Page 14 - BiTS_10_OCTOBER_2020

about all the early pioneers and do you know I think that's something we really might sort of consider
doing.

BiTS: Right, and is there a sort of competition that goes on between you and John Tefteller and people
like that, to find these missing records if there are some?

Gillian: No, I don't think so at all. I think we've tried to stick with, we respect all this other sort of
collectors and things, but Johnny's mission was to bring out stuff where it wasn't available elsewhere.
Obviously if collectors they find something, I think Mr Tefteller's paid a fortune, hasn't he, for the

odd record. That's out with something we
couldn’t afford to do anyway really. If we ever
get gifted a dub, we might put it out, but I
don't think we tackle it that way, although I
must say, my beloved husband, I mean he still

can't stop buying 78s. We're still buying 'em.

Gary: I mean just to add to that, when
Johnny, mainly at the point where he switched
over to CDs and he realised that you could get
a fair amount of recordings on any one of

John Tefteller these CDs and that opened up the possibility
of putting out the complete recorded works
of whoever it might be, the only way that that
happened, I mean of course Johnny was orchestrating the whole thing but in addition to that collectors
around the world both here in the UK and in the US, in particular, but an awful lot of collectors in
mainland Europe too, they all opened their collections to Document. They could see what Johnny was

trying to achieve. Some were a little bit critical of it and some were sceptical, but on the whole, I've
seen the lists of those that provided dubs or whatever, however, he received them from them, I've
sent recordings too, but there was one guy, in particular, a chap called Roger Misovitch. I don't know
what the equivalent in other countries to this would be, but for the UK, he was like the chief whip of
collectors and he was whipping them up and getting them to send in, to provide the recordings and
it was all done on a voluntary basis and it was the same with the writers too.

Gillian: It's an interesting point I think that you were raising here though Ian, because obviously most
of this was done in the 90s. We have put stuff out since we took Document over, but now we're living
in the age of the Internet and of course YouTube, and many of these recordings sort of come out of
the woodwork and if you think of something like what we thought were the complete recordings of
Tommy Johnson, well they're not because Mr Tefteller ended up with one, so that's always a dilemma

and sometimes, Johnny just took what he could get when you're trying to bring everything out and
now you might see, I know I was looking for something the other day and I thought, God, that's such
a great copy, ours doesn't sound as good as that, what do you do there? For us, do we try and source
that, put it out? What about the person who bought it originally? You'd go crazy thinking about that
really.

BiTS: Whose job is it to clean this stuff up if you find it? If anybody finds it.

14