Another Adventure in Jazz Collecting, Baltimore Part 4

I was all set to drive down to Baltimore on Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. But there were a few problems. First, I couldn’t sleep. My mind could not shut down from thinking about the records. Were they originals? Would they be in good condition?  Was I paying too much? How would I pay for them? Did I want to carry all that cash to Baltimore? Which car would I use to get them? Would it be big enough? What if it wasn’t? Would I need to bring boxes for the records? Where would I put the records when I got home? How would I sort them out? How would I get them into the car if the car were already filled with records from the WFMU Record Fair? These were just a few of the thousands of questions swirling inside my brain.

So one problem was the lack of sleep. Then there was the idea that if I were somehow able to get the records before Friday, I could bring some of them to the WFMU Record Fair and recoup some of my investment immediately. The Lovely Mrs. JC was a strong proponent of this idea. Wisely, she has always been the one managing money in our household. If it had been me in charge, we would likely have 30,000 records, and not just a mere 10,000 records. And we’d be broke.

But I still needed a car to carry the records. Fortunately my niece has a Toyota Highlander, which I had used previously to haul about 1,500 records. I arranged to pick that up on Tuesday, so I had the option of going down before Friday if I wanted. Wednesday was out of the question because I had work projects to complete, but Thursday was a possibility. I reached out to Rob in Baltimore. Thursday during the day wasn’t great for him. I wrote back: What about the evening? Sure, he said, anytime after 6:30 p.m. If I were to drive down and arrive at 6:30 p.m. and spend two hours looking at the records and loading them, then drive back to New York, I could expect to be back home in the range of midnight on the early side and 1 a.m. on the late side. But I’d have so much adrenaline flowing I probably wouldn’t even notice the drive. Besides, I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so getting home late, with the records in hand, was probably better for my health than simply staying home and obsessing about the records. So I sent Rob back a note saying that I would be there around 6:30 in the evening on Thursday. Fine, he wrote back. He was looking forward to it.

After another sleepless night on Wednesday, Thursday was finally at hand. At about 2 p.m. I put the leash on my dog Marty and got into the car and headed to the Lincoln Tunnel for the trek to Baltimore, which I figured to be at least 4 hours during rush hour. You may remember Marty as my good luck charm from when I bought the Iriving Kalus collection. No way was Marty staying behind. The trip to Baltimore was uneventful. I was able to grab a bite along the way and still arrive at Rob’s place at about 6:15. I called him up to tell him I was there and he said to meet him in the back. It was a small apartment/office building. I pulled up to the back and met Rob there. We went down a short corridor and up a couple of small flights of stairs. Not the best for hauling boxes of heavy records, but there was nothing we could do about that. Once I got to the apartment, I put Marty in his crate and took a look around.

The records were in brown boxes from Home Depot, the kind you might use if you were moving books. They weren’t all that sturdy and I was glad that I had brought five sturdy record boxes from home. I had counted about 200 collectible records from the list that Rob had sent me. My plan was to isolate the collectible records, put those in my boxes and bring them back up to the apartment when I got back to New York. I would leave the rest of the records in the car for a few days until I was able to drive them up to the house in The Berkshires, where there would be enough room to unload them and sort through them. I was going to use a separate car completely to haul records to and from the WFMU Record Fair.

I looked at all of the boxes on the floor. It looked like a lot more records than I had seen on the list. I could see immediately why Rob wanted to get rid of all of these boxes at one time. I could also see that they wouldn’t easily fit in the car. Before I even began looking at the records, I asked Rob if it would be OK if I didn’t take the classical boxes with me. I told him that I would just donate them to Goodwill anyway, so if he could do that, it would be very helpful. Sure, he said. No problem. The classical boxes were taken care of.

Oh, yes, Rob said, there were also these three other boxes. Boxes he had forgotten about and hadn’t included on this list. He wasn’t even sure what they contained. I opened the top of one of the boxes. I saw two things. A broken 78 and an intact 78. Both were on the Prestige label. I looked further into the boxes. More 78s, more Prestiges, all intact, none broken.  I asked Rob if it would be OK if I took the three new boxes instead of the classical boxes, assuming I had room in the car. Sure, he said. No problem.

Now I was prepared to look at the jazz records, which were on the other side of the room from the classical boxes and the boxes of 78s. One box was a little smaller than the others. I grabbed that one first. It was filled with 10-inch LPs. I pulled out the first record. Miles Davis, Volume 2, Blue Note 5022. My hands were trembling with excitement as I turned the record to its side, looked the cover over carefully on both sides, and pulled the record from its jacket. This would be the first test of whether the drive down to Baltimore was a complete waste of time or an opportunity to buy a jazz collection that I could potentially treasure for the rest of my life. I gently took the record from its cover and pulled it over to the nearest light.

What happened next? Stay tuned for Part 5 tomorrow.