Category: Features

Another Adventure, Part 4: Ornette, Monk, Dee and Me

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Bobby Bradford

Dee had already been in contact with a guy who has a record store in Maine. He was disappointed that I wound up with the records. He had no way to know and didn’t realize, I’m sure, I had no intention of keeping them all. Dee put him in touch with me and we arranged for him to come to The Berkshires and make an offer for whatever he wanted. We struck a deal and he took about  220 records, including many of the rock and blues records. There were probably about 400 jazz records left. I reached out to a friend who owns a record store around here and invited him to take a look and make an offer. He came, but didn’t take anything. He did, however, bring a friend who did buy a few choice items, including the two Monk Blue Notes, which, for the record, were not original pressings but early West 63rd labels. Read more

Another Adventure, Part 3: Ornette, Monk, Dee and Me

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Dizzy

It was a Thursday when I went to Dee’s, the week before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States. Before I left Dee’s with my five records and four-hour drive, we had one last conversation as I was getting into my car. For a variety of reasons, Dee needed to sell the records by the Spring, hopefully in the May/June time frame. She was concerned that Spring would come and she would still have the records. I told her not to worry; if she still had the records in the Spring, I would drive back, pay her a fair price and take the records so she wouldn’t have to be concerned. She offered on the spot for me to take them all, sell them at my own pace and then pay her later. She was obviously comfortable placing a lot of trust in me, but I politely declined. I didn’t want that much responsibility, tempting as it may have been. Read more

Another Adventure, Part 2: Ornette, Monk, Dee and Me

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Gerry Mulligan

It was probably mid-November when I made my way north to Dee’s. She lives up, up, up a mountain and, with the early snow in that part of the world, I was fortunate to have a four-wheel drive vehicle, otherwise there may have been no story to tell at all. Dee has this fantastic house that she designed and helped build, with views overlooking the mountains, and everything in the home is bursting with creativity and creative energy, including furniture that she also designed. Not to mention the vinyl.

Dee and I got along right off the bat, as you can probably tell. We’re around the same age and we both love jazz, so that was a good start. She told me a bit of her life story, I told her a bit of mine, we chatted, I got a brief tour of the house and then we went to the room with the records. There were 5-6 long shelves with records, I guessed about 1,000 or 1,200 records in all. They were not all jazz records. There were classical, a little rare gospel and blues, and a big section of contemporary Latin and Brazilian – her own carefully curated collection. Read more

Another Adventure, Part 1: Ornette, Monk, Dee and Me

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I owe you all a story.

It started last Halloween. A new commenter on Jazz Collector, who identified herself as Dee Dee, submitted the following:“I am Ornette’s stepdaughter – raised with Monk in the house frequently. I’m needing now to part with his and my mother’s vinyl collection, AND my original silver gelatin art photography – an AUTOGRAPHED edition of one single print of these historic musicians:

Count Basie
Miles Davis
Dizzy Gillespie
Horace Silver
Art Blakey and Billy Higgins
Gil Evans
Gerry Mulligan
Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams
Abbey Lincoln
Gato Barbieri
Pharaoh Sanders
Charlie Haden
Ernie Andrews
Mal Waldron
Steve McCall
Charlie Rouse
Freddie Greene
Bobby Bradford
Bela Fleck
Buster Williams
Chico Freeman and Pacquito d’Rivera
Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Gomez
Milton Nascimento
Djavan
Joao Bosco
Ivan Lins
Airto Moreira
Jose “Cheo” Feliciano
Francisco Aguabella
Willie Colon
Yomo Toro
Dave Valentin
Papo Lucca
Yolanda Rivera” Read more

How Do You Listen?

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Lots of philosophical/existential comments on the previous post, which we all love, or at least some of us, or at least me.  I have another one: What do you actually listen to and how do you listen? For myself, I have two primary listening modes. One is really listening, which is sitting down with no other distractions, no devices, no cell phones, no iPads, no books or magazines, putting a record on the turntable, actively listening and concentrating solely on the music. When I do this, vinyl is the only choice and I would say, at this stage of my life, I don’t do this as often as I would like and, when I do, my choices are typically records that I already know and music I am familiar with. I can’t tell you exactly why, but I think it is because I don’t do this frequently enough and, when I do listen to my favorite records, it feels like I am reuniting with old friends, and it’s a great feeling. The other night, for example, I had about three hours I was able to devote to listening, which was a somewhat extraordinary event. I didn’t put a single record on the turntable that wasn’t an old friend. I started with Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street; moved on the Sonny Rollins Plus Four; Roland Kirk, Volunteered Slavery, the live side at Newport; Thelonious Monk, Criss-Cross; Dave Brubeck plays Bernstein, the West Side story side; then I was in the mood for a vocal, so I went with Ray Charles and Betty Carter. It was a lovely way to spend an evening and, after doing so, I vowed to myself to do it more often. Read more

Japan Record Shopping, Part 3: Back to Tokyo

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The stairwell leading to the 4th floor at Disk Union Shibuya

