“The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence”

When I was actively collecting jazz records, a period that lasted from 1995 to early 2000s, I usually tried to avoid such bona fide places as JRM or JRC in NY. Why? Because practice showed those specialist places lacked the element of surprise.

The word “digging” is now very popular with record chasers and in this sense, I didn’t believe one could have a good score in one of those places. Everything had been “pre-dug” for your arrival. All the gems had been found, appropriately priced, and the affordable records would be those that could be found cheaper elsewhere.

On my first Chicago visit a year earlier, I made every effort to avoid JRM. The city was full of other great shops with strong selections that, in my opinion, would rival if not beat those in NYC on an average day. But on that day, I had a little time to kill before a group dinner in downtown Chicago, so I popped into JRM.

I was making my way through lots of overpriced records in the bins that looked like they had been there forever. I got tired, slightly annoyed and distracted. My theory seemed to prove itself. I started just walking around the place and ended up in the back room.

At the long counter, an older (well, in comparison with other employees) gentleman was going through a couple of big piles of jazz lps. My blood rushed to my brain when I had just one glance at the piles. I asked whether those were available. The owner (it was likely him) said no, but also he seemed to be in the good mood at that moment, and he said he might as well just start pricing those. So, he began, right in front of me, and I was free to take the records straight from his hands. What a treat!

There were a few Blue Notes, Chet Bakers and others on PJ, some more obscure Atlantics like Lee Konitz “Inside Hi-Fi” that I had been chasing for a while, and so on… Most were really, really clean. What stunned me the most was that the prices he was putting on the records right in front of me seemed ridiculously low in comparison to what I had just seen in the bins. At one point he said: “If there’s a record that should be $85, it’s this one”, and he put the sticker on the Jane Fielding Jazz West 5. That record looked only VG+ to me so I passed, holding on to the pile where everything was cheaper, mostly way cheaper than that. The most expensive item in my pile was one of the Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House volumes, a beautiful flat edge Lex with the frame cover priced at the whopping $75. Everything else was downhill from that.

I ended up passing on the PJ Chet Bakers only to be pulling my hair for years after that. You know, those copies were super clean in great clean unsplit covers (which are the bigger challenge in the early 12″ PJ series) but I constantly encountered those clean early PJs with the strange glare to the grooves, which always made me suspect the groove wear. I passed on many over the years due to that fear but now I think I wasn’t right about the wear. Those Chets were priced at $50 each, which was on a higher end in my view at the time. In retrospect, those ended up being the cleanest affordable copies of the “and Crew” and “in Europe” that I had ever held in my hands. 

Customer service was not the strong side there. I made my way to the checkout only to be told after I paid my $450 total that had it been $500, they would have given me 10% off. Really, I thought, you telling me now??? There was plenty left in the piles but I was already 30 minutes late for the dinner, so instead of arguing, I dashed several blocks south to the restaurant squeezing a thick back under my arm…

A couple of weeks later I mentioned my score to Jack Brown. He asked what was the best record I got. I said it was the beautiful copy of the Soul Station. “How much”, he asked? $50, I said. He almost swallowed his sigar. “Are they nuts!?”, he said. “It’s a $500 record.” Yes, I knew I had done well…