Over the past 10 months I have had the pleasure to work with Gerald Short, also known as Jazzman Gerald, so it only seemed fit to introduce him and the label he runs, Jazzman Records, to you all. I am aware of the fact that some readers and listeners have raised the concern that my views about him are biased, after all, he is the reason that I am able to earn my daily bread. But I can assure you that my views are completely genuine, and contrary to what some might assume, one of the reasons why I got my job in the first place was because I don’t suck up to him and I tell him my honest view about everything, even if that means that we sometimes end up disagreeing on certain things.

Jazzman Gerald has been collecting music and records for about 30 years and it is rumoured that he has one of the best record collections in the world. I guess, if you have people like Madlib, J Rocc and Cut Chemist coming around to check out and sample the records you got, and you have high profile DJ’s such as Gilles Peterson amongst your customers, it is only fair to say that you must be doing something right…

Gerald started up Jazzman Records in a market stall in Camden in the early 90′s, selling rare and obscure vinyl, and has since then released over 200 releases on LP, CD, 12″ and 7″ - a number that excludes his subsidiary label releases on Soul 7, Funk 45, Jukebox Jam, Popcorn, Fryers and Soul Spectrum.

To me, he is one of the hardest working people in the music industry and that goes beyond just looking at the number of releases he has been putting out for the past 10 odd years. He puts his heart and soul into every release that he does and he never releases anything that he doesn’t have the rights to - something I very much respect him for.

I met him for the first time when I went for a casual job interview for my current job and one of the key things that struck me about him was that he is very honest and fair. He was telling me stories about how he had traveled to the US in order to find these old musicians who’s records and music he wanted to reissue, how he had spent months, sometimes years, trying to track them down, and how good it felt being able to not only share their amazing music with a broader audience, but also to finally make sure that they got the recognition they deserved and paid for the amazing music they had once made.

We were sitting in the office the other day discussing the radio show we had made for Laid Back when Gerald said: “I’m in the happiness business Orsi. My job is to make people happy with the music I release” which I think pretty much sums it all up. A LOT of work goes into these reissues - blood, sweat and tears, and Gerald is always striving to outdo himself by trying to make the next release better than the previous.

As you will hear on the radio show, it is not about scamming artists or customers and making big profits doing these releases and reissues. It is about finding excellent music, some that might be very rare and expensive, and making it available and accessible to a broad audience of people who might not otherwise be able to listen or buy those kind of records.

Apart from obviously being able to share some of the gems Gerald has in his record collection, my main aim of the show was to be able to share his story with you and to shed some light on issues that certain people might have been criticising him for. I had a great time recording it with him (Thanks Gerald!!) and I love the music he pulled out exclusively for this show, so I can only hope that you will enjoy it just as much as I did.

Orsii