Category: Features

Where’s The Reader Forum?

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Ok, I’m back, and thanks to everyone for your best wishes. I haven’t been on eBay in days and I’m not ready to begin blogging now, but I have to say I’m thrilled to see that the site went on just fine without me: Perhaps even better. This is what I had envisioned when I started Jazz Collector, a community where we can all chat and ask one another questions, and share both the passion for the collecting as well as the passion for the music. Anyway, necessity was the mother of invention, and the idea of the Reader Forum took hold and now I’ve made it a permanent part of the site. So, to find the new Reader Forum just go to the top of the page and there it is right between Hot Topics and About. I’ve also had it enhanced so that the most recent comments are on top, so you don’t have to scroll down every time to see what’s new. Thanks to everyone who commented on the site and kept things going and please, please, please don’t stop now simply because I’m back.  I can’t wait to read it all.

The Gift of Jazz

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When I was six my parents took me to a jazz show somewhere in New York. I think it was the Palladium, but my memory doesn’t stretch back far enough to remember the exact location. I do remember that there was George Shearing on the bill and I didn’t understand how a blind man could play the piano. How did he know what to play without seeing the keys? And there was the Miles Davis quintet or sextet, and I’m pretty sure I saw Trane when I was six. I wish I could have appreciated it. The education in jazz from my parents continued. There were Sunday afternoon concerts at the Village Gate — Jazz Interactions, they were called — and brunches and late afternoon shows at the Five Spot and the Red Garter, all when I was pre-teen and early teen. I remember my father going up to Kenny Burrell and asking if he’d give me lessons. That was not cool. Anyway, Burrell was warm and friendly and I noticed in my collection the other day an autographed copy of Blue Bash!, Kenny Burrell with Jimmy Smith on Verve signed: “To Diane and Hal, Best Wishes, Kenny Burrell.”  All of which is a roundabout way of saying how much I appreciate this great gift my parents gave me and that I am quite sad to report that my mom just passed away unexpectedly. I will be taking a few days off from Jazz Collector, so there will be no new posts from me, but I am hopeful that you guys can fill in the slack. I will post an item right after I post this called: Reader Forum. Please use this to post new comments and keep an eye on eBay and keep the conversation going while I step away for a few days. Thanks.

What Makes a Collectible a Collectible?

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In another post (A Visit To A Record Store, Part 2), Jan poses an interesting question, addressed to experienced and serious collectors: What do you consider to be collectible and how do you decide if a second pressing of a record is collectible or not?

I am not, I must admit, among the most serious of collectors. I know this sounds odd coming from the guy who writes about jazz records every day, pores over eBay listings to decide which records to put in the Price Guide and writes articles under the headline “Confessions of a Vinyl Addict.”

However, and this gets to Jan’s point: The copy of Saxophone Colossus in my collection is a Bergenfield, N.J. pressing. Same with Tenor Madness. I have the Bergenfield copies, they are in great condition, they have yellow labels, this is enough for me. I have the music in an early pressing, it sounds great, I’m OK. Would I like a New York pressing of both of these records? Yes. Would I ever obsess about it? No. Would I ever pay the going rate on eBay for them? Not a chance.

The people I’ve always considered to be “serious collectors” wouldn’t accept these second pressings and are constantly hunting for the original pressings and would not be content with anything but an original. I do think, however, things are changing and the

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More Confessions of a Vinyl Act, Part 3

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OK. The crisis has passed. As relapses go, it was relatively harmless. I did not log onto eBay and search for every missing Blue Note and bid like a madman. I did not head into Manhattan armed with enough cash and credit cards to buy out the Jazz Record Center. I didn’t really do anything except lose a night’s sleep and move a bunch of Jimmy Smith records from one shelf to another.

As I am left to ponder this latest chapter in my ongoing struggle with vinyl addiction, I believe what I had was not a relapse of vinyl addiction but something more akin to a full blown existential crisis. Why am I here, what am I doing, why do I have 10,000 records, why do I care if a single one of those records has a New York USA address on the label rather than a 767 Lexington Avenue address? You know, the usual kind of existential crisis.

The trigger was the cataloging of the Blue Notes and the process of

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More Confessions of A Vinyl Addict, Part 2

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ReissuesOK, so I got to the JJ Johnson record and realized it was a New York USA pressing, and then I got to Blue Note 1513, Thad Jones, Detroit-New York Junction, and realized it was a Japanese pressing, and then I got to Blue Note 1515, Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House Volume 1, and realized, hey, I don’t own that record at all.

