Where’s The Reader Forum?
Mar 10, 2010 Features
Ok, I’m back, and thanks to everyone for your best wishes. I haven’t been on eBay in days and I’m not ready to begin blogging now, but I have to say I’m thrilled to see that the site went on just fine without me: Perhaps even better. This is what I had envisioned when I started Jazz Collector, a community where we can all chat and ask one another questions, and share both the passion for the collecting as well as the passion for the music. Anyway, necessity was the mother of invention, and the idea of the Reader Forum took hold and now I’ve made it a permanent part of the site. So, to find the new Reader Forum just go to the top of the page and there it is right between Hot Topics and About. I’ve also had it enhanced so that the most recent comments are on top, so you don’t have to scroll down every time to see what’s new. Thanks to everyone who commented on the site and kept things going and please, please, please don’t stop now simply because I’m back. I can’t wait to read it all.
Tags: Reader Forum
WFMU Record Fair: A Brief Report
Oct 26, 2009 Features, Record Shows
So I did go to the WFMU Record Fair on Sunday. I’ve attached a picture to prove it. I didn’t buy any records. My goal with Record Shows has traditionally been to find bargains. You often get dealers who don’t know anything about jazz vinyl, and sometimes they under-price the records, and sometimes they are just trying to get rid of records, and sometimes they are happy to bargain so they don’t have to take the records home. There have also been many times where I’ve met collectors who really didn’t know the value of their records, and they underpriced everything that they had. I’ve written here about the guy who had a bunch of original Blue Notes and Prestiges and just priced everything at $5, including a mint copy of
Tags: Tina Brooks, WFMU Record Fair
Jazz Vinyl Countdown? HAH!
Oct 13, 2009 Features, The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown
So much for whittling down my collection. Last night, I bought another batch of albums, about 300 altogether. So, let’s see: Since I started this Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown two weeks ago, I’ve decided to sell 12 records. In that same period, I’ve managed to purchase 300 records, for a net gain of 288 records. At the rate I’m going, in three years I’ll have a half a million records and I’ll be living in a straitjacket. In any case, there is a story behind the purchase of these records, which I will tell. A couple of weeks ago I accompanied the lovely Mrs. Jazz Collector to a party of her colleagues. She told me there would be many other spouses there. She was wrong: There were three others, and two of them fell asleep before the hors d’oeuvres were served. So that left me and another guy. We started chatting. I told him about Jazz Collector. “Really,” he said. “I’m moving to California in two weeks and I was thinking about selling my jazz collection.” “Really,” I said. “This could be
Tags: Jazz Vinyl Countdown
The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown
Sep 29, 2009 Features, The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown
I counted my records the other day. At least I counted most of them. I didn’t count the 78s and I didn’t count the ones in storage. The ones in storage are all to be sold and the 78s are, well, 78s. No matter. The point is this. I have more records than I want. I have them in four separate rooms in two separate homes. I have records I have owned for more than 25 years and have never put on a turntable. I have records by artists I don’t especially like. I have collected them because I am a collector. It is what I do. That is why my site is called Jazz Collector.
I counted the records because I have made a fairly momentous decision, and that decision is this: I am going to get rid of many of them. This is heresy, is it not? These are my friends, all hand selected personally by me. I have invited them into my home, to share my space, to give me comfort and joy in times of stress or sorrow. And they have served me well, all of them, in whatever way they could.
But the time has come to part ways with many of them. Why?
