Guest Column: Collecting Blue Note CDs

Mattyman has promised us a guest column about collecting Blue Note jazz CDs and here it is:

Collecting Blue Note Albums on Compact Disc
Guest Column by Mattyman, The Netherlands

First of all a big thanks to Al for giving me the opportunity to tell y’all something about collecting Blue Note releases on CD, which I’ve been avidly doing since the early nineties. Since I couldn’t think of a ‘logical line’ in my column, I decided to randomly describe a few of the things that I pay attention to before I buy a CD and to make things more clear, I have once again created a photo page that y’all can use while you read the story. The few photos that I included in this story are only meant to literally jazz up the look of the column. I will continuously refer to that photo page as well, so maybe the best way to do this is to open the page in a new window.
Here we go, folks!
The first jazz album that I ever bought was John Coltrane – Blue Train, in 1992. There was a reason why I bought it. My favorite Dutch writer (and known jazz collector, drummer and DJ), Jules Deelder, has written many long and short stories about his deep love for jazz, how he first heard it as a little boy and how mesmerized he was by the voice and trumpet playing of, as he’d find out later, Chet Baker. His endless hunts for vinyl are the most fun to read, since I had been digging like that myself for seventies funk. I wanted to know more about jazz, ’cause if Jules Deelder dug so frantically, it had to be good. I honestly had not listened to one jazz album in my entire life before 1992. So I went to my favorite record store and grabbed Blue Train, simply because

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