Jim Jones R.I.P.

Longtime Cleveland resident, friend , artist and photographer , and noted International musician Jim Jones is dead at the age of fifty seven, a few weeks shy of his Fifty eight birthday.

Known by many , loved by all. Jim passed away in his comfy chair at home on the evening of Monday February 18th.

Jim's health had been in severe decline these past few years... A familiar figure on the Cleveland and global musical scene. Jim was a creative force in such noted bands as Pere Ubu, and The Easter Monkeys...

I first encountered the peace loving Mister Jones in the late nineteen sixties when he was an employee of the downtown Cleveland Record Rendezvous store located at 300 Prospect Avenue. Jim was a full-time member of the Cleveland underground scene. At that time Jim wore his locks long and appeared to be the doppleganger for the Dutch Boy paint poster boy with longer flowing locks, and seemingly jumped off the paint can into life. I was employed at the time by Kay's Bookstore a few Prospect storefronts away.

We would often visit each others place of employment on lunch hour. Jim having a keenly developed appreciation for all matter of aesthetics pertaining to cinema , literature, and a consummate bibliophile.

We often attended many of the same rock and roll events and after parties. Sitting together in the last balcony row of Cleveland's Music Hall for David Bowie's initial United States concert September 22nd, 1972.

We were both happy to be there courtesy of RCA records, and often joked afterwards for years how that with all the hype and media juice poured into the Bowie concert launch , that the event was over before it began... Indeed, rock music was over for quite sometime the following year with the release of The Stooges RAW POWER , which was recorded in London, England during that very September 1972 week while Bowie premiered Ziggy Stardust in Cleveland"s Music Hall.

Year's later, Jimmy introduced me to English music critic Jon Savage who proceeded to play for the three of us the freshly produced 1997 version in Jimmy's kitchen music nook. We were blown away by the Iggy version as opposed to the muddy 1973 Bowie produced version of RAW POWER... When Captain Beefheart played Cleveland's Club in the early 1970's we were there.

[Ry Cooder opened this Warner Brothers sponsored small venue tour.]

Ditto Jones was in the tent for many of the Musicarnival shows , including the notable theater in the round Mothers of Invention tent show in 1970.Jimmy was fond of bestowing crafty self made cd mix tapes of various musical artists as gifts , and his kindness in this chapter of his creative life the material of legends....Such diverse musical taste did JJ possess.

Richard Thompson and Marianne Faithfull from stem to stern, all forms of worldly worthy music. A clever palate of Middle Eastern ragas and guezels, served up with African and Latin flavors, musical stews from Jamaica, and Island ska for kicks.

Jim Jones was a musical scholar of no small talent. Truly an encyclopedic and intuitive genius and artist. A gracious host. Polite , well-mannered man. Story teller of retail days spent with fellow clerk and full processed soulful brother Cecil Stewart.

Carnivalesque outrageous full process hairdo Cecil baby. Leo Mintz, who is said to have first coined the phrase "rock and roll" , was the balding , cigarette in the chops , hard drinking owner that assigned the vue tasks , putting away orders , working the counters and his prowess spawned the ancient wooden 78, 45, and 33 and 1/3 listening booths.

It was still a do at the vue to spin a 78r.p.m. jump blues record from the nineteen fifties in the year nineteen eighty!

Jimmy could imitate Leo's gravely camel-throated husky blasts to a turn. The vue was located between two Greek bar and food joints: The Clock and The Columbia.

We drank copiously and ate decent sit-down fare along the lines of meats, potatoes, and salads at both restaurants. Leo Mintz drank at both Clock and Columbia, amid giant plumes of smoke and shots of strong libation being quaffed by all who could afford.

The street flower vendor trade met every working evening at the clock to settle up and hand off the leftover limpid flowery dollar and down trade ending in bars closing hours , and then the after hours. Nightlife people. Jimmy walked with understanding among the street circus characters of lower Prospect and around the Central Market for many years.

Jimmy told all kinds of great stories about many aspects of his life. His powers of memory very sucinct. We were fortunate to have Mister Jones as a member of the Old Erie Street Book Store staff in the nineteen nineties.

His great ability to organize and hand-sell books was a pleasure to witness. Working with Jimmy was a pleasant study in his calm intelligent humble presence with clients -- Many of whom still inquire concerning him to this day.

His ability to catalog and describe books for sale came natural. If I had the presence of mind to take the book business online in the late 1990's as Jimmy suggested, we would be better off today. Yes, Jimmy was that kind of human. A class act in the old school fashion.

Mister Jones always in possession of an active mind and acerbic wit tempered with gallows humor...

Our Mother's cooked from the same Betty Crocker cookbooks during our formative years in the nineteen fifties and early sixties, we discovered years later. Jimmy was often a visitor to our home for meals around the Holidays , and was a favorite of our Family ... Now those of us who knew and loved him will find a darker visage to great our days. Jimmy was not a fan of the modern changes that occurred in downtown Cleveland and was vocal in his criticism.

He preferred Otto Moser's on East Fourth Street not Playhouse Square . Felt that Captain Frank's seafood restaurant belonged on East Ninth Street, not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He pined for a breakfast again at the former Nahra's Restaurant once located at East Second and Prospect. Describing Nahras as "complete with steaming vats of corned beef and potatoes boiling away in its windows alone were enough to take the chill from a cold and windy Cleveland's day".

Jimmy's had a special love for canine's and always kept a hound or two about.

His latest pair "Sammi the meathound ' , and the confused canine " Rollo" , both survive him..... Now we face a number of cold and sad days without the staid comfort of Mister Jones friendship and place in our collective lives. I will admit to deep sadness with Jim's passing.

