Mar 10, 2010 Features 1 Comment
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 [...]
Oct 26, 2009 Features, Record Shows 7 Comments
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 [...]
Oct 13, 2009 Features, The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown 3 Comments
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. [...]
Sep 29, 2009 Features, The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown 20 Comments
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. [...]
Sep 15, 2009 Features, Jazz Memoirs 2 Comments
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. [...]
Sep 15, 2009 Features 3 Comments
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 [...]
Aug 24, 2009 Features 1 Comment
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 [...]
Aug 13, 2009 Features 4 Comments
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 [...]
Aug 10, 2009 Features 2 Comments
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 [...]
Jun 17, 2009 Album Covers, Blue Note, Features, Free Collectibles 8 Comments
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 [...]
Apr 6, 2009 Features 4 Comments
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 [...]
Mar 24, 2009 Features 5 Comments
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 [...]
Mar 16, 2009 Features, Jazz Vinyl on eBay 2 Comments
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 [...]
Mar 13, 2009 Features 1 Comment
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 [...]
Mar 13, 2009 Features Leave a comment
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 [...]
Mar 10, 2009 Features Leave a comment
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 [...]
Jan 27, 2009 Collecting Tips, Features, Uncategorized 13 Comments
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 [...]
Nov 5, 2008 Features, Free Collectibles 1 Comment
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 [...]
Oct 28, 2008 Features 1 Comment
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 [...]
Oct 23, 2008 Features Leave a comment
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 [...]
Oct 14, 2008 Features 2 Comments
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 [...]
Oct 13, 2008 Features, Jazz Memoirs, Riverside 5 Comments
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 [...]
Oct 10, 2008 Autographs, Features, Prestige 1 Comment
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 [...]
Oct 2, 2008 Blue Note, Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay, Price Guide 21 Comments
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, [...]
Oct 2, 2008 Features 4 Comments
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 [...]
Sep 30, 2008 Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay, Price Guide Leave a comment
We’ve updated the Price Guide in a number of ways over the past few days. We added about 35 new entries, including a copy of Louis Smith, Smithville, that sold for more than $1,500, a copy of Sonny Clark’s Cool Struttin’ that sold for 3,750, the Count Basie RCA record with the Andy Warhol cover [...]
Sep 18, 2008 Features 8 Comments
A couple of days ago we sent out an email to all of our newsletter subscribers from a few years ago. It was interesting in that most of the people that replied, did so via email rather than going to the Web site and posting a comment there. We are trying to get people used [...]
Sep 12, 2008 Features, Jazz Memoirs 1 Comment
Tuesday was Sonny Rollins’ 78th birthday. Happy Birthday, Newk.
First time I saw Sonny was in the early 1970s at the Village Vanguard. Sonny wasn’t playing live when I first got into jazz. He was in one of his several retirements. I’d go to clubs in the city and see Bill Evans and Monk and Roland [...]
Sep 11, 2008 Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay Leave a comment
We’re back posting regularly on the blog, which means we’re back to watching eBay. It’s been a while and, from what we can tell, the prices have held pretty steady over the past couple of years. We’re looking at a batch of records over the weekend and we’ll summarize them in a few posts today, [...]
Jan 2, 2008 Features 3 Comments
I did the Jazz Collector Web site and newsletter for about a year and a half in 2004 and 2005 and abandoned my loyal readers to start another business. I almost came back a year ago, but didn’t. Now I’m trying again. This time it should stick. – Al Perlman
Jul 20, 2005 Features Leave a comment
We took an unexpected break for a couple of days. Sorry about that. Here’s a note from a new subscriber:
“Al: Just discovered you site tonight and have been happily reading your commentaries and exploring your links for the last couple of hours. I expect to lear a lot from you and your correspondents and will [...]
Jun 30, 2005 Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay Leave a comment
I’m always looking for information on records I see on eBay that I haven’t seen before, either online or in real life. I’ve been collecting jazz records for more than 35 years and have spent thousands of hours poring through record stores all over the U.S. and in parts of Europe, yet I still come [...]
May 26, 2004 Features, Jazz Vinyl Leave a comment
As we go through records preparing to sell them on eBay, we always seem to find a few that fail to list the accompanying musicians. When this happens, we go through our source material to try to fill in the blanks. Among the resources we use most often are The Jazz Discography by Tom Lord, [...]
May 25, 2004 Features Leave a comment
Many dealers, including our partner AJ Doctor, use the Goldmine Grading Guide as a guideline to grading records. Goldmine is a biweekly record collectors magazine in the United States that also publishes price guides. The following is an excerpt from their Grading Guide:
Mint (M): Absolutely perfect in every way – certainly never played, possibly even [...]
May 10, 2004 Features Leave a comment
I couldn’t sleep again the other night so I went into my music room and started poring through the batch of 115 Downbeat and Metronome magazines I bought at the WFMU Record Show in New York last week. Most of the magazines are from the 1940s and 1950s, with a few Downbeats from the 1960s [...]
Apr 5, 2004 Features, Jazz Memoirs, Jazz Vinyl 1 Comment
(This is the first in an occasional, sporadic and perhaps-never ending series of confessions by Al Perlman)
My name is Al. I’m a vinyl addict.
Last year, I thought I had it beaten. I had turned 50, quit my job and decided to move to a smaller house. It was time to downsize. No one really needs [...]
Apr 4, 2004 Features, Jazz Memoirs Leave a comment
One of the great things about selling the records on eBay is making contact with a wide group of people with varied experiences. One of the customers got into a riff about the late bassist and composer Charles Mingus, which brought me back 30 years, to the time when I was a young reporter for [...]
Apr 4, 2004 Autographs, Features 5 Comments
It’s always surprised me that jazz collectors seem to place only marginal value in autographed albums or other memorabilia. There are exceptions of course: A Charlie Parker signature on a contract or a Billie Holiday inscription on a book are extraordinarily rare collectibles that fetch a small fortune whenever they appear on eBay or on [...]
Feb 21, 2004 Features Leave a comment
Review of:
Sonny Stitt, The Complete Roost Sonny Stitt Studio Sessions, Mosaic Records MD9-208
By Al Perlman
I am an unabashed fan of Mosaic records. No company does a better job mining and repackaging the treasures of recorded jazz. From Mosaic’s beginnings in 1983 the company has focused on producing comprehensive boxed sets that document periods or styles of music [...]
Aug 26, 2003 $1000 Records, 10-Inch LPs, Features, Jazz Vinyl, Jazz Vinyl on eBay Leave a comment
Jazz vinyl dealers at the WFMU Record Convention in New York last November were concerned. Traffic at the show was down and, worse, volume on E-Bay had declined fairly dramatically in the fall. A few dealers were anticipating the beginning of the end of the LP market, finally done in by CDs and other [...]