The Jazz Collector Inbox: A New Vinyl Store, Dex Bio, Strayhorn, Etc.

Being an infamous jazz vinyl maven and member in good standing of the Jazz Journalists Association affords me the pleasure of having my name appear on many mailing lists for press releases, other announcements and the very occasional free record, CD or digital download (whether I want it or not).  Which is a roundabout way of saying that I am going to use this post to clean out my inbox.

Most of my inbox is filled with releases from a guy named Jim Eigo at Jazz Promo Services, a service I used a couple of years ago to try to bring greater attention to the post I wrote after the election called Chasing Trane: A Review, an Appreciation, a Spiritual Awakening. It looks as if Mr. Eigo has taken the plunge that has often been a pipedream of my own and has opened a brand new vinyl record shop called Original Vinyl Records in Warwick, NY.

This is yet another town in the Hudson Valley of New York, which, for some unknown reason seems to have become a mecca for vintage vinyl shops. According to an interview in Goldmine, Eigo chose this location for a pretty simple reason: It’s a minute from his home and the price was right.

A quick search tells me this store is about an hour and 10 minutes from my apartment in Manhattan and another two and a half hours to my house in the Berkshires, so I will have to add it to my Hudson Valley itinerary on my travels along with Spike’s Record Rack in Catskill, NY, and Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon, NY. I will make sure Mr. Eigo is there on my travels so I can chat with him about what he may have in store for us.

In the meantime, he has been using his own service to send out promotions about the store, including the pictures accompanying this article of records from several newly purchased collections. Looks like some interesting stuff, further fueling my interest in getting to the store soon, which, of course is the intent. I’m sure if you contact Jim at the store or at Jazz Promo Services, he would be happy to add your name to his mailing list.

Speaking of record stores, there was this notice that the original proprietor of Bleeker Bob’s, Robert Plotnik, passed away earlier this year. I was in that store dozens of times and never bought a single record there. But that was me. Of course, it made it into Seinfeld, so it will live forever.

There’s a new biography called The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon written by his wife Maxine Gordon. Looking forward to reading it after seeing this review in The New York Times.

If you want insight into the mind and music of Billy Strayhorn, you can now access his archives at The Library of Congress.

The media company Vox has done a video series on jazz, including this one on Blue Note album art.

Finally, there is this animated infographic on The Top 20 Jazz Pianists of All Time.The young woman who created this sent me a link and I said if I got a chance I would post it. So I did.