Comments on: J.R. Monterose In Action and In the $1,000 Bin

By: Robert Sanders

Robert Sanders — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:55:54 +0000

I have an original recording of In
Action on the Studio 4 label. Wonder what it is worth today.

By: Robert Sanders

Robert Sanders — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:53:37 +0000

I was there in the summer of 1964 and did some recording at Sotos’

By: Jeff Barr

Jeff Barr — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:21:15 +0000

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

By: jeffrey

jeffrey — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:11:17 +0000

nice site glad to see your back at it.

By: Al

Al — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:51:43 +0000

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.

By: Rudolf A. Flinterman

Rudolf A. Flinterman — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:29:47 +0000

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.