Collections: Norman Jay

A life-long love of music...

Norman Jay has always had an incredible love of music. There’s a clear thirst for new sounds in those sets, a near catholic taste for soulful expression, but it’s the love, the total enthusiasm that keeps fans coming back time after time. Little wonder he names his soundsystem Good Times.

Casting his eyes and ears back over his collection, Norman Jay quickly becomes more than a little misty-eyed. “Seriously, all of those tunes remind me of very happy times. I was fortunate that I came from a stable family background, my family were happy. Even though we had no money we had a record collection – a record player and some records. And that meant an awful lot.”

Surrounded by music, the young Norman Jay quickly translated his youthful savings into 45s. Snapping up ska, early reggae and Blue Beat singles, the aspiring selector quickly developed a love for anything soulful – particularly the sounds of black America. “If I could pick one of these it would be 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' by Otis Redding. I don't remember it first time round. I think my dad said he did, because it was re-issued after his death on Atlantic and it became massive. But I can always remember my dad playing that record and it was a huge family favourite – at Christmas, weddings, christenings… all of those records would come out.”

Following the older kids Norman soon become immersed in club culture, in the funky sounds of James Brown the social messages he carried within his songs. “All soul, all relationships,” he states. “Because I was an early teenager then, obviously I was a bit more socially aware and I discovered records like James Brown, and all the social commentary records.”

“Those were, for the first time, I can honestly say that aside from listening to the melody and liking the production, that I seriously listened to the lyrics and the words. And basically those records were talking to me, personally. Especially ‘Backstabbers’ by The O'Jays and The Detroit Spinners with ‘Ghetto Child’. I was definitely a ghetto child. Those were seminal. At that time I didn't realise all those records emanated from a couple of studios in Philadelphia, that they were the Sound of Philadelphia which I grew to love and seriously collect. But those records back at that time made a huge impression on me.”

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Seriously, all of those tunes remind me of very happy times…

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A teenager in the mid-70s, Norman Jay gravitated towards the jazz-funk scene and was swept up in the lavish orchestrations of the 12 inch revolution. Then a new format, the expansive grooves of that black wax allowed composers to indulge themselves in ambitious new ideas, resulting in the spawning of entire genres. “I'm of that generation when the first 12"s landed – and obviously, I became an obsessive with the 12"s,” he laughs. “I was already confirmed an obsessive singles buyer, but in the summer of ‘76 when the first 12"s came – especially in the dance world – I was all over them like a rash. Even though I couldn't afford them.”

“I was of that age, that target audience. I lived in discos, in parties and nightclubs. But I still bought my soul, funnily enough. I still bought my soul. It would have been around that time that I bought my first jazz-funk LP. Which was from Grover Washington, 'Mr Magic'. I bought a few, then. It was a gateway album to a lot of jazz-funk artists, who at that time were pretty underground. I discovered Bob James, the ‘Nautilus’ album. I discovered Donald Byrd.”

Living for the moment, this young club kid refused to look backwards, instead continually searching out the latest sound, the newest style. “It's fantastic because strangely – it seems strange now – but then, I was only looking forward,” he recalls. “Following the true modernist ideals. I was only interested in new music, never really bought anything old or retrospective.”

The opening of the Record & Tape Exchange chain, though, changed this. Norman Jay began spending hours scanning the racks, seeking out unheard cuts to sit alongside the latest imports. “The rock, hippy guys who worked there sold all the rock stuff upstairs, and black music was relegated to the cellar,” he says. “They then let me go down there and all the albums were like a pound, £1.50. So that’s when my album collection began in earnest, I began buying all my albums for a quid – cut outs – getting home, and being the anorak I was at that time spent all day in my bedroom listening to music.”

“It was like, wow! The discovery was absolutely amazing! I was also a fan of album cover art, and bought strange albums purely on the back of liking the cover and that's how I discovered some of the rock acts that I liked, and whose albums I owned. Rock and pop.”

“I discovered music by Joe Cocker,” Norman recalls. “I was always a Dusty Springfield fan but I bought tonnes of Dusty's back catalogue. I loved the Small Faces. The band at the time that I loved – and still play it to this day – was the Spencer Davis Group. Loved Spencer Davis. Through liking Spencer was how I discovered Paul Weller's music, because Paul sounded to me like a modern Stevie Winwood. Which I liked.”

“But in those days I had to keep that as a very dark secret,” he adds. “Where I went there was only black music played but I liked other stuff as well, including The Clash. It was only when I became more confident as a DJ and started running my own events in the mid to late 80s that I threw caution to the wind, broke all of those rules and became probably the first black guy to play those records with impunity.”

Already a well-known club favourite, Norman Jay took to running his own events in abandoned warehouse spaces. Events such as Shake ‘N’ Fingerpop are legendary, spanning genres in a manner that could only be possible with an enormous – and enormously varied – record collection.

“Warehouse parties,” he smiles. “It was my event and that gave me the freedom. The crowds that I had then really appreciated that and demanded more of it. There was no musical barriers. And that's why I became so popular. I'd play stuff like Lou Reed, ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, next to Brass Construction next to an Acid House record straight out of Chicago.”

Even though he no longer DJs on vinyl Norman Jay remains a habitual crate digger, yet he refuses to get carried away with his purchases. “I'm a pseudo-completist because even though I had access to getting every catalogue number of records of labels that I collected, I said to myself: only get the ones that you like. Don't get the ones that you don't like and pretend that you like them. Don't get it just to complete it. I have most James Brown albums but I don't have every album because I don't like every album. I'm like that with a lot of acts. I have most of the ones that I would consider good. A few marginals. But the ones I listened to and thought were crap I took back and exchanged for music that I really did love. So my music was always organic and always pruned.”

Which of course leads us to the age-old question: just how many records does Norman Jay own?

“I've got virtually every record I've ever bought since 1967 so you do the maths!” he chuckles. “I've always swerved the question about how many you've got because I've got no idea! And I'm certainly not going to go back and start counting them now. Suffice to say, a lot! But not as many as people think. I've probably got less than 20,000 records. For me, it was always the quality of the stuff. I've got DJ pals and serious record collector pals whose collection simply dwarfs mine. But, you'd be hard pressed to find anything you'd want!”

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Norman Jay's new compilation 'Good Times – Skank & Boogie' is out now on Sunday Best.

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