Happy Birthday, Cannonball
Sep 15, 2009 Features, Jazz Memoirs
Thank you to Don-Lucky for pointing out that this would have been Cannonball Adderley’s 81st birthday. I’ll never forget where I was when Cannonball died back in August 1975. I was driving my car in Auburn, N.Y., where I was just breaking in as a newspaper reporter. I had to pull over to compose myself. Cannonball was always a big figure for me because he was a favorite of my father’s and I saw him a few times as a kid and also because the album Live At The Lighthouse was the first or second record that really set me on the path to becoming a jazz fan and, eventually, a jazz collector. For my money, after Bird there was Cannon on alto and then a big gap to whoever would be next. I’ve been putting records on eBay lately, a lot of duplicates, and I listen to parts of them before I post them. Every time I put on a Cannonball record, particularly the early ones on Mercury, I am surprised and amazed once again at just how much he had under his fingers and how naturally he swung and how everything he did was just great. So, Happy Birthday, indeed. By the way,
Tags: Cannonball Adderley
A Tale of a Few Vocalists
Sep 15, 2009 Features
I was perusing a Web site called Jazz.com the other day. They’ve been picking up a few of my posts here and there and sending traffic my way, which I appreciate. Anyway, they pointed to another feature from another post somewhere else in which the great drummer Jimmy Cobb was asked to list his six favorite records. Anyway, there was Miles Birth of the Cool and, of course, Kind of Blue, on which Cobb played. Then there was an Oscar Peterson and, incredibly to me, a Wynton Marsalis. I won’t comment on that one. The two that struck me were the vocalists: Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. This brought up a conversation I had with a friend last weekend. He had made the point that he believed there were three premium vocal stylists (in the jazz idiom, of course) in the 20th Century. They were:
Tags: Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Cobb
New Study Confirms The Truth: Jazz Fans Are Cool
Aug 24, 2009 Features
There’s this new study from the University of Cambridge that concludes that people make assumptions about other people based on their musical tastes. Classical music fans, for example, are expected to be dumb and boring. Rock fans: emotionally unstable. Who fares best in this study? Jazz fans, of course. We are regarded as imaginative, peace-loving individuals with friendly and outgoing natures. In other words, people think we’re cool. Sounds about right to me. Of course, if they really knew about the obsessive side of us jazz collectors, perhaps they might alter their view.
Tags: University of Cambridge
Does Jazz Really Need Saving?
Aug 13, 2009 Features
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day entitled “Can Jazz Be Saved?” It cites a bunch of statistics showing that the audience for jazz in the U.S. is both dwindling and aging, which is not a good combination. It’s somewhat of a sad commentary on the state of the jazz scene in America, but it does ignore the other reality that jazz is still revered and treasured to a much greater degree in Europe and Asia. It also talks about jazz following the route of classical music, in the sense that it is now viewed a an art form of high culture. I thought it might be interesting to share with everyone. In a way, the article supports what we’re seeing in the jazz collectibles market — the belief that jazz is a high art form and its history should be cherished and preserved: Thus, the subsequent rise we’re witnessing in prices for the original artifacts.
Tags: The Wall Street Journal
JR Monterose In Action, Redux
Aug 10, 2009 Features
Got two notes recently from Jeff Barr, a long-time jazz writer, DJ, collector, producer and seller of rare vinyl. The first note was asking to inform my readers about his site, www.jazzrecordscene.com, which is worth checking out because there’s some very nice vinyl there. I’ve added a link to this site from Jazz Collector, so you can find it easily from the home page whenever you come to visit it, which we hope is quite often. Jeff also posted a comment giving some more history on the J. R. Monterose In Action LP that I wrote about last week. Here’s Jeff’s comment, which will also come up as a comment on the previous item:
“Peter Jacobson and Jeff Barr started VSOP in 1980 in Washington DC, where Barr was a jazz disc jockey and record seller, and Jacobson was on the staff of the Smithsonian as a legal consultant. The deal to acquire the license to reissue J. R. Monterose, on the Studio 4 label, was reached after contacting Jimmy Sota, the original producer of the LP. Jimmy was coming off a run of semi-successful low-budget spaghetti westerns in Italian with subtitles, and was glad to let us have the deal…we paid $1750.00 to get the rights and the tape, and, oh by the way, two boxes of unused originals…which in 1980
Tags: Beacon Records, Elmo Hope, Jeff Barr, JR Monterose, VSOP Records
Win A Free Collectible: Blue Note Cover Art
Jun 17, 2009 Album Covers, Blue Note, Features, Free Collectibles
OK, we’ve been putting up some interesting posts, but we’re not getting all that many comments these days, aside from Michel and Rudolf and a few of our other consistent (and always compelling) contributors. That means it must be time to give away another free collectible.
So, here it is, a new free giveaway contest from Jazz Collector, and it’s a Blue Note (no not an original copy of Candy by Lee Morgan, or even a second pressing of Newk’s Time by Sonny Rollins). It is (drum roll, please):
BLUE NOTE: THE ALBUM COVER ART
This is a 128-book of album cover art from the Blue Note catalogue, first published in 1991 by Chronicle Books. It features page after page of classic Blue Note covers from the 1950s and 1960s, featuring so many of the great designs by Reid Miles and photos by Francis Wolff. The book also includes a foreward by Horace Silver, which I will present in a separate post later in the week.
