So I just found out that Bob Switzer died a couple of years ago. Bob owned a used record store in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia for many years. Taz Records. Bob was a local institution. I had him completely pegged the minute I saw him for the first time - the Jerry Lee Lewis hairstyle, the wayfarers with dark red lenses, black jeans and t-shirt, cigarette hanging from his mouth, the subtle intellectual lisp, and curmudgeonly disposition. Seemingly out of context in Halifax and yet perfectly embodying its simple goodness...like so many of its treasures. A woman pointed at a picture of the Killer on the wall and asked Bob if that was him. "That, ma'am, is a god!"
For years I would go in to Taz Records and make obscure requests - in part to try to impress Bob but mainly just to satisfy my own rather perverse musical needs - Billie Holliday, Mel Torme, the McGuire Sisters, Waylon Jennings, Al Jarreau...Roger Whitaker. And for years I received grumpy, resentful service - or was completely ignored.
Then one day I heard something by Rudy Vallee and instantly fell in love with the music of the twenties. Very hard stuff to find in the little city by the sea but I knew just where to go. Suddenly Bob Switzer, aka my new best friend, was walking me through the entire history of the Jewish American Theatre as he dug through bins pulling out LPs and throwing them at me like a scene from High Fidelity (Jack Black MUST have met Bob!). Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson were all introduced to me -as though dear old friends of Bob - as he took me on a journey through their lives and careers, highs and lows, sharing stories and secrets I had no business knowing. How did he know? Surely one of the sweeter moments in life and I remember it well.
I never went to back to Taz after that day because I moved away to Toronto.....and because I feared we could never recreate the perfection of that encounter, which I had coveted for so long. But Bob, just as surely as the ocean and Point Pleasant Park, has always remained in my heart and memory. Like them, he was Halifax to me. And my heart aches a bit upon learning of his passing, because the Halifax that I knew and loved so much feels just a little further away.
Here is another perspective on Bob from a guy much closer to him, one of his former employees at Taz. I love the piece below because, in describing Bob, the writer really captures the beautiful essence of the man through the flaws and bullshit - even as he imparts an implicit sense of the magic of the land I love:
I received the news via email, from another ex-Haligonian living here in Vancouver. Bob was one of those larger than life characters one rarely encounters, and - like many of them, I'd imagine - his image overshadowed a great deal of detail about the man.
I worked for Bob at Taz Records in the late eighties. Bob was a legendary figure in Halifax, resembling the store's cartoon namesake, or, in my mind, an open-shirted Tom Waits topped with the hairdo of Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob's favourite performer. I was hired because I was young and into a lot of music Bob ignored, and, most importantly, because he knew he needed to provide his customers with some relief from his curmudgeonly demeanour. Bob could outdo himself at that, and I have friends - especially female ones - that shudder at the idea of a visit to his shop. He could be brusque, sarcastic, sexist, homophobic, intolerant and narrow-minded, but I'm often reminded that he seemed to enjoy slapping a Lenny Bruce LP on the shop's precariously placed turntable (indeed, anyone could put anything on; the turntable was fully accessible to anyone in the store). His generation prided itself on its 'sick' humour and some of Bob's worst characteristics came from consistently testing everyone around him. Even then, he offered a raised eyebrow to anyone else in the room he deemed smart enough to be playing to.
I learned that there was more than the hermit-like character I imagined sleeping in his store, which then appeared to be a converted residence at the base of Citadel Hill, caked with countless layers of cigarette smoke and ash and home to a bathroom that never, ever saw a light bulb. He taught school, worked in bridge construction, had already seen one record shop (with the surprisingly hippy-friendly name Rubber Soul) go out of business and was an inveterate reader, especially of history. Bob appeared to burn a little more brightly inside than most of his obsessive customers.
Bob's business sense reflected the ebb and flow of record collector mentality. He extended credit to an astonishingly large number of customers, aware that the resolve to drop in and repay a twenty-dollar purchase would result in yet another purchase to be repaid, and so on. Of course, Bob frequently lost his scrawled ledger and your personal sense of honesty would be tested when Bob misread an amount owed as a credit.
Bob was a generous character to those that he liked. I never paid for lunch in my time at the store, even if that meant a steady diet of gut-rotting donairs. Bob also liked to surprise some regulars by giving them whatever LPs they had on hold prior to Christmas. He loved a good dinner out, especially at the Chicken Tandoor, where he hosted boozy get-togethers of record dealers assembled for his Dartmouth record shows (which were invariably held on the weekend of the daylight-savings time change, so I'd arrive an hour late for work). If there was a shortage of Indian music to be found at Taz, it was because he passed on nearly every LP he found to the restaurant. If you went into the kitchen, you could see the turntable.
I don't recall taking a lot of pay from Taz, but I know I received an original Pye LP of Something Else by the Kinks for my first day's work. Working at Taz was an education, filled with names like Bullmoose Jackson, Travis Wammack, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. I also learned that any performer, regardless of their obscurity or perceived lack of quality, was somebody's absolute favourite, and that a world of music had slipped between the cracks of major labels and music retail chains. Bob and I liked to butt heads on the relative merits of our favourites - British bands, by his estimation, were "all fags" - and it was either youthful indiscretion or a desire to wind him up when I claimed the Fine Young Cannibals version of "Suspicious Minds" was superior to the original. A heated debate was once interrupted by the New York Dolls' appropriation of "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah" on "Subway Train". You can't argue while chuckling.
Long after my time at the store, I invited Bob to participate in a Desert Island Discs program I was producing for CKDU. It may have been a desire to class things up, or challenge people's perceptions of him, but Bob included E. Power Biggs playing Bach's Tocatta and Fugue, a classical piece, with the Jerry Lee and PJ Proby. It ran nearly a full album side, far longer than we could accommodate in a one-hour program. I doubt this was a lack of familiarity with the material, but rather the fact that this music transported Bob so thoroughly that its length never occurred to him.
When I decided to leave Halifax for Vancouver, I financed the move of most of my records and CDs by selling a portion of my collection. Bob reviewed what I had and offered $1000 dollars, significantly more than any other shop - and the approximate cost of the move. I think it was his way of wishing me well. In keeping with his usual practice, he paid me in cash (from the wad he liked to carry wedged into the pocket of his unfeasibly tight jeans) on the night I was leaving in a pub.
Years later, I saw him on a visit to the Maritimes. Naturally, I found him outside the Library. I was pleased that he still had that inquisitive nature that drove him into the books. He was frustrated with the state of downtown Halifax and, indeed, his store was suffering a blackout that afternoon, but he was happy in a relationship. He seemed to say we both weathered the bumps life offered, but had done well for ourselves.
In Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe has his Penny Lane character explain that a real music fan can never be lonely, because they can visit a record shop and see all their friends (a line I'd imagine that had a long gestation before Crowe found the opportunity to express it). It's a touching sentiment but it also alludes to the loneliness of the LP listener. We are transported by the music we love and, often, it speaks to us about the goodness in humanity in a way day-to-day existence fails to do, but stacks of records can be a wall we throw up to keep people away.
Bob taught me that there is a lot to appreciate in this world. He was a character to be grateful for and I wish he were still here.
http://www.missyp.com/bobswitzer/index.php
