I went away for the long Memorial Day weekend and didn’t look at eBay for three days. Here are some of the things I missed:
Howard McGhee, Music From The Connection, Felsted 7512. This was in nice condition and sold for more than $1,000.
Benny Carter, Cosmopolite, Norgran 1070. This was an original yellow label copy, autographed by Carter and, according to the dealer, directly from Carter’s own collection. A nice collectible, indeed. Read more
I was poring through eBay this morning, preparing today’s update, when my wife came into my office. “Did you see The Times?” she asked. “There’s an article that Coltrane’s drummer died.”
It’s not surprising that The Times would refer to Elvin Jones as “Coltrane’s drummer.” That’s the way many of us came to find his music, on those great Atlantic and Impulse LPs of the early and mid 1960s. Jones’s contributions to Trane’s seminal quartet did more to influence the music than anything he might have accomplished before or since. Jones, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison – they all must have known at the time that Trane was taking them on explorations that were redefining the music.
I turned to my record collection and searched for my favorite Elvin moments from that era. Two albums caught my eye: Africa/Brass, Impulse 6, about which, ironically, I wrote last week; and Coltrane Live at Birdland, Impulse 50. The live LP, particularly the track “Afro-Blue,” exemplifies the way in which Jones drove the quartet to places no other drummer of the era could have taken them. Here’s an excerpt from the original liner notes to this 1963 LP, courtesy of LeRoi Jones: Read more
Today we answer a couple of questions from readers and keep our ongoing eye on eBay.
Q. It always drives me crazy when records don’t list all the musicians. I was recently listening to a copy of The Touch of Tony Scott on the RCA label. The pianist sounded like Bill Evans, but I wasn’t sure. Can you please tell me who is on this album?
A. Good ears. The pianist is Bill Evans, very early in his career. You can hear him very effectively on “Round Midnight.” The album was recorded by three different bands on three dates in 1956. Read more
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 digital technologies. It turns out the pessimism was misguided. The market picked up shortly thereafter, hit another dip again in February and early March, Read more