By Steven Frost

After our rest in the mountains of Hakone I was excited to explore metropolitan Tokyo. When we arrived in Shibuya and got settled in I merely Google-mapped Disk Union and assumed following the search results would lead me to the correct destination. Along the way I came across the jazz bar Dug, a name I knew from separate recordings by Albert Manglesdorff and Mal Waldron. Unfortunately it was Dug in name only, with drinks and a cover charge, but no live music. A few blocks passed Dug, unlike so many of my other searches in Japan, I actually found the store on the first try, located in the heart of Shibuya with no trouble at all. Disk Union Shibuya is a multi- story affair with each floor dedicated to a different genre of music. The stairwell leading to F4, jazz and blues, certainly filled me with a sense of expectation. Read more

Japan Record Shopping, Part Two: In Search of Jazz Bars and Vinyl

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Roots Records in Takamatsu

By Steven Frost

I was really pleasantly surprised when the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kyoto to Osaka arrived at Osaka Central Station after no more than a 15-20 minute ride. We put our stuff in the room and headed out for Minami, one of Osaka’s main commercial areas, adjacent to Little America, an Osaka neighborhood with a reputation for being young and cool. Minami was the first place I’d been in Japan that wasn’t spotless, and it was super touristy and overcrowded. My daughter quickly became consumed with shopping, with my wife in a supporting role, but my threshold for clothes shopping, while longer than when marriage first began rubbing off all my sharp edges, is still limited. I put “jazz bar” into Google Maps and lo and behold, there was a hit a mere three minute walk down the main shopping drag and up a side street to Jazz Bar Top Rank. I did my now well- rehearsed up and down the street “where the hell is this place?” before finding the staircase and heading to the second floor. Read more

Guest Column: Japan Record Shopping, Part One, Or How to Manage a Dense, Unwieldy Carry-On

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Hard Bop Records, Kyoto

Overall view of Hard Bop Records, Kyoto, with many nice records on the wall, many more at the front not shown

I’m Steven Frost, a longtime reader of Jazz Collector and jazz music aficionado. I reached out to Al to see if he’d be interested in me writing about my jazz record-related adventures on a family summer trip to Japan. Initially my computer had some keyboard issues after arrival and it looked like I’d need to wait until I returned to the States to document the trip, yet a couple of days ago my Macbook keyboard miraculously healed itself. It must be related to all the wonderful temples we have visited since arriving here.

I looked forward to this trip for a long time, having spent many years in China, but never having the opportunity for an extended trip to Japan. My first encounter with the Japanese appreciation for jazz had come as a college student in 1991. Not long after settling in my dorm room in Beijing I was playing something by Coltrane on a boombox when a knock came on the door. It was a Japanese student I’d never met who looked at me and only said, “Coltrane.” Then he took me by the arm and walked me down the hall to his room and opened the door. My eyes were greeted by a large Impulse era poster of Coltrane he’d obviously brought from home, sitting on a large tripod by his desk. I have purchased a number of records from Japanese sellers over the years and also have a fondness for Japanese phono cartridges, but was very curious to see if my impression of Japan as a jazz loving country, one developed from afar, would be reinforced by an actual visit here.

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Guest Column, Part 2: “How I Got Over”

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Here’s Part 2 from our friend Lenni Bukowski.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”  – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Nothing will ever take the place of you.“ Well, if you’re a collector, something has to, correct?! I mean, all this energy/devotion has to go somewhere. I began the first post quoting from Mr. A‘s email to me wherein he touched on an important part of ceasing to collect records: “How to find a place in our lives for the passion we get by collecting, listening and playing jazz.” The realization that I could exist without being a “record boy” was similar to the one depicted by Harvey Pekar in American Splendor #4, “How I Quit Collecting Records and Put Out A Comic Book With The Money I Saved.”

Yet, I had no inclination to produce a comic book. Nor did I wish to follow the example of an acquaintance, Bruno Johnson, who sold his record collection to finance the start of a CD label, Okka Disc. So, I faced a decision; in Gurdjieffian thought, what do I want to be? Now, this time around.

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Guest Column: Dancing in Your Head

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Greetings to all. I’m Lenni Bukowski, whose comments under the moniker of Lennib you may have read, although recent ones may have been anathema as they dealt with dissolution rather than accumulation. I have also been emailing Al on the matter of disposing due to his post of May 3rd, 2015, titled ‘See You in Brooklyn? Not Anymore.’  He suggested  “Why don’t you write a post or two on your experiences…how to find a place in our lives for the passion we get by collecting, listening and playing jazz.”

I believe I have always been a collector of some sort, of something. Baseball cards, books, stamps, coins, toy soldiers. And looking back, I outgrew all of them over time. Being Chicago born, I had always been riding the subway or buses when I was old enough to and on one such journey of exploration in 1963 or ‘64, I walked into the Jazz Record Mart, 7 West Grand, and immediately heard a sound that would stay with me always. I asked the clerk, dig now, a hipster for real, red haired, goatee’d, all in black, beret’d, what was playing over the speakers. The reply came, with hipster hauteur, “That’s Bird, man.” Seeing a look of befuddlement, he took pity on a youngster and said that’s Charlie Parker.

And off I went. Read more

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