Believe me folks it hurts to lose one of your own . A chill wind blows down Prospect Avenue today , The VUE is shuttered , most of the old familiar places and faces have left town. Our world is a bit sadder today. Jimmy takes his great tales with him, and though a few of us may attempt to account some of them. Jimmy told them best! A gentle pisces , whose passage occurred within his astrological season.

A service and tribute will follow. May Jimmy now rest in peace. He will not be forgotten.

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Bookselling sure has changed

in many diverse ways since opening my first used and rare bookstore in 1976. Time was when opening the door for business and having enough desirable inventory on hand to sell to those passing by was enough to earn a decent living.

Downtown Cleveland was still quite alive throughout the 1980's and most of the 1990's, before retail stopped on a dime a few years prior to the dawning of the 21st century.

Advertising in the telephone book, word of mouth, and good customer service all helped grease the wheels of commerce, and allowed us growth and stability in this time honored trade of bookselling.

On the rare book side of the ledger, only a few hundred of us antiquarians plied our trade in the United States of America, and we knew each other well enough for sizable purchases amongst ourselves to transpire with a handshake or telephone call.

Good luck today in this matter.

The internet has managed to make every last rag picker, and housewife a budding A.S.W. Rosenbach or William Targ, and with no training or apprenticeship of any sort these parasitical neophytes are instant booksellers.

The temerarious nature of these part-time, house bound biblio-peddlers is horrifying to one who has spent the better part of a lifetime paying on a lease and considering bookselling a career, not a profitable hobby.

I go on record as supporting any person who possesses the temerity to start up an open door bookstore in this day and age.

This bricks and mortar approach to bookselling was always an option, and the charm and value of the education an open door shop surely offset any of the rewards garnered by the "specialist" or catalog only booksellers working from their homes.

The postwar Cleveland, Ohio of my youth had a great downtown bookselling community, and the seven to ten odd bookstores that it was comprised of formed enough cache to draw clients from the surrounding area to around the world in their day.

When I was employed by one of these firms, Kay's Bookstore, in 1970 we had open evening hours on Mondays and Thursdays, and customers did visit and shop. Publix Book mart was another fine open shop, and like Kay's had an interesting mixture of used, antiquarian, and new books for sale.

An assortment of used stores existed in lower rent areas of downtown, and a few true world class antiquarian book concerns existed street level as well. Other American cities had similar bookstores, and a great days fun was often spent visiting these retail stores for fun and profit.

A great way to finance a small vacation or trip abroad was to match one's book knowledge against the field of play consisting of a bookseller's open store and its contents, often resulting in the acquisition of a gem or two and a tidy profit.

Needless to say the internet has changed this style of book gathering once and for all.

The internet has spawned a new variety of biblio-sleuth, one who flits about with a battery run hand held device, checking titles and bar coded ISBN numbers to the physical book, waiting for the machine to spit back it's fiscal verdict while the party holding the device possesses no more of an iota of knowledge or care for it's content save the monetary result.

It is due to this prevalent modern book hunting climate that I no longer have much interest in opening the door to this bookstore to such sordid characters, and when I do see these hand held devices in the paws of their holders in a public space I am moved towards nausea of a physical and existential nature.

I encountered an old colleague the other morning and the subject of library discard sales came up in conversation.

She mentioned that she had thought of me when attending one of these affairs recently and she was told by the holder of one of these afore said hand held devices that he was reserving a large trove of books running the length of four six foot tables for this electronic scrutiny while they volumes in question while the books were still stacked below their for-sale tables, unsold and just for this greedy biblio morons scrutiny.

I no longer attend these sales due to the fact that such scavenger beasts would not fare very well in my opinion, and push come to shove, I would find his position of review before purchase unacceptable and act accordingly.

The other reason not to attend such functions as these library sales is that most all of the offerings are pre-picked and purchased by the volunteers who work them. Ditto, the thrift stores, charitable sales, flea markets, and most of the other second hand public sale repositories.

We have a plethora of books to choose from and make available for sale, and prefer selling books to buying books these days.

-- Bookselling time. --

Seeing that the basis of this article concerns commerce and economics, we are proud to offer a copy of one of the most important books of twentieth century intellectual thought by Freidrich Hayek, THE ROAD TO SERFDOM.

Don't take my word concerning this book's importance; both the New York Public Library and The London Times listed this book as one of the 100 most influential books of the twentieth century.

The copy we offer is neatly signed by Hayek, and would prove to be a significant addition to any bibliophile's library.

Hats off to all you brave booksellers who open your doors to the public and have the verve to earn a living the old fashioned way.

The Hayek title we offer seems to mirror to some extent the fiscal climate of the contemporary bookseller. The modern bookseller is serf to the internet and a percentage partner, often only by choice of the internet outfit who steers the sale towards the bookseller.

One of the reasons I choose bookselling instead of another career, was the freedom it offered, the daily stream of knowledge it provides, and the laissez faire nature of commerce that it provided prior to the internet.

Chances are great that due to the rather ugly nature of life in downtown Cleveland, Ohio these days, and the sad and pervasive poverty that afflicts the citizenry we will not be opening our doors to the hand held devices of the modern biblio-putz and putzettes of the world anytime soon.

Old Erie Street Bookstore remains on the sidelines, waiting to get called onto a level playing field in a city that is choking to death from it's excessive bad planning, and inability to hold it's brighter youth or attract any venture oriented entrepreneurs due to the greed and stupidity of the current roster of bad civic actors and greasy politicians that pose about town telling their glorious self serving tales.

Best wishes to John and Kim, all my Family and you the faithful customer who has helped me learn and survive to date in this bookselling trade.

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