Month: April 2010

Finding a Rare Lee Konitz, Right On My Own Shelf

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I have many hundreds of records I’m hoping to sell and on rare occasions someone may come to the house to peruse them. I don’t necessarily encourage this, but if I know you from Jazz Collector I’m generally OK with it. Anyway, the other night I had one of our readers come over and it turns out he was an alto player who was associated with the Lenny Tristano school and had played with Sal Mosca, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Billy Bauer and others. He went through the records I was selling and didn’t find anything he liked and asked if I had an 78s I’d be willing to sell. I do have more than 1,000 78s and I have been willing to pare this down and among the more than 1,000 78s I happen to have about 100 Prestiges in mint, unplayed condition. I purchased these Prestiges on

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Catching Up On Some Sweet Blue Notes

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Here are a few more Blue Note 1500-series beauties we’ve been watching:

This one goes into the $1,000 bin: Lou Donaldson, Quartet, Quintet, Sextet, Blue Note 1537. This was an original Lexington Avenue pressing that was in M- condition all the way around. A real beauty. It sold for $1,880.55.

Lee Morgan, City Lights, Blue Note 1575. This was an original pressing. The vinyl was listed as VG++ and the cover was listed as VG+. The price was $850 and it had nearly 200 page views, which means a lot of people were at least considering a bid. I know I was.

Paul Chambers, Bass on Top, Blue Note 1569. This was also an original pressing, although the listing was a little weird, advertising it as Bone and Bari, the Curtis Fuller LP. Nonetheless, whatever record this turns out to be it was listed in VG++ condition and it sold for $790.

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Mono or Stereo?

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Generally I prefer mono pressings of my records, if they are available. I tend to like the sound better and, to me, they are more authentic. There are exceptions, though, and I discovered one the other day. When I was in Academy LPs last week in Manhattan I noticed a copy of this LP: La Vern Baker Sings Bessie Smith, Atlantic 1281. This is a great LP, if you are not familiar with it, featuring a swinging jazz band including Paul Quinichette, Buck Blayton, Sahib Shihab, Vic Dickenson and others. Anyway, I knew that my copy at home was a stereo pressing and the one in the store was a mono pressing with the black label, an original copy, and the price was fair, $20 if I recall. So I purchased it thinking I would upgrade the copy in my collection. I got home, cleaned the black-label copy, put it on the turntable and felt there was something missing. So I took out the stereo copy and it sounded better: Fuller, clearer and crisper. I am not an audiophile and I

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For the $2,000 Bin: Marable and Flanagan

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Let’s update the $2,000 bin, shall we?

The Lawrence Marable Quintet, Tenorman, Jazz West 8. The vinyl on this was listed as VG++ and the cover was listed as excellent, which I generally take to mean either VG+ or VG++ depending upon the seller and the description. For this item, I would think VG++ would be appropriate based on my grading terminology. This copy sold for $2,024.99. I admit: I don’t own a copy of this LP. Generally the LPs that have the high price tags are not just rare, but the music is good as well. Anyone want to share a review/opinion on this LP?

Also entering the $2,000 club, again, was this:

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On eBay: Watching Some Prestiges

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Here are some interesting items we’ll be watching this weekend.

Tommy Flanagan Overseas, Prestige 7134. This is an original pressing. The vinyl is listed in M- and the cover looks to be VG++. I went years and years without ever seeing a copy of this record, always to hear about it in legend as one of the rarest of the rare. It’s funny, isn’t it, how there seems to be a nice copy of this record on eBay every couple of weeks? I think it’s a function of eBay and potential sellers realizing that can get top dollar for the record, so they look to flip it. I don’t have an original copy in my collection, but I’ve survived this long without it, so I think I’ll be OK. This one is more than $1,300 and it still has not reached the seller’s reserve price.

