Watching High-Ticket Jazz Vinyl on eBay
I hopped on eBay last week and put a few rare items in my queue, starting with this one: Don Pullen and Milford Graves in Concert at Yale University. This one doesn’t have a label and has a hand painted jacket. The seller was our friends at Carolina Soul and they graded the vinyl in VG+ condition and the cover in VG++ condition. The main reason I put the record on my watch list was the price, which was already above $6,000 at the time. I wasn’t the only one to notice, obviously, but I did get the following note from our friend Daryl, who wrote the following: “Carolina Soul – what is this album? Will it fetch this dollars from a music (plus cover) perspective? Will it top the $9,000-plus sale from December 2022 as found at Gripsweat? We’ve written about that one before, Free Jazz (And More) at a Price. Per Clifford on that earlier post, no more than 100 copies of this record were produced. Anyway, based on the picture, this doesn’t look like the same record that got the $9,000-plus price. This one sold for “only” $6,100.
I was watching another high-ticket item and wondering if it would sell. That would be The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album on Fantasy with autographs by Evans and Bennett on the inner sleeve. The seller had it priced at $3,600 and I was wondering if there would be any takers following the death of Tony Bennett. There wasn’t, and the seller has it relisted at the same price. What do you think? Overpriced by about $3K or so?
Finally, there was John Coltrane, Coltrane, Prestige 7105. This is a sealed copy. When the album was originally issued in 1957, they weren’t using vacuum seals. Would anybody be surprised if they opened this and the label was blue instead of yellow? The seller had a start price of about $2,000 and didn’t get any bids. If it were me, I’d unseal the record. If it was an original New York yellow, I’d keep it, play it and cherish it. But that’s just me.
Probably around 100 hand-painted, yeah. Gold cover (same LP/labels and jacket material) exists in probably at least a few hundred examples. I’d think around 500 copies in total, one run, with a small number of those being decorated by the artists themselves.
Expected this one to go for a higher price to be honest. But $6,100 isn’t anything to sneeze at either. Musically it is first-rate as well.
Prices seems to be weirdly down at the moment. I know I’m not selling as much. But lots of things are going for less than I’d expect. The Graves-Pullen LP is a great example.
I may have said this in response to a column some years back- I have a hand painted copy of the Pullen-Graves. At one time I had two and there was a third one in a used record shop in my hometown of Portland, ME. It is hard to imagine only 100 were painted but I recall one commenter heard that number from Milford’s wife.
Eight different copies were on display at ARTISTS SPACE in late 2021-early 2022 in an exhibition called Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency. If you add mine and three others I can currently account for it seems like there must’ve been a whole lot more than 100.
I will cherish mine until death and only regret I sold the second copy many years ago for a bit over bupkis to a friend. With $6,000 I could’ve invited all the regular respondents of Jazz Collector to Maine for a lobster dinner and had enough left over to buy a Blue Note 4th pressings!
Maine lobster dinner works for me.
Aloha Clifford and Al, what makes this record so valuable? Hand painted cover listed in numbers? What style is this bop, cool jazz, just curious as I am unfamiliar with it. Mahalo!
Free jazz.
Milford himself claimed around 20-30. Some have claimed more like 2-300 but that seems high for a hand painted jacket (where you don’t have, say, an Arkestra of people festooning the covers assembly-line style). Reliable sources have stuck with ~100 and that works for me, give or take… a true number appears to be impossible to verify but regardless, it definitely wasn’t many!
I loaned my gold cover to all three exhibitions (Philly, NYC, LA) and saw up close the hand painted versions. Really beautiful objects indeed.
Aloha Clifford, thank you very much for that information! When I came out of college in the 90’s, walked into a “hi-fi” store, learned about the magic of tubes, my mentors called me the young blood, lol! They knew my love of music and vinyl so they filled me with the period mainly from the late 30’s to mid 60’s, through all the Bop derivatives into modal. I’m sure I’ll get there one day, lol! I do have Lp’s from the 70’s to present but it mostly follows the music I was “influenced” by. I do love the fact that a musician painted their own covers! Mahalo!
Yeah, I started with “free” and went to bop, cool, third stream, swing, Chicago/New Orleans… it’s all of interest to me. The Pullen-Graves (and there are two volumes, this is the first) duos are pretty special and document a 1966 live concert at Yale University, piano and drums in powerful but delicate communication. There’s a lot to be heard in those grooves, and the music is now also available on CD as an authorized reissue via Corbett Vs. Dempsey.
Hey Al, did you see you got a hail from LJC on Duke Jordan?
https://londonjazzcollector.wordpress.com/2023/08/04/duke-jordan-flight-to-jordan-1960-blue-note-toshiba-emi-1992/#comments
I was wondering if the jacket is what it worth 6k or is it the music ?
The music is great, but the non-painted version will set you back far less coin. Still expensive, but not $6k.
the jacket in this case is a direct and unique connection to the artists. either way, if record collecting were purely about the music, there would be no record collecting anymore.