Best of all, the book will be given away FREE to one lucky reader of Jazz Collector. To be eligible to win all you have to do is
Tags: Blue Note Cover Art
Why Do We Collect?
Apr 6, 2009 Features
Ye ask, and ye shall receive. Bethellodge asks on another post that we start a conversation on the topic: “Why do we collect?”
Here’s my story: I started out, probably like most of us, loving the music for the music’s sake. I remember the sound of jazz in my living room, from my father’s collection, and listening to John Coltrane in between classes at Queens College, and going back and discovering Bird and Dexter and Sonny and Clifford and Ella and so many of my heroes. The albums I found early in my searches are so often among my favorites and the albums I put on the turntable most often. Last night I had a half hour to kill and put on Oscar Peterson, West Side Story. It was like getting together with an old friend. In the beginning it was just about the music: Who cared if a pressing was original, as long as I could listen to the music? At some point, however, it became about more than the music, about finding the original pressing and building a collection. In my case, I know part of it is– and always has been — the thrill
Tags: Dexter Gordon, Freddie Redd, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins
Mrs. JC Sounds Off
Mar 24, 2009 Features
Mrs JC, Incognito
We turn the post over to Mrs. Jazz Collector:
“I really have just one question: Are you all as crazy as my husband?
When our kids were growing up, every family vacation we would drive around looking for record stores. In Boston, LA, San Francisco, Toronto, London – wherever – we’d search for record stores, Al would run in and leave us sitting in the car, no matter what the neighborhood. He’d go away on business trips and come back loaded with records. One time he went to Chicago and bought 300 78s and had to buy an extra piece of luggage just to lug them home.
Where we live is always a function of whether there is room for Al’s records. We bought one house because it had a huge living room with high ceilings. Al had floor-to-ceiling cabinets built, with a rolling
Free Advice For eBay Sellers
Mar 16, 2009 Features, Jazz Vinyl on eBay
From the archives:
Here’s advice I gave recently to someone looking to sell jazz records on eBay:
1. Buy a professional record cleaner and clean every record before you grade it and sell it.
2. Grade your records accurately/conservatively. You want to develop a good reputation and leave your customers satisfied so they’ll feel confident buying more from you.
3. Have a no-questions-asked return policy. If someone is not happy, pay to have the record shipped back and refund his money. If a buyer is consistently unhappy, politely stop doing business with him.
4. When you ship records, package them professionally and carefully and don’t scrimp on using high-end boxes and packing material.
5. Be accurate in your descriptions and include as much information as possible. Learn about the details that are important to buyers, such as the address on labels, colors of labels, distinguishing characteristics such as the deep groove and anything else that will make your listings clear and informative. Include the label and number. Try not to be too wordy: English may not be the first language of many buyers, so keep your listings concise and uncomplicated.
6. Get a good camera and take clear pictures, showing as much detail as possible.
What do you think? Do you have any other advice for sellers of jazz records on eBay?
Another From the Archives: A JATP Jazz Bash
Mar 13, 2009 Features
Here’s another item we found of interest from our Downbeat collection. It’s a review by D. Leon Wolf in the Nov. 18, 1946 issue of Downbeat. The headline: Granz Bash a Caricature on Jazz: Everything Bad in Jazz Found Here.” Here’s how the article starts off: “Of all the wretched music ever inflicted upon this earnest devotee of le jazz hot, nothing, I regret to say, has yet to equal Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic concert the night of Oct. 24. Everything that is rotten in contemporary hazz was to be found in this musical catastrophe.”
