Category: Features

Tales from the Inbox and From the Turntable

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Clearing out some old emails and watch list and found this link and note from our friend Clifford: Hank Mobley, Blue Note 1568. The note reads as follows: “Watching this one because it is apparently quite unplayable.” And that it was. The vinyl was listed in G condition, with the caution that it would not play without skipping. The cover was VG- with edge wear and seam splits. I think Clifford sent me the listing when the price was about $150. It would up selling for $810 with 16 bidders. Quite a lot, IMHO, for a record that I wouldn’t put on my turntable, but perhaps the new owner will like to frame it, or have it for investment purposes, figuring that these things are only going up in value, no matter what the condition. Trying not to pass judgment, because collecting is very personal and we all have our passions and idiosyncrasies.

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An Update on Slide Hampton

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I received the following note after posting the link to the Slide Hampton Exodus record.
Hi, Al. Frank Basile here. I’m a baritone saxophonist in NYC. I’ve been a long-time reader of your blog. I was about to post a comment on your most recent post, but I’m not sure about your policies toward including links and promoting things that may be a bit “off subject.” But I wanted to bring to your readers’ attention some current happenings related to Slide Hampton after I read the mention of the Slide Hampton record Exodus in your most recent post. Slide Hampton’s Exodus is a fantastic record. Slide led his wonderful octet from 1959-1962 and they recorded a total of 8 LPs (1 on Strand, 4 on Atlantic, 1 on Epic, 1 on Charlie Parker, and 1 on Philips).
(With Al’s permission) I wanted to share a few things with the JC community related to Slide Hampton and the Slide Hampton Octet:
Over the past few years, I’ve been transcribing Slide’s great arrangements he wrote for this band and we’ve put on a number of concerts. We celebrated Slide’s 85th birthday last year with a weekend at Dizzy’s. I’ve posted a few videos from those gigs here:
We will be performing Slide’s octet music on February 9-10 at Smalls. Info can be found here:
(And for those of you who are interested in checking out the gigs but don’t live in the NYC area, you can live stream the gigs from the Smalls website.)
There’s also some amazing video footage of Slide’s original octet (which was filmed in Paris just days before the Exodus recording) here:
Finally, a very fine trombone player named Peter Lin, who has been helping look after Slide for the past few years, has just started producing an extensive video interview series documenting Slide’s life. He’s set up a fundraiser to defray the costs of the project. More info can be found here:

Guest Column: “Unholy Grails?”

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We have another guest column for you. I will let it speak for itself, although I will admit upfront I’ve never owned or listened to any of the records discussed here.

The Unholy Grail of Jazz Albums
By Lynn E. McCutcheon
najp@embarqmail.com

 Perhaps some of you have heard about the so-called “Holy Grail” list of jazz albums. It consists of some of the rarest and most desirable jazz albums ever made, with an emphasis on LPs made mostly in the 1950s and 60s. There are a large number of entries from the 1500 Blue Note series, a fair number from the 4000 series, and a sprinkling of entries from lesser known labels such as Transition, Signal, and Jazz West. On the rare occasions when these are offered for sale, they command prices that exceed the budget of many collectors.

At another extreme we have some very nice albums from the same time frame that seemingly no one is looking for – records that might fall under the heading of “Unholy Grail.” To my knowledge, all of these are rare, but let me know if you think some of these are actually more common than I think they are. I hope to list and describe a few of these that have fallen into my hands in the last decade or so. A caution – I tend to like MJQ, Sonny Stitt, Ben Webster, Arnett Cobb, Lou Donaldson, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and Buddy Collette, to name a few. If you don’t care for any of these folks you may not like my list. Here are some of my favorites, listed and described in no particular order.

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Back to the Bridge and a Rare Blue Note

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This thing with the Sonny Rollins Bridge is actually picking up a lot of momentum. I am back in Manhattan and I went into my elevator today where there is a television that is always tuned to a local news station and the next thing I know there’s a black and white clip of Sonny as part of a very lengthy feature story about the campaign to rename the Williamsburg Bridge in his honor. Then I got back upstairs and did a Google search and three days ago there was an article in Slate advocating “Why the Williamsburg Bridge Should be Renamed After Sonny Rollins.” I must admit, when I first wrote about this back in June (“The Sonny Rollins Bridge: Why Didn’t We Think of That?”) I thought this was really a pipe dream and not a potential reality. Now, I’ve come full circle into believing that this can actually happen. Hats off to Jeff Caltabiano for coming up with an inspired idea and actually pursuing it. I will reach out to Jeff this week and find out what we can do to help.

