Don Bay 19/11/1951 - 08/05/2024 RIP

 

In the first week of May 2024 we heard the sad news that Don Bay, one of the three original founders of Sterns, had passed away on May 8th at Chumphon, Thailand, where he had built his home and lived for almost two decades.

Don was born Azad Bayramian in Baghdad, Iraq, on November 19^th, 1951, and was youngest of a large and relatively prosperous family growing up in neighbouring Iran where his father reputedly had the contract to light the Shah's palace. Don was always conscious of this independent business background.

As political instability, coup d’état and other life-threatening events overtook the whole region, Don moved away. First to the USA where he attended college while pumping gas for one of his uncles and where his name mutated from Azad to Don, and then, eventually, to London.

Here in the very early 1970s he found himself in the renowned Troubadour coffee house come folk club in Earls Court, sometimes as a client, sometimes serving, and here his story with Sterns began. He met and befriended expatriate Dutchman and African music enthusiast, Robert Urbanus, who later introduced him to Ghanaian, Charles Easmon, and the idea of reinvigorating the old Sterns of Tottenham Court Road into a dedicated African record shop on Whitfield Street, began to take hold.

 

Through a previous venture which involved importing brass cutlery from Thailand and a lucky break via an unsolicited review in a Sunday colour supplement, Don had some small savings available - legend has it in a pot under his bed - and while he didn’t know much about African music, he was the only one of the three who knew one side of a financial ledger from the other. He also had a vital ingredient: chutzpah.

With joint investment the shop opened in 1983 and soon expanded into a distributor, label, production house and de facto meeting place for African musicians, whether resident or visiting London. It was an energetic time and Don’s unique brand of energy was called upon many times as the rapidly expanding but still fledgling business met situations for which the directors had no previous experience.

At one point they were confident enough to include the legend “London – New York – São Paulo” on their headed notepaper, and New York in particular absorbed much of Don’s time and attention. But while all parties were interested in expansion, perhaps it was Don who was the most restless and so in 2006 he resigned his position to concentrate on other ventures.

Charming, volatile, mischievous, generous, irascible, passionate, loveable, at times hilariously funny but above all and at all times, human; there are perhaps too many words to describe such a person as Don. So it really is with great sadness that we say goodbye to a friend, and wish our heartfelt condolences to his family, his wife, and to other friends and all whose life he touched. We miss you.

RIP Don Bay 19/11/1951 - 08/05/2024

 

All photos: Jak Kilby