Wolf’s view of some of the musicians: Illinois Jacquet: “The lousiest tenor in the country making over $50 a week, barring none.” Rex Stewart: “Granz, if he had the guts, should have yanked him off the stage during his second number, the most sickening and
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Coleman Hawkins, Downbeat Magazine, Illinois Jacquet, Jazz At the Philharmonic, Norman Granz, Rex Stewart
Bird And Diz And Downbeat, 1946, 1947
Mar 13, 2009 Features
In addition to vinyl, I collect jazz books, magazines and other ephemera. Once in a while I go through my old copies of Downbeat. Here’s something I pulled a few years ago:
The Dec. 16, 1946 Downbeat offers a prime example of the divergent fortunes of the two leaders of the be-bop movement. On the front page there is a picture of Dizzy Gillespie having fun and joking around. On page six, at the top of the page, there’s a small article with the headline: “Parker Fund Does Fine at L.A. Benefit.” It was a four-paragraph item, noting that a benefit for Charlie Parker in Los Angeles raised a total of $500.86. The purpose of the money: “To assist Parker, upon his release from a sanitarium, to secure instruments, clothes and what
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Heroes: Musicians and Their Influences
Mar 10, 2009 Features
From our our archives, here’s an interesting item from June 18, 2004.
If you’re looking for a good read, pick up the July issue of Downbeat. It’s being promoted as the “70th Anniversary Collector’s Edition” and the focus is a feature called “Our Heroes” in which more than 70 musicians talk about their primary influences. Here are a few highlights:
Sonny Rollins on Coleman Hawkins: “I first saw him play on 52nd Street. I used to put eyebrow pencil on my lip to make a fake mustache so I could get in. We’d stand in the back, and it was like looking at a god playing.”
Joe Zawinul on Art Tatum: “He always sounded like two piano players. The story goes like this:
Tags: Antonio Hart, Art Tatum, Cannonball Adderley, Coleman Hawkins, Downbeat, Joe Zawinul, Sonny Rollins
The Blue Note Story
Jan 27, 2009 Collecting Tips, Features, Uncategorized
So the other day I was reorganizing my records, which I do every couple of months, and I took out an old Sidney Bechet record on Blue Note and inside the sleeve found this great little pamphlet, called The Blue Note Story. It’s a four-pager on a coated paper and it clearly dates from 1955 — it talks about Blue Note starting in 1939 — 16 years ago. It is written by Leonard Feather and measures 8-1/2 inches high by 5-1/2 inches wide, which is basically a standard 8-1/2-by-11 sheet folded in half. I will post the entire contents of this pamphlet momentarily. How this rates as I collectible, I have no idea. I do know that, in my view, it’s a helluva a lot more interesting than the Bechet record. I must have three or four dozen Lexington Avenue Blue Notes in my collection — including 10-inch and 12-inch LPs — and I’ve never found this pamphlet in any of the others.
So here’s what it says:
And The Winner Is (Part 2) . . .
Nov 5, 2008 Features, Free Collectibles
Yes, Barack Obama. YAY!!!!!! Not quite as important, we do have a winner of our latest record give-away. Early this morning we asked our lovely bride, Mrs. Jazz Collector, to pick from the seven names who entered our contest to give away the record, Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple, Blue Note 84232. And the name she picked — Michael Haensch. So Michael if you’re out there, you can send an email to me at al(at)jazzcollector.com with your mailing address and contact information, and we’ll send you the Wayne Shorter LP. We’ll be posting another item in the next day or two giving away yet another record. Why? Why not? Stay tuned.
Tags: Blue Note, Wayne Shorter
What Happened at the WFMU Record Fair?
Oct 28, 2008 Features
Sorry we haven’t posted in a few days. We sold some records at the WFMU Record Fair on Friday. There were good crowds, maybe about 3 percent were interested in jazz, and, from what we sold, the bulk went to a couple of dealers, one from Japan, the other from Belgium. In walking around, we didn’t see a great deal of high-end collectibles — we didn’t bring any from Jazz Collector. Most dealers save those for eBay these days. We did see Joe from Euclid Records and he apparently had a few high-end Blue Notes, including Cliff Jordan Blowing in From Chicago, Blue Note 1549, and one of the early Lee Morgans. Joe, if you read this, let us know how you did. Also, we see that Jason Sweet, one of our other readers, commented elsewhere, so if you were there and would like to share your impressions, please feel free to comment on this post.
Tags: Euclid Records, WFMU Record Fair
See You At the Fair?
Oct 23, 2008 Features
Sorry we haven’t been posting the past couple of days. We’ve been buried in our basement, cleaning and pricing records for this weekend’s WFMU Record Fair, which begins on Friday and runs through Sunday. Click here for details. Jazz Collector has a table on Friday: Our location is F5, if you want to stop by and visit. We had hoped to be there all weekend, but it sold out pretty early. We’ve worked one of these shows once before and it’s pretty good — definitely the best record show in the New York area. It brings out a lot of good dealers and a lot of collectors and it’s definitely worth the trip. If you’re going to come, it’s always best to get there early, when the doors open at 4 p.m. on Friday. If you know a dealer and can get in earlier than that, then it’s even better.
