Label Guide: 77 Records

77 Records was a British record label born out of Doug Dobell's famous jazz record shop in London.

Doug Dobell took over his father's old bookshop on 77 Charing Cross Road in 1946 and started selling 78rpm records additionally to books. From the 1950s on, his Dobell's Jazz Record Shop turned into the UK's prime destination for imported jazz records, and over the years Dobell expanded his offerings into blues, folk and gospel music. In the 1960s and 1970s the shop became legendary with both regular customers and musicians from both sides of the Atlantic, who would stop by Dobell's every time they were in London.

The record label was born in 1957, obviously named after the shop's address, and Dobell recorded many British folk and jazz musicians for his 77 Records and its subsidiary Folklore, including Bruce Turner, Tubby Hayes, Dick Morrissey and Alexis Korner, but also the young Bob Dylan, who appeared on a 1963 Folklore album under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt.

77 Records also distributed various US labels, but the releases that are worth watching out for are its own productions. The label was active until the late 1970s, and the record shop was closed in 1992, five years after Doug Dobell's death.