Adventures in Jazz Collecting, Part 4

So I finally got home on Monday after my trip to Trenton and massive traffic on the Belt Parkway through Brooklyn and Queens. I started unloading the records, My nosy neighbor was watching. I smiled. “Records,” I said. I’m not sure she knew what I was talking about. The records filled the front foyer of my house. There were seven crates altogether. I had decided to just take everything that Rob had. This included Christmas records, and Aretha Franklin, and some pretty well damaged jazz records. The first two crates I looked through had nothing. Was it all an illusion? In my rush of adrenaline and musk and mold and dust, did I imagine that there were collectible jazz records in this batch? I went searching for the Tina Brooks record. This I knew was a collectible. I grabbed it. The moldy flakes from the cover fell off in my hands. I grabbed the vinyl, went upstairs and put it on my VPI record cleaner. The dust and dirt and grime and mold came off, but the record was in only VG condition. And the cover? It was pretty bad, and it reeked of mold and musk. I threw it in the garbage. Not a good start.

Mrs JC popped in. “You realize these records smell,” she said. Yes, I did. She then actually made a good suggestion: “Why don’t you separate the ones that are not damaged from the ones that are damaged?” So I did — not all the records, just the collectible ones. Even the ones that weren’t damaged needed cleaning, but there was a nice pile of collectible, undamaged records beginning to form in my living room. These included Jackie McLean’s Capuchin Swing, and the Grachan Moncur LPs on Blue Note, and a nice New Jersey pressing of Miles Davis Relaxin’. In fact, with each of these records, when I eventually cleaned them, it seemed as if they had never been played. Even some of the records with slightly damaged covers cleaned up nicely: Paul Chambers Whims of Chambers and the Clifford Brown Memorial Album. Then there was the Big Sound by Gene Ammons: That one was so damaged that the cover had actually attached itself to the vinyl, like a cancerous growth that could not be removed. I put that record in the same pile as the Tina Brooks cover, for the garbage.

That was Monday. On Tuesday I had to do a project for my real job, then on Wednesday and Thursday I was able to work on the record collection, cleaning and sorting and listening. The best thing about buying a collection — even a small one like this — is that it gets you to listening to the music again. For example, the copy of Capuchin Swing that I previously owned was a Liberty pressing, which I probably hadn’t listened to in 25 years. I put on the new, near mint original copy from this collection, and it was like discovering the music all over again. 

Anyway, here’s the bottom line. All in all there were about 20-25 nice collectibles that cleaned up pretty well, including some of the aforementioned ones that seemed unplayed. There were a bunch more that had some level of damage, and some that just won’t survive. The Christmas records got tossed, the Arethas and five other boxes are sitting in my garage awaiting a decision: Perhaps I’ll toss them, perhaps try to sell them.

All in all it was not the score of a lifetime, but it was a blast and I was able to get some great records at a fair and reasonable price and I’m having a great time looking at them and cleaning them and listening to them. So, as Rob in Trenton had suggested, the trip was definitely worthwhile.

Now I’m totally ready for my next Adventure in Jazz Collecting. Stay tuned.