Giles Oakley writes: As a regular at Ray's Jazz Shop in its many incarnations, I owe a great deal to Ray Smith (obituary, 20 April) for exposing me to numerous artists I might never have come across without his love for music. Generally I got little more than a gruff nod of recognition as I flicked through the racks of discs, but he once passed on a bit of his marketing philosophy. He had noticed with frustration that when he priced obscure secondhand records very low, hoping to promote artists he admired, they would languish unsold in the browser bins, sometimes for years. As soon as he raised the price to something that felt outlandish, the record would immediately sell. He realised that customers assumed that "top dollar" meant top quality. His approach makes sense in any business where you care about the product.
Peter Checkland writes: Richard Williams's obituary of Ray Smith rightly refers to the "inestimable cultural value" of specialist record shops, which are not driven by the bottom line. Some years ago, I had read of Dick Wetmore's apparently unique approach to jazz violin, and asked Ray about him. Nothing was available in the UK. When I next went into the shop, I found waiting for me a tape Ray had asked a friend of his to make. It had 18 tracks featuring Wetmore's stately saxophone-like lines. When I asked Ray how I could recompense his friend, he said only that he would appreciate a replacement blank tape. Treating customers as friends – now a lost concept, alas.