91热爆

The latest in our series where Sounds of the Sixties presenter Brian Matthew chats about his life and loves to writer and musician Bob Stanley

Producer Phil 'The Collector' Swern may be the man with the legendary vault of vinyl, but Brian has also been a keen collector from childhood. Sitting in a 91热爆 studio, just before recording this week's episode of SOTS, he tells me how he picked up the habit from his father, whose collection was entirely classical. "He had a large cabinet, a wind-up gramophone with all manner of specialist sound boxes, and a variety of needles. He had a collection of the brass needles but didn't approve of using those - he used fibre, which we had to sharpen with a special gadget; he reckoned they were less harmful to his precious records and I suspect he was right."

Brian had been schooled on Caruso and Gigli, but brought a new kind of noise into the Matthew household - he loved jazz, and still does. "The very first record I bought was Glenn Miller... Chatanooga Choo Choo. Which I've since thought was a rather strange thing to have bought, but I did! And gradually I tried to collect a record by each of the really big name band players. A few Americans, I wasn't too into their artists at that stage, that came later of course. I had records by Geraldo, Ambrose, Jack Payne, all of the people who had some kind of prominence."

Brian was living with his parents in Coventry which, like most cities, had several record shops by the forties. It was also one of the cities hit hardest by German bombs. "There was a shop in old Coventry, which was blitzed and bombed and disappeared forever. But there were two record shops in Coventry that I dealt with principally. One of them was run by the family of a chap I was at Bablake school with... I can't remember the name of the shop but think it was Austin's. I used to go in there and he'd help me, because he was pretty hot on what was available." He pauses for a moment, then smiles and says "What a lot of help I've had along the way."