South London Shellac

My friend Richard Sanderson (Hither Green-based musician) shared his fine collection of 1930s records with me last week, with their sleeves historical documents of South London record shops in that era.





The Musical Box (proprietor G.H. Papworth) was at 254 High Street, Lewisham

Wallace was at 111 & 113 New Cross Road ('opposite free library')

L.R. Robin was at 96 and 98 East Street, Walworth.

Saunders & Fortescue had branches at 251 Rye Lane, Peckham and 135 High Street, Lewisham. They sold bicycles and prams as well as records.

Richard plays his records on this rather fine wind up gramophone.

He was using it as part of a sound performance at the 10th December lanch party for  issue no.4 of the surrealist journal Patricide, held at Massive Little World. This is in one of the railway arches behind the Deptford Project railway carriage cafe.

The event included 'Richard Sanderson with an amplified toothbrush and wind-up gramophone, poetry by Daniel Lehan and Jazz Poetry accompanied by improvised trumpet, bass and drums'. It was concluded by Sonic Egg, which featured an egg being boiled to an improvised soundtrack including a man playing guitar with a mannequin's foot. Or as Patricide reported it 'the Elite were soft boiled in egg form before being dashed against a wall'.



(by the way Grace Pailthorpe, later a British Surrealist painter, worked in New Cross during the First World War, as previously discussed at Transpontine).