All that jazz and this man with vinyl records

He shouts at the photographer for coming too close to his music player which has a diamond stylus to play his rare and old vinyl records. Sunil Sampat has kept over 9,000 vinyls records of Jazz music carefully wrapped in paper and plastic along with autographs of the artistes that have featured in the record. The International Jazz Day on April 30 doesn't really matter to him as everyday is a jazz day for him.

Born in 1942, Sampat grew up in Nagpur where he heard jazz for the first time at a music store. He was 10 when he bought his first shellac, Benny Goodman's 'On the Sunny Side of the Street', with his weekly allowance. His first LP (long playing) vinyl was an Oscar Peterson album for which he paid Rs.25.  

Sampat works as an engineer and is also a contributing editor for Rolling Stones magazine in India. He is also on the committee for jazz at NCPA and a member of the Capital Jazz group. Living in Bandra since 1974, he earlier lived in Canada with his wife Manju, also a collector, where he picked up most of his vinyls. "There used to be radio jockey in Canada who was a popular collector of vinyls. There was an announcement that he had passed away and his collection was being sold. I drove to the place and bought at least a dozen albums. I have an album of famous saxophone player Sonny Stitt playing in a night club in Chicago. The stage was so small that the four musicians had to exchange places to play their instruments," said Sampat who hosted Yolande Bavan (jazz vocalist from Sri Lanka) from the Lambert, Hendricks and Bavan fame in his house. She offered him a 100 dollars in the 1980s for one of her recordings, but he refused. I have also met artistes like Miles Davis.

As Bavan sings from Newport in the background, Sampat's speakers are a novelty in themselves. He bought the two big wooden boxes in 1963. "I made an illegal recording of Bavan singing here in Mumbai during the Jazz Yatra when Louiz Banks was backing her. Louiz begged me for the recording, so I copied it and gave it to him," he said.

Some of his collections are rare as only 500 copies of them were made in the world. He doesn't lend his records to anybody. He has two rules: keeping the records and the needle of the player clean and nobody should touch the records.

He said that when the CDs started coming in, most people were giving up their vinyls as they found them of no use. He collected all of them. "Whichever city I visit, I try to find a vinyl store there. When I was in Paris in the 80s, I found a huge jazz collection of vinyl records in between pineapples and papayas in a farmers' market. I begged the shopkeeper to sell them, but he wouldn't accept US dollars. I returned empty-handed," he said.

Sampat listens to jazz music only on vinyl as it sounds real, honest and no technical tweaking is required as none of it is digitised. "There's no need to enhance the bass, treble or anything," he said.

From 78 rpm Shellac which came before the 33 rpm LP vinyls that hold up to 40 minutes of music on both sides, Sampat has them all. He believes that they are in revival mode. "Audience has increased in the last 4-5 years and even the LPs are in revival. Music connoisseurs can only listen to vinyl records," he said.