I knew all of that. I knew I didn’t have a complete original collection of Blue Notes. I knew I wasn’t even close to having a complete collection of original Blue Notes. I knew I never aspired to having a complete collection of original Blue Notes. But I felt compelled to go on, to go through the entire 1500 series and know exactly what I had

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More Confessions of a Vinyl Addict, Part 1

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Friends, my name is Al and I am a vinyl addict. It is necessary for me to confess once again because I have had yet another setback. Remember my mission to pare down my collection, which I have labeled The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown? Well, as part of that endeavor I decided it would be wise to take inventory of my records so that I would know what I actually have, in intimate detail: Record, condition, provenance, value. I had never actually done this before, so yesterday I set up a spreadsheet and began the process. I started, naturally, with the Blue Notes, the 1500 series, Blue Note 1501, Miles Davis Volume 1. I pulled the record off the shelf, looked at the record, cleaned it, typed the information into the spreadsheet, put it back on the shelf and then pulled the second record, Blue Note 1502, Miles Davis Volume 2. Same deal: Looked at the record, cleaned it, wrote it down, then moved on to the next record.

What a mistake.

I was moving along fine through the first eight records in the

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WFMU Record Fair: A Brief Report

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So I did go to the WFMU Record Fair on Sunday. I’ve attached a picture to prove it. I didn’t buy any records. My goal with Record Shows has traditionally been to find bargains. You often get dealers who don’t know anything about jazz vinyl, and sometimes they under-price the records, and sometimes they are just trying to get rid of records, and sometimes they are happy to bargain so they don’t have to take the records home. There have also been many times where I’ve met collectors who really didn’t know the value of their records, and they underpriced everything that they had. I’ve written here about the guy who had a bunch of original Blue Notes and Prestiges and just priced everything at $5, including a mint copy of

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Jazz Vinyl Countdown? HAH!

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So much for whittling down my collection. Last night, I bought another batch of albums, about 300 altogether. So, let’s see: Since I started this Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown two weeks ago, I’ve decided to sell 12 records. In that same period, I’ve managed to purchase 300 records, for a net gain of 288 records. At the rate I’m going, in three years I’ll have a half a million records and I’ll be living in a straitjacket. In any case, there is a story behind the purchase of these records, which I will tell. A couple of weeks ago I accompanied the lovely Mrs. Jazz Collector to a party of her colleagues. She told me there would be many other spouses there.  She was wrong: There were three others, and two of them fell asleep before the hors d’oeuvres were served. So that left me and another guy. We started chatting. I told him about Jazz Collector. “Really,” he said. “I’m moving to California in two weeks and I was thinking about selling my jazz collection.” “Really,” I said. “This could be

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The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown

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I counted my records the other day. At least I counted most of them. I didn’t count the 78s and I didn’t count the ones in storage. The ones in storage are all to be sold and the 78s are, well, 78s. No matter. The point is this. I have more records than I want. I have them in four separate rooms in two separate homes. I have records I have owned for more than 25 years and have never put on a turntable. I have records by artists I don’t especially like. I have collected them because I am a collector. It is what I do. That is why my site is called Jazz Collector.

I counted the records because I have made a fairly momentous decision, and that decision is this: I am going to get rid of many of them. This is heresy, is it not? These are my friends, all hand selected personally by me. I have invited them into my home, to share my space, to give me comfort and joy in times of stress or sorrow. And they have served me well, all of them, in whatever way they could.

But the time has come to part ways with many of them. Why?

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Happy Birthday, Cannonball

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Thank you to Don-Lucky for pointing out that this would have been Cannonball Adderley’s 81st birthday. I’ll never forget where I was when Cannonball died back in August 1975. I was driving my car in Auburn, N.Y., where I was just breaking in as a newspaper reporter. I had to pull over to compose myself. Cannonball was always a big figure for me because he was a favorite of my father’s and I saw him a few times as a kid and also because the album Live At The Lighthouse was the first or second record that really set me on the path to becoming a jazz fan and, eventually, a jazz collector. For my money, after Bird there was Cannon on alto and then a big gap to whoever would be next. I’ve been putting records on eBay lately, a lot of duplicates, and I listen to parts of them before I post them. Every time I put on a Cannonball record, particularly the early ones on Mercury, I am surprised and amazed once again at just how much he had under his fingers and how naturally he swung and how everything he did was just great. So, Happy Birthday, indeed. By the way,

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