Hi Marc, the visit to General's was a real treat, including meeting you and the others. Thanks to Ked for getting me out there that day. The glory days of used vinyl shopping for classical records unfortunately has passed in London and the UK. Until Covid, I made annual trips to London, staying for a few weeks of wonderful classical music performances almost every evening, and serious shopping for records in the day time. There were quite a few dealers with extensive lists, including some who were based in London. I would visit them and we would talk about records and I learned a lot about the details of pressings, etc. For those outside of London, I would have them ship me records I purchased to my London hotel or, later, my London timeshare. There were also several brick and mortar stores like Harold Moores in London, and doing annual trips, meant there was a lot of turn over in inventory. That meant it took two or three multihour visits to go through all the inventory. The Classical Music Exchange in Nottinghill Gate was a complete separate store with three levels of records (the basement was where the 50p records were). I would end up with three suitcases full of records (each 30 kilos! - thanks to Virgin frequent flyer miles) each visit.
I started buying from Sophia Singer many years ago. She was too far from London for me to visit. However, when I was writing my book on Decca Records, I got to interview and become friends with several of the old time Decca engineers, including Mike Mailes, who had retired within a maybe twenty miles of Sophia, near Derby. We went up north to visit York in 2014 or 2015 and came back by way of Derby to visit Mike and his wife and present him with a copy of the Decca book. Mike then drove us to Sophia's home where I introduced Mike to her. Sophia gifted me with a few rehearsal tapes that she had gotten from the sisters of Chris Raeburn, one of the Decca producers, whose record collection Sophia was handling after his death. I believe Mike had Sophia sell some of his records.
I started buying from Sophia Singer many years ago. She was too far from London for me to visit. However, when I was writing my book on Decca Records, I got to interview and become friends with several of the old time Decca engineers, including Mike Mailes, who had retired within a maybe twenty miles of Sophia, near Derby. We went up north to visit York in 2014 or 2015 and came back by way of Derby to visit Mike and his wife and present him with a copy of the Decca book. Mike then drove us to Sophia's home where I introduced Mike to her. Sophia gifted me with a few rehearsal tapes that she had gotten from the sisters of Chris Raeburn, one of the Decca producers, whose record collection Sophia was handling after his death. I believe Mike had Sophia sell some of his records.
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