Category: Features

Another Adventure in Jazz Collecting, Baltimore Part 1

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On Thursday, Nov. 14, 2103, I received the following e-mail:

“Hello Al,

When our father passed away, my siblings and I inherited our Uncle Bruce’s jazz record collection. It’s roughly 1,000 records and spans from the mid ‘50s to the mid ‘70s. Apparently our uncle was a serious collector, the rumor is that we only got part of the collection. However, the part we have isn’t bad from what I can tell, because it includes the following Artists/Titles that currently appear in articles on your site: John Coltrane/Blue Train; John Coltrane/Soultrane; Wynton Kelly/Kelly at Midnight; Hank Mobley/Mobley’s 2nd Message; Sonny Rollins/Saxophone Colossus.

We are selling the entire collection. Please let me know if you’re interested or have any suggestions about the best/most efficient way to reach the target audience.

Best regards,

Rob (Baltimore, MD)”

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Comic-al, But not Very funny

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A reader sent me a copy of this sobering article: Those Comics in Your Basement? Probably Worthless. It tells the story of the plight of collectors of comic books who have seen the collections vanish into virtual nothingness. There’s the story of one collector who thought his collection was worth about $23,000 when, in reality, it was worth probably less than $500. Of course, there are the exceptions — the beautiful, pristine, blue-chip first issues. We’ve seen a similar path in the jazz vinyl market, where the run-of-the-mill pressings are now pretty much worthless, while the high-end collectibles seem to getting more and more valuable as the years pass by. But we also see that the list of what is deemed “collectible” changes as well, although the original Blue Notes seem to be invulnerable to any downturns. Some records by more traditional artists, thinking of the Verve, Clef and Norgran labels for example, seem to have declined in value and/or interest among collectors over the years that we’ve been watching the market. What do you think? Time to start thinking about selling that old vinyl while the demand is still high, or will the high-end collectibles continue to be a solid investment, not just musically but financially as well? Or do you even care as long as you have the music? Seems to me, anyone paying collectible prices for rare records these days is not just doing it for the music, but with the expectation that the records will at least maintain their value and, hopefully, continue to increase in value.

Oh Little Label of Bethlehem

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mal waldronThere’s so much nice jazz vinyl on eBay now my eyes are crossed just looking. This is the first one that caught my eye: Mal Waldron, Left Alone, Bethlehem 6045. This was an original pressing in M- condition for the record and probably VG+ for the cover. It just sold moments ago for $999.99. It’s funny, because I woke up this morning thinking about doing a post on the Bethlehem label, similar to the ones I did last week on Riverside and New Jazz. Then I realized I am not familiar enough with the entire Bethlehem catalogue to make a really strong list. Not only do I not own this Mal record, I also don’t own the Roland Kirk Third Dimension record, nor the Booker Ervin Book Cooks record, nor the Charlie Mariano Sextet record, nor, as earlier noted, the Jimmy Knepper record with Bill Evans. I am certainly Bethlehem-deprived in my collection. Of the ones that I know and like, my favorites are:

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A Trip To a Record Store

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I had the opportunity to be in Princeton, NJ. yesterday. My son was involved as associate director of a production of “Into the Woods” (check out the New York Times review), and I was there to see the play. Naturally, I made it my business to arrive early and pay a visit to the Princeton Record Exchange. Now, I must admit, despite my relatively close geographic proximity to Princeton, I hadn’t been to the Princeton Record Exchange in years. A couple of reasons: I had found that they were a bit high priced when they had major collectibles and, more relevantly, they had always had this nasty habit of placing really sticky, hard-to-remove labels directly on the covers of records. I can often go through the records in my collection and know by the label tears which ones I purchased at the Princeton Record Exchange. At some point, I decided it wasn’t worth buying records and then getting upset because I was ruining the covers because my fingernails weren’t long enough to really get under their stupid labels. We collectors have our own idiosyncrasies, don’t we? Wonder if anyone else has had the same issue with Princeton Record Exchange? In any case, I arrived there yesterday afternoon at Read more

The Girls on the Vinyl

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Saw this interesting movie yesterday called “The Girls in the Band.” It’s a documentary about female jazz musicians, not vocalists, from early jazz through today. So naturally, my reaction on walking out of the theater is that I wanted to write something about it for Jazz Collector and, of course, my focus would be on collectible records by female jazz artists.  I was taxing my brain to come up with the most valuable jazz record by female artists and all I could come up with were the Toshiko Akiyoshi records on Storyville and Norgran. So I got up this morning, did a search by price on the Jazz Collector Price Guide and the obvious records came up right away: The Jutta Hipp records on Blue Note, particularly Blue Note 1530 with Zoot Sims. Duh. I didn’t think of these immediately because, surprisingly, Jutta Hipp was not one of the artists mentioned in the film. After the Jutta Hipp records, what’s the next highest priced record by a female artist in the Jazz Collector Price Guide? Take a guess. Hint: It’s not one that I thought of.

The “Infamous” Junkie Cover?

