J.R. Monterose In Action and In the $1,000 Bin
I hadn’t updated the $1,000 bin in a while, so I went searching for interesting new items and I came upon this: J. R. Monterose In Action + The Joe Abodeely Trio, Studio 4. According to the seller, this original pressing was one of approximately 250 issued and sold from the cloak room of Abodeely’s The Tender Trap night club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was also described as an original Columbia pressing from Rock Island, Ill. The record and the cover were both listed in VG++ condition and the price was $1,703.98. In addition to the price tag, what caught my attention was the memory somewhere deep in the back of my recesses of my brain that I actually own this record. So, I ran downstairs, trailed excitedly by my dog Marty, and searched through the shelves of Part II of my collection and there it was, sitting there. I pulled out the copy, ready to bask in the glow of a $1,700 record. But, alas, to my chagrin the copy I pulled out was
a reissue from the Very Special Old Phonography label. Oh well. I’m sure the record is nice and I will play it and listen to it sometime soon and give you all a report. One of the nice things about having the record, even if it’s a reissue, is having access to the liner notes, which help to explain what J. R. Monterose was doing in Cedar Rapids in the first place, playing with the world famous Joe Abodeely trio. Here’s some quotes from J.R. from the liner notes: “From the time I started to play, I was under the impression that New York City was the place for jazzmen.” Then, he moved upstate and played in Albany and, eventually did 16 weeks in Ocean City, Md. “The tourists really dug it,” J.R. said. “The same thing happened in Albany. So, I decided to keep my eyes open for places in smaller areas where I could play my kind of jazz.” That led him to The Tender Trap Night Club in Cedar Rapids, where he had been playing for ten months at the time of this recording in 1964. So there you have it.
I bought mine from Leon Leavitt, who had a small stock of mint copies. So, I imagine he hasd been pals with the Iowa cloakroom attendant. I paid then (in the seventies) what I considered to be a fortune (over 100 bucks)! Leon, who still lived in L.A. then, was kind enough to bring the records all the way to my downtown hotel room. After a handshake he was immediately gone, no time for a chat, although for years he had supplied me many valuables by mail. Customer relations American style? Maybe he just felt I was the most interested party. He would sell his stuff anyway. Later he went to Japan to trade directly.
I promised to listen to this and report back to you, which I have done and am doing. Nice record, very well recorded. I have a track on now called That You Are, which is a new head on top of All The Things You Are. J.R. is wailing quite nicely and the group behind him is supportive without trying to play beyond their capabilities. Also, despite the name, it is not a live album, but a studio recording. If you find it, either the original or even this re-issue, it’s worth a place in your collection.
nice site glad to see your back at it.
Peter Jacobson and Jeff Barr started VSOP in 1980 in Washington DC, where Barr was a jazz disk jockey and record seller, and Jacobson was on the staff of the Smithsonian as a legal consultant.
The deal to acquire the license to reissue J. R. Monterose, on Studio 4 label, was reached after contacting Jimmy Sota, the original producer of the LP. Jimmy was coming off a run of semi-succesful low budget spaghetti westerns in Italian with subtitles, and was glad to let us have the deal…we paid $1750.00 to get the rights and the tape, and, oh by the way, 2 boxes of unused originals… which in 1980 went for $400-900, up to $12 or $1500. So The Record Was in The Black. We did the same thing when VSOP secured the rights-to-release and original tape for the two Elmo Hope Trio Lps on Beacon and Celebrity (Here’s Hope and High Hope). The deal was done in the offices of a couple of tune traders who made their money off of “Sesame Street”…$1500 was the fee for the license for each, but we got 37 fresh originals that had been acquired from the estate of the producer, Joe Davis, who was famed for putting buxom nudes on the covers of Wurlitzer
organ solos and marching bands… The Hope reissues weren’t recognized in the profuse vinyl
market of the day and only sold in the low 1000s, but the 37 originals were all immediately purchased by Barr’s network of world wide jazz collectors. I’ll be checking your site out
more often, Jeff Barr
I was there in the summer of 1964 and did some recording at Sotos’
I have an original recording of In
Action on the Studio 4 label. Wonder what it is worth today.