Tags: WFMU Record Fair
A Tribute to William Claxton
Oct 14, 2008 Features
I opened up my New York Times this morning to the news that the great jazz photographer William Claxton had died at age 80. Claxton was one of the great jazz photographers, mainly on the West Coast, and he was most noted for his great, almost obsessive, work in shooting the young Chet Baker. His first jazz photography was in album covers, and he was something of a house photographer for Pacific Jazz Records. In some cases, the value of some of the top collectible records are, in part, a tribute to his innovative and interesting covers. One that comes to mind, in addition to the Baker LPs on Pacific Jazz, is Sonny Rollins’ Way Out West on Contemporary, with Sonny notably dressed in a 10-gallon hat and holster with his tenor slung at his side like a weapon, which it was in Sonny’s hands.
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Tags: Chet Baker, Pacific Jazz, Sonny Rollins, William Claxton
Record Stores, A Birthday, And Some Nostalgia
Oct 13, 2008 Features, Jazz Memoirs, Riverside
I miss record stores. There was a time, living here in the New York area, I could sneak out my office at lunchtime and visit a different record store every day of the week, for several weeks without repeating myself. Just in my area of Long Island and Queens, there was Titus Oaks in Hicksville and Huntington and, if I wanted to be adventurous, Brooklyn; and Radio City in Hempstead, and later another one in Hempstead; and Infinity in Wantaugh; and several Mr. Cheapos; and a guy named Kenny who had one on Union Turnpike in Fresh Meadows and another on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica; and one on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck, and several more, whose names and locations are all muddled together in my memory.
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From the Archives: A $38,000 Bill Evans Letter: A $129,000 Trane Manuscript
Oct 10, 2008 Autographs, Features, Prestige
Here at Jazz Collector, we usually focus on jazz records, mostly what’s bought and sold on eBay. There are lots of reasons for that but, fundamentally, the reason is that we believe eBay sets the market’s prices. What’s more it’s a public market, so everyone can see it and monitor it and decide if he or she wants to participate. And finally, it’s a true worldwide market. Check out The Great eBay Debate for other opinions. But there are, we recognize, other places for jazz collectibles, and other objects d’jazz than vinyl. We were reminded of this as we were going through our archives and came across this article from 2005 referencing a huge sale of jazz collectibles by the auction house Guernsey’s. I’ll repost the whole item below, but note just a couple of items: The Bill Evans letter to John Coltrane that sold for more than $38,000 and the original manuscript and text for Trane’s A Love Supreme, which sold for more than $129,000.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bill Evans, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Guernsey's, John Coltrane
The Great Ebay Debate
Oct 2, 2008 Blue Note, Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay, Price Guide
Three years ago, in the previous iteration of Jazz Collector, we had a heated discussion about the pros and cons of eBay, spurred by a letter from the Blue Note expert Larry Cohn. I’ve been updating the site with a lot of the old material and posting it with the original dates. This one, however, I thought was worth reprising as a current entry, since the blog format of posting comments is just perfect for this type of discussion. Please take a look, starting with Larry’s original letter, read the comments, and then feel free to post comments of your own.
“Hello Al, from Larry Cohn in NYC. Like you I have been collecting jazz LPs for decades and was surprised by the major rise in prices beginning in the 1980s, largely spurred by Japanese collectors. However, I don’t think we can take as seriously the recent eBay phenomenon.
Tags: Fred Cohen, Jazz Record Center, Larry Cohn, Leon Leavitt, Song For My Father
Reader Forum/Hot Topics
Oct 2, 2008 Features
We’ve set up a new section on the site called Hot Topics. We’re hoping that it evolves into something like a Reader Forum, where collectors can come and ask questions about collectibles and can get answers from other collectors within the community. At Jazz Collector, we don’t claim to be experts on everything in the jazz collectible world, but we know that collectively our readers have all the expertise anyone would ever need. I will add a question and several responses that we received this week on this post to show how it works. If you have a question about any jazz collectible, just post it as a comment on this post and let’s see if we can generate some responses.