Hank Mobley, Mobley’s Second Message, Prestige 7082. This is an original pressing and it looks to be in VG++ condition for both the record and the cover. This is being offered by Academy LPs in New York. It’ s funny, I went into their

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A Blues Walk & A Visit to A Shrine

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Perhaps CeeDee started a trend this week with his guest column. Here’s another from our friend Don-Lucky:

A ‘Blues Walk’ in NYC…

“Lou Donaldson at the Vanguard on Tuesday April 6th, 2010 was one of the best sets I’ve seen there in a while and well worth the long drive down to NYC from Ottawa. The first set began with Lou’s theme song Blues Walk and escalated through a series of standards and into Alligator Boogaloo from there. He was accompanied by Randy Johnston on guitar, Pat Bianchi on the organ, and Fukushi Tainaka on the drums… It didn’t stop there, Dr. Lonnie Smith dropped in to pay his respects for the second set, along with a quick cameo by Roy Hargrove, and a few vocals by singer Champion Fulton. Definitely worth the trip. Although Lonnie seems to think I owed him money from the last time he was in Canada. Don’t ask me why !

As for the rest of the trip, I did manage to drop in on Rudy Van Gelder at his fabled studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,  on the way out Wednesday morning. That’s the studio in the picture above. Rudy wanted

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On eBay: Dex, Garland, Trane

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I wound up taking a six-week hiatus from selling records on eBay after my mom passed away, but I am back now and have been busy posting records by the armful the past couple of weeks. Some of the items are records I’ve written about on Jazz Collector, so we can see whether my investments were wise or not so wise. Here are a few:

Stan Levey, This Time the Drum’s on Me, Bethlehem 37. This is a record that features some very rare Dexter Gordon from the 1950s. It’s amazing to think how infrequently Dexter was recorded during this period, when you would have expected him to be quite prolific. Anyway, I bought this record in a batch of other records and wrote about it under the title: Taking a Chance on Junk Vinyl. It was among a group of 25 records and the whole batch cost me $30. This is already at $40 on eBay and should sell for a bit more than that.

Red Garland with John Coltrane, High Pressure, Prestige 7209. This was one of the ones I purchased in the

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Sealed Giant Steps? $2,025? Huh?

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I know this is going to give some of you a heart attack: That sealed copy of Giant Steps of unknown provenance sold for $2,025.55. What happens with something like that? Does the buyer even open it? If he does, what if it’s just a standard red and green label? What happens? I think it’s amazing that this seller is able to get these prices for some of his offerings. But I do wonder if there’s an alternate reality going on that we’re not aware of, like whether there is one set of buyers that are completely rapt by his marketing wizardry and only bid on his stuff and are not bidding on any other records. Here are a couple of other auctions we were watching from him: Louis Armstrong at the Crescendo Volume 2, Decca 8169. This is a pretty routine record that you could probably find pretty regularly for $10 or $20 at a weekend record show. This one sold for $103.50. How about: Billie Holiday, Lady in Satin, Columbia 8048? This was a 6-eye stereo pressing. Nothing special, right? This one sold for $157.55. As I was copying the picture of Giant Steps, I took another look at the listing. Someone asked about the label and this was the seller’s reply:

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Guest Column: Making The Case For CDs

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When we started Jazz Collector we invited members of the community to contribute to the site and, if you check out the About page, we apparently still do. To date, no one has really taken us up on the offer and all of the posts have been written by yours truly, which has been fine. The other day, however, we got a note from one of our readers asking if he could post an item and, of course, the answer was yes. So here it is:

“Greetings-my name is Ceedee and I’m a jazz collector. I’ve been using this music and the never-ending search for the next ‘must-have’ as a source of pure pleasure and inspiration for nearly 40 years now. And if the latest list of items I’m watching at eBay is any indication, it’s a search that’s not about to end any time soon. It’s the access to collections and collectors worldwide that eBay has made possible – not to mention great web sites such as Jazz Collector – which go a long way towards enabling this ‘healthy’ habit.

Before the 12-step analogy goes any further, let me assure you that for me, it has been necessary

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On eBay: Lee Morgan, Webster Young, Andy Warhol

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The seller Jazzhound, who is apparently local to me but whom I don’t know, has been selling some nice items on eBay, including: Lee Morgan, The Cooker, Blue Note 1578. This was an original pressing and the vinyl was in M- condition and the cover was VG++ and the price was only $565.33. Did I say only $565.33? Yes I did. It just seems that this record should be selling for more money, even though this is the highest price we’ve ever recorded for the Jazz Collector Price Guide. The same seller has a few more nice rarities selling this week, including: Webster Young, For Lady, Prestige 7106. This is an original pressing with the New York label and it is a fine album, indeed. This copy is in M- condition for both the vinyl and the cover and it is currently at around $500. And this is one that features a cover design by Andy Warhol:

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