Given this is one of my favorite albums, I will weigh in on that copy of Tony Bennett / Bill Evans Album on Fantasy with autographs by Evans and Bennett on the inner sleeve… Tony’s signature is spot on, however, I am certain the second autograph is that of Al Roker and not Bill Evans !!! Depending on the condition of the LP itself, the signatures are later vintage and only worth maybe $50-100 over and above fair market for that LP in current condition… If it was signed on the cover that would probably help add value, but a record sleeve isn’t as impressive on display IMO
Here’s one I was really surprised to see show up on ebay after Tony passed…
Another long-lost copy of Tony’s first 78rpm back when his stage name was still Joe Bari:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334958714939?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=FbxoLiu8QuW&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
(*Up until now, there were thought to be only a few copies known to exist, and Tony and I had them !)
Yep, Al Roker’s autograph indeed.
Aloha don-lucky, that is very neat! I forgot that during his career he had a “name change,” so that it would help him in the industry and with fans, name recognition. What year is that 78 from? Mahalo!
wait… what the hell? why would al roker by signing that? am i missing something?
Probably was at a Tony Bennett concert. Hahaha!
A little more insight on the Al Roker / Tony Bennett connection. My suspicion is that this one was probably signed at one of Tony’s many TODAY show appearances over the years… I’ve also seen both of them together at various concerts and media events as well so you just never know. (My money is on a random TODAY show appearance though)
As for the first 78rpm: Tony Bennett, then known as Joe Bari, recorded “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” and the B-side “Vieni Qui” with Pat Easton and the Marty Manning Orchestra produced by critic George Simon in 1949 for Leslie Records. This was his first professional recording.
https://jazzdiscography.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/bari-goldmine.pdf
https://jazzdiscography.com/finding-tony-bennetts-first-recording/
*Tony’s son Danny bought a copy found by Scott Resti as a gift for Tony’s 90th birthday, and I have the copy Bil Bowman found.
The one guy I knew who owned a copy of the PG at Yale record died and all his records were stored in an out building by his wife and were inundated by a flood then tossed. One of the best collections I’ve seen.
Was anyone watching this Liberty pressing of Freddie Hubbard Hub-Tones on eBay?! $370!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256164601019?hash=item3ba4999cbb%3Ag%3AWvEAAOSw671kyBRR&nma=true&si=dQxJCaOaYI9LRqxJsZ0DjI2uGpU%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Sorry all, I posted a follow-up comment on the Al Roker autograph along with some additional history on the Joe Bari 78 rpm but it seems to have disappeared from the thread.
Long story short, Tony was a frequent guest on the TODAY show at NBC Studios inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and often a fixture for the annual Christmas at Rockefeller Center broadcast. I suspect both signatures were acquired during one of those appearances, and most likely a two-for-one opportunity… Given the pen type used, I suspect the records inner sleeve was the best sub-straight to avoid potential smudging and generic enough that Al would sign it as well.
As for that ultra-rare Joe Bari (aka Tony Bennett) 78 rpm, it was recorded in April 1949 at the New York Decca studios on Fifty-seventh Street for Leslie Records, a small independent label owned by Sy Leslie and produced by George Simon, writer for Metronome. The disc features a Gershwin standard “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” on the A-side, followed up with an original composition by George Simon, an Italian-style novelty called “Vieni Qui” performed with the Pat Easton Orchestra on the flip side. There was a vocal group back-up on this recording known as the Skyriders but had, by this time, changed their name to the Tattlers and previously worked with Bing Crosby on his recording of a Johnny Mercer song called “Jamboree-Jones.”
Here’s a link to a big-score where the first re-discovered copy was unearthed:
https://jazzdiscography.com/finding-tony-bennetts-first-recording/
*Two other copies have since surfaced, one of which was bought from the previous owner by Tony’s eldest son Danny as a 90th birthday present for his father, who noted in Chapter 5 of his biography ‘The Good Life’ that “the one copy he had literally crumbled in his hands in the 1960s.”
For all you treasure hunters out there, apparently, there is another record that was made a few months after the Leslie record that has also thought to have been completely lost. This was a “demonstration disc” of two old songs— “Crazy Rhythm,” and a “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” This recording was never released but would be great if it were found still in playable condition someday and released posthumously.
Aloha don-lucky, thank you for all that Bennett history and information about his earliest recordings! Mahalo!
No problem Kyle, my pleasure. *UPDATE: I did my good deed for the day and tipped off the ebay seller that he had an Al Roker autograph on that copy of his Tony Bennett / Bill Evans album ! The listing has since been corrected along with the price… Albeit still a tad high for this one IMO.
People sell to professional sellers their record based on Discogs and Popsike prices, then professionnal sellers sells them on Discogs and Ebay with bigger prices. Then other people look at Discogs to appreciate their records etc etc…
I miss Ebay auctions starting at 4,50 $.