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The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds

Ep083: Black Sabbath Manager & Birmingham Legend Jim 'Big Bear' Simpson

The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds

Nate Goyer

Music, Music History, Music Interviews

4.7579 Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2017

⏱️ 86 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jim 'Big Bear' Simpson is a Birmingham legend, living a life in service of music; from his Jazz & Blues roots to his record label to becoming the 1st manager of Black Sabbath, taking them from the gritty pubs of Birmingham to having a #1 record album 'Paranoid', Jim always gives it his all. Now he's putting on the 33rd Annual Birmingham & Solihull Jazz & Blues Festival; The man never stops and aren't we lucky!

If you like records, just starting a collection or are an uber-nerd with a house-full of vinyl, this is the podcast for you. Nate Goyer is The Vinyl Guide and discusses all things music and record-related.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

First time I ever played with the four of us.

0:03.0

No, I can't remember, but it must have been Henry's Blues House,

0:06.0

which was run by our money at the time, Jim Simpson.

0:10.0

We had all this energy banking around.

0:12.0

We had this band that we all five us believed in.

0:14.0

We knew it was a good band.

0:15.0

We knew it was better than most.

0:17.0

We knew we had something special.

0:19.0

But we hadn't got a direction.

0:21.6

So you live your life precisely by the rules of the game?

0:43.3

Is your mind an open page?

0:45.3

Oh, will it always be the same?

0:48.3

Is your choice the master voice?

0:51.3

You deny the holders job? If your heart laid with a rebel, what you should? The first of the boys, and I were a band And uh...

0:55.0

The hard they were in the rebel

0:57.0

Was you to see the other dark?

1:00.0

The first time I came across them, they were a band called Earth

1:06.0

and it was just booked in

1:10.0

into the studio, you know, as a demo session.

1:14.1

And they came in in their sort of scruffy way.

1:18.8

In Ozzy, then, didn't have any shoes.

1:21.6

I mean, we'd show up for a gig, and most of the time people would turn us away

...

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