After a life studying jazz, Jim Godbolt has channelled his knowledge into a detailed volume, writes Joel Taylor

WHEN Jim Godbolt suggested to a specialist record label he put together a CD box set incorporating the best of more than 30 years of British jazz to coincide with the republishing of his seminal History of Jazz in Britain 1919-1950, it seems as though he was taken a bit by surprise when they agreed.
Sitting in his fourth floor flat in Lissenden Gardens, Dartmouth Park, where he has lived for 30 years, Jim, now 82, rubs his forehead, seemingly remembering the sleepless nights that he must have gone through as he tried to whittle down thousands of recordings to just 100 tracks.
“The producer came to me and said he needed 100 tracks, 12,000 words and 20 photos for the accompanying booklet,” he says.
And old collaborator Bob Glass, formally of the Ray’s Jazz shop in Shaftesbury Avenue, joined him to go through things and he employed a Polish typist to work his “infernal” computer.
He says: “We used CDs, LPs, EPs, 78s, catalogues books – it was enjoyable but manic. I have got sight problems and Bob has got hearing problems, so between us there was a bit of confusion.”
Jim, who has edited the in-house magazine of Ronnie Scott’s for 25 years, stresses that neither the book nor the box set are about British jazz per se, but about jazz in Britain.
For more than 60 years Jim has been submersed by music, working as a journalist, agent and manager, not just for jazz musicians but also for 1960s’ groups like The Swinging Blue Jeans.
Born in 1922 in Wandsworth he grew up with music around him but it was not until his late teens that he became hooked on jazz.
After World War II, Jim became an agent for the likes of Mick Mulligan and George Melly and led the revival of trad jazz, and it was the 100 Club, Oxford Street, which became the home for this revival. A major movement competing against the revival of Dixieland was new jazz, celebrated by the emergence of the Soho club set up by saxophonist Ronnie Scott, where the likes of Duke Ellington were appearing. But such was Jim’s association with trad, it seemed unlikely he would be accepted into the fold at Ronnie’s.
Indeed, when Jim went to see manager Pete King in 1979, with the suggestion of setting up an in-house magazine, Jim got short shrift. He said: “I went up to him and suggested that Ronnie Scott’s should have its own magazine, and he said ‘f*** off’. I didn’t eff off and I have been doing the Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s (Jars) magazine now for 25 years.”
For much of that time Jim’s friend clarinettist Wally Fawkes has supplied cartoons to Jars and the pair seem to have been working together for more than 50 years.
He has a photograph of a cricket team which includes himself and Wally and Ray Smith, who later ran Ray’s Jazz, in Shaftesbury Avenue.
He says: “This was the Ravers, the only jazz cricket team in the world. Our ground was Paddington Recreation Ground.
“My highest score was 45, but I was a pretty good slip catcher. There was a lot of laughter and we had a drunken time.”
The 150th copy of Jars which features an articles about the relationship between jazz and cricket. It says: “Both require a strong sense of rhythm, timing, concentration, improvisation, solo and teamwork”.
So, will Jim be following up the work with another box set of CDs to accompany a re-issue of his book covering 1950-1970? Looking slightly distressed at the prospect he nods: “A successor has already been mooted.”

• The box set was released by Proper Records in April, and the book is republished by Northway Press in May.