged 76, began to dispense the imported albums of Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Cecil Taylor and other prophets of a movement then known as the "new thing", on such covetable independent US labels as ESP-Disk and Candid.
Ray was a natural hipster and, like all great record-shop managers, was sometimes intimidating and seldom allowed his time to be wasted, but successive generations benefited from his love and broad knowledge of the entire history of jazz. One of his slogans, in a magazine advertisement, trumpeted that inclusivity by claiming that the shop's stock ranged "from George Lewis to George Lewis" ? in other words, from a New Orleans clarinettist of the most traditional kind to a highly experimental New York trombonist and composer of the same name.
In 1975, Collet's moved to Shaftesbury Avenue, where Smith eventually took over the lease and the stock, rechristening the premises Ray's Jazz Shop. In 2002 he retired after selling the business to Foyles, who closed the shop but transferred the stock, and the name, to a department of their bookshop in Charing Cross Road.
Ray was born in the west London suburb of Ealing and had a difficult childhood. His father served in the army during the second world war and thereafter played no part in the family's life, leaving his wife to bring up their son. Ray was sent to board at Allhallows school near Lyme Regis in Dorset, where he developed a love of jazz and cricket. His asthma made it difficult to participate in sport, and he was bullied as a result, but he turned out to have a gift for spinning a cricket ball. Returning from his holidays at home, he would carry with him recordings by Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie.
In 1956, aged 21, he went to work for Collet's, the well-known leftwing bookseller. Their record shop on New Oxford Street contained a folk and blues department on the ground floor, run by Gill Cook and Hans Fried, with Ray selling jazz records from a basement which also contained his own drum kit and occasionally became the venue for impromptu sessions.
As an increasingly familiar face on the Soho jazz and art scene, he played with Wally Fawkes's Troglodytes and other bands, shared a flat on Monmouth Street with the saxophonist Bobby Wellins, and became friendly with the artist Peter Blake. Ray can be seen dancing the Twist in Ken Russell's 1962 TV pop-art documentary, Pop Goes the Easel, which examined the work and the world of Blake, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier.
The drummer Charlie Watts, a future member of the Rolling Stones and a fellow jazz fan, was another friend. When the embryonic Stones supported the Dave Hunt Blues Band, which featured Ray on drums, Watts borrowed Smith's kit and made a hole in the snare drum head.
Many years later, when Watts was invited to present an hour of music on the Jazz FM radio station, he took Ray along to share the microphone. Although Ray gave up playing in the 60s, the drums remained in the basement and made the move to Shaftesbury Avenue.
After the relocation, the business was given an unexpected boost when Ray arranged to sell a large cache of valuable unplayed bebop 78s on the Savoy and Dee Gee labels (the latter named after and owned by Gillespie) discovered in a New Jersey warehouse by the bandleader Chris Barber. Ray's assistants, Bob Glass and Matthew Wright, helped sort and sell them, with the aid of newspaper and television publicity. Mint copies of Charlie Parker's classic Parker's Mood were among the treasures which found their way into the hands of grateful collectors.
Cricket and football were frequent topics of conversation in the shop. Ray played for many years in the colours of the Ravers, a superficially louche but deadly serious cricket team consisting of jazz musicians, including Fawkes, Mick Mulligan, Bruce Turner and Frank Parr, and other figures from their world, such as the agent Jim Godbolt and the Melody Maker journalist Bob Dawbarn. A member of Middlesex cricket club, Ray was a frequent visitor to Lord's and was once asked to provide specialist advice to the county's young spinners. After supporting Brentford, his local football team, during childhood, he switched his allegiance to Chelsea in later years.
When Collet's announced a plan to move the shop into their main branch, Ray decided to buy the jazz half and become its proprietor. Once Cook and the folk department had made their exit, Ray and his assistants spent a weekend knocking down the interior wall dividing the genres, repositioned the counter and were open for business under the new name on the Monday morning.
Wright took on the manager's role, succeeded by Glyn Callingham and Paul Pace, while Mike Gavin came in to run a blues and roots section in the basement. Among the browser bins was a category of LPs under the title, invented by Ray, of "Hen's Teeth": the rarest of the rare, from Dick Twardzik on the Pacific Jazz label to Joe Harriott on Jazzland.
For all their inestimable cultural value, however, specialist record shops of all kinds are the most marginal of businesses, and by 2002 Ray had no desire to accept yet another rent increase. The business changed owners, and he retired to watch Test cricket from around the world on a large TV screen in his Camden Town flat.
In 1969 he married the artist Wendy Jones, who ? as Wendy Smith ? illustrated a successful series of children's books by Margaret Mahy. They separated in later years, but remained friends, and Wendy was among those in attendance during his final weeks in hospital.
? Ray Smith, record-shop owner, born 9 September 1934; died 17 April 2011
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