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Once again we will travel to France for today’s post thanks to our friend CeeDee, who seems to be inspiring a few of our reports lately. This one concerns this record: Miles Davis Group, Barclay 84.018. This was an original 10-inch French pressing that looked to be in VG++ condition for the record and VG+ for the cover. It consists of music from the Prestige “Dig” date, featuring Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean. In his note to me, CeeDee described this as “the infamous junkie cover.” I had to confess my ignorance. I had never seen this cover before, nor had I ever heard of the picture and the reference to a junkie cover. I asked CeeDee what he knew. Apparently, he doesn’t know much in terms of details but said he’s always heard that’s how this particular cover was usually referenced by collectors and the image has rarely been produced in any format. He suggests that some of our European readers will have what he describes as the “grim details.” So let’s put it out there and see what comes back. The record sold for $577.89, by the way. I have a feeling after this post and subsequent comments, the value may go up even higher. I will say I, for one, am newly intrigued by this record.
Separately, CeeDee sent me these followup excerpts to set the mood of the times:

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Another Story

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So I said there would be another birthday story from yesterday and here it is:

About a week ago, you may recall, I posted an item about a lovely Phil Woods 10-inch record on the New Jazz label (Of Prestiges and Great Tenor Records). I mentioned that this would be of particular interest to a good friend, who has a passion for both 10-inch LPs and Phil Woods. That friend is the oft-mentioned Dan Axelrod and when he saw that post he emailed me a listing of yet another 10-inch Phil Woods record from the same era, and that was called Encores, the Phil Woods New Jazz Quintet, Prestige 191. And Dan told me that this is the record that has been at the top of his want list for years, and that it should also be at the top of my want list. Why? Well, in looking longingly at this record over the course of many years, Dan discovered that it was actually recorded on February 4, 1955. That was the exact date of my second birthday. Which was cool enough. But, in addition, there was actually a song on this record called “Toos Bloos.”  Get it: Too’s Blues and I was two on the day it was recorded. Well, to be honest, that coincidence didn’t do all that much for me, but for Dan it was a sign. I had to own this record. It was “my” record. And, if I had even one shred of a doubt, Dan told me one more fact that seemed to be the clincher that this was, indeed, a signal from a power far greater than any of us that this was “my” record and I must, at any cost, own it: Read more

A Story Goes With It

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You may recall several weeks ago I wrote a post for The Lovely Mrs. JC. It wasn’t entirely altruistic: She was seeking help from the Jazz Collector community in acquiring a birthday gift for me, preferably an original Blue Note that would fill a gap in my collection (A Blue Note Birthday). Helping her was, of course, helping myself. Well, it is a milestone birthday and the day has arrived and, as you can see from the accompanying picture, my birthday wish has been fulfilled, quite nicely I must say. I also promised I would tell you the story that went with the gift, so here it is, or at least as much as I can ascertain from The Lovely Mrs. JC. I will say that after my plea to the Jazz Collector community there was hardly a groundswell of enthusiasm. The Lovely Mrs. JC received one email. About a week after the initial post I asked her how it was going and she said not so well, so I put up another subtle reminder or two on Jazz Collector. Perhaps I was too subtle, for nothing came in. I gave her an updated wish list with a couple more records and she told me she would follow up with the one person who responded and we decided to leave it at that and I was not to ask about it anymore, lest I run the risk of ruining any suprise. She didn’t

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A Blue Note Birthday?

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The Lovely Mrs. JC has asked me to write a post for her. It seems that someone quite close to Jazz Collector  has a major birthday coming up in the next few weeks and, when this person, who happens to be typing this post, was asked what he would like as a gift for this momentous occasion he replied, naturally, that he would love an original Blue Note to fill in a gap in his collection. Oh, something like Shades of Redd, or Cliff Craft, or Blowing in From Chicago, or Cliff Jordan, or any of the Thad Jones Blue Notes, or Davis Cup, or John Jenkins and Kenny Burrell, or either of the Louis Smith Blue Notes, or Lou Donaldson Quartet, Quintet, Sextet. Any of those would make quite a handsome birthday gift, don’t you think? Now, despite all of these years of being married to a Jazz Collector, the Lovely Mrs. JC really doesn’t know how to go about finding of these rare items, other than walking into the Jazz Record Center and asking Fred, which she may do when the time comes. However, she also thought that someone out there in the Jazz Collector community might want to help her in this search, perhaps someone who is planning to list one of these records on eBay and would prefer selling it to her at a fair market price, knowing that it would end up in the hands of a most appreciate Jazz Collector. Or perhaps someone with a duplicate copy. In addition to asking me to write this post, she also has set up her own email, mrsjc(at)jazzcollector.com, so that if anyone would wish to take her up on this quest, they can communicate with her directly and not spoil any potential surprise. So, having written this post, I have done my part. After Feb. 4  I will let you know what, if anything, transpires.

 

Jazz Collector’s Greatest Hits

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I was having trouble sleeping the other night and clicked on to Jazz Collector on my iPad to look and see if there were any comments or any other activity. There wasn’t much, so I started browsing around the site. How did I browse around the site? Good question. It’s not really that well designed for browsing, is it? If I wanted to look at, say, what makes an original Blue Note and original Blue Note, I would have to do a search on “Blue Note,” which would bring up just about every post over the past eight years. At some point I will put the time in to make it more browser-friendly. In the meantime, what I did was I clicked over to the right side of the page where it lists all of the Archives, month by month, and I picked random months and just went down from the top, looking at any article that piqued my interest. It was actually quite fun – particularly looking at some of the articles that generated a lot of comments from the community. It was kind of like a Jazz Collector’s Greatest Hits, going from post to post, not necessarily focusing just on which records are selling for how much money on eBay. I would suggest you do the same thing and see (and share), which posts capture your attention. Here are some of the random posts I settled upon:

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