jazz at the battlefront | jazzcollector.com

Jazz In Korea: A Story Goes With It

October 23, 2009 Al Leave a comment

For those of you who won’t be in New York at the WFMU Record Fair this weekend, we are watching some jazz vinyl on eBay. Here’s an interesting one with a story behind it: Howard McGhee and his Korean All Stars, Jazz At the Battlefront Volume 1, Hi-Lo 6001. This is an original 10-inch LP. It is listed in M- condition for the vinyl and VG++ for the cover. The current price is a little more than $100 and the seller is Euclid Records, who we hope to see at the record fair on Sunday. Anyway, this is the story behind the record. From what I recall, the great jazz bass player Oscar Pettiford was hired by the U.S. government to lead a group of jazz players to go over to Korea to play for the troops who were stationed there in 1951 or 1952. So he put together a group including Howard McGhee on trumpet, JJ Johnson on trombone, Rudy Williams on tenor sax, Skeeter Best on guitar and Charles Rice on drums. Pettiford, of course, was to be on bass — except something happened. I had heard it was a fight, perhaps in a bar, but my

10-Inch LPs

Day One At the WFMU Record Fair

October 23, 2010 Al 4 comments

So yesterday was Day One of the WFMU Record Fair in New York City and I purchased a dealer table to sell of duplicates from my collection and other odds and ends and this was my experience.

There was a time, when I was an compulsive buyer of records – as opposed to now, when I am merely an obsessive buyer of records – when I would purchase a dealer’s table at a record show just so that I could show up early and look at the other dealers’ records before anyone else. I’d get there and hover while dealers of jazz records would be unpacking their wares and I could get first shot at their offerings. Don’t laugh – I got some mighty nice records this way.

Now, however, I am more serene about it. I didn’t get there yesterday until 3:30 and the show opened at four to early arrivals so I barely had time to even look. In fact, I convinced myself that the only reason I was looking at all was so that I could write about it here at Jazz Collector. I even made certain that I would not be buying either compulsively or obsessively or both: I only brought $100.

So at 3:30 I began roaming the floor with my $100. What struck me was that just about every table had jazz records: Some a box or two, some had many, many boxes. And it was a lot of the stuff