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Is There a “50-Year Rule” for Jazz Vinyl?

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Three “victims” of the 50-Year Rule

A few weeks ago I got into an interesting email discussion with one of our loyal readers, Dave Sockel, who sent me an article about the plummeting market value of Elvis Presley collectibles, particularly old Elvis vinyl. Dave’s email came with the subject line: “A cautionary tale for all of us?” This was my reply:

“I remember reading something a few years ago — I think I posted on Jazz Collector — about a “50-year-rule” for artists. Basically, 50 years after the peak of the artist’s popularity and/or death, he or she is all but forgotten and the demand for their stuff starts to really erode. We’ve kind of seen it with the beboppers in Jazz, and a guy like Art Tatum. When I started collecting, Tatum records were collectibles. Not any more.

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A Not-Quite Adventure In Jazz Collecting

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So I placed some bids on the Omega Auctions auction last week. And I struck out completely. There was nothing in the collection that really caught my eye, but I wanted to participate to see if I could perhaps buy something at a lowball price. Part of it was the fun of being in the hunt; part of it was to understand the experience to share with you all here at Jazz Collector. So I went through the entire auction list and marked about a dozen items and put in bids that were low but not completely unreasonably, particularly if the action was light. I wasn’t able to do the auction live, so these were all online bids. If I had been able to do it live, who knows what would have happened. Here’s a bit of a summary: Read more

West Coasting It in The Big Apple

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Well, I never made it to the 43rd Annual Jazz Record Collector’s Bash yesterday. I hope those that did make it had a good time and perhaps found some jazz vinyl or shellac gems. Instead, I wound up reorganizing the records in my New York apartment. Don’t ask. There  was no need to reorganize, I just enjoy doing it. It gives me a chance to re-explore what I have and discover records I either forgot I owned or purchased or, for some reason, never got around to putting on the turntable. Yesterday, the record that wound up going on the turntable for the first time was Richie Kamuca Quartet on Mode, Mode LP 102. No idea why I chose this because Kamuca is not someone I’ve really listened closely to very often. Turns out to be an excellent record, with Carl Perkins on piano, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Stan Level on drums, recorded in June 1957 in Hollywood.

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The Sonny Rollins Bridge: Why Didn’t We think of That?

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It felt so good clearing out portions of my inbox yesterday, I’m going to the same today, starting with a couple of items about one of my heroes, Sonny Rollins. The first comes from an article by Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker from April 5. (I told you I was way behind on my email). It is about a movement, now in its early stages, to rename the Williamsburg Bridge in honor of Sonny. The Sonny Rollins Bridge: Now this is an idea we can all get behind. The idea is the brainchild of a guy named Jeff Caltabiano, who has established something called The Sonny Rollins Bridge Project. When we get a chance we will reach out and find out if he has made any progress. Read more

An Old Fashioned Jazz Vinyl Auction

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Here’s an interesting opportunity: An auction house in the U.K. is auctioning a private jazz collection on Tuesday June 27 and there are options for individuals to bid live, either online or by telephone. The auction house is Omega Auctions and music is one of the areas in which they specialize. The collection belonged to a collector named B.W. Duncan and, of you are interested, you can read his bio here. As for the records themselves: There are quite a large number of Blue Notes, offered as individual pieces, such as Eric Dolphy Out To Lunch or Herbie Hancock My Point of View. There are also Blue Note packages sold in lots, such as an Art Blakey lot or a Horace Silver/Lee Morgan lot. Many of the records in the collection are U.K. pressings. It looks like there are 260 lots in all. It’s worth taking a look at the auction, but make sure to read the instructions if you want to bid because you have to set things up in advance and you have to pay some fairly hefty fees. Read more

To Buy (It Now), Or Not to Buy (It Now)

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Regular contributor Daryl Parks posed an interesting question about auctions versus buy-it-now listings on eBay. From the beginning here at Jazz Collector we have focused on auctions. Not sure why, but that was how I always did business on eBay, when I did do business on eBay, both as a buyer and as a seller. Daryl was helping a friend with some listings of jazz records, and the friend preferred buy-it-now, particularly for what he described as “big ticket” items, in this case original Blue Note pressings from Curtis Fuller and Jutta Hipp. His explanation, as explained by Daryl: “Buy-it-now attracts different types of buyers who prefer to avoid roller-coasters and unpredictability while resulting in predictable outcomes for the seller; he has always had great success with this approach.” Read more

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