Dexter On Dial, Jutta On Blue Note

We’re putting together a new price guide and entering new entries into the database. Here are a few interesting items that won’t make it into the next newsletter. More of these tomorrow.

Dexter Gordon, Dial 204. This was the original 10-inch pressing in just VG condition and still sold for $232.54.

Stan Getz, West Coast Jazz, Norgran $217.50. Admittedly, this was in nice condition, but it still sold for a very high price, compared to other copies we’ve seen: $217.50 Read more

More on the Great eBay Debate

Jazz Collector Newsletter, June 2002

 

We have some positive changes coming at Jazz Collector. We’re updating the Jazzcollector.com Web site and starting Monday we’ll be posting new items each weekday. Plus, we’ll be giving away free collectibles from the site periodically. Finally, we’re going to post more articles and commentaries from readers and increase activity on the site’s Forum. The hope is to create a hub for the Jazz Collector community, so please use the site and offer up any suggestions. The site upgrade won’t affect the newsletter, which will still come out once a month. We have more than 800 subscribers now and the roster keeps growing. Obviously, jazz vinyl is alive and well.

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Podcast: Horace Silver, Part One

Today’s theme: Horace Silver, Part One. Featured musicians include Horace Silver, Stan Getz, Art Farmer, Hank Mobley, Curley Russell, Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham, Doug Watkins, Jimmy Raney, Roy Haynes, Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Louis Smith, Blue Mitchell.

Guest Column: (Mis)Adventures in Jazz Hunting, Southern Style: Goats, Garlic, Grief and Gordon

By Dave S.

As I have promised Al over the years, I will continue to submit for his approval, my journeys into the unknown of crate diggin’ we call the Twilight Zone. This week’s episode takes us to Birmingham. Not Birmingham, England, but Birmingham, Alabama. You might ask why Birmingham, Ala., generally regarded as fertile hunting grounds for Southern Fried Rock such as the Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd, but certainly not for our favorite genre.  I was heading there for a business trip so I thought I would go where no jazzman has gone before (sorry for the weak TV references) and see what I could find.

I put an ad in the Birmingham craigslist website a couple of weeks before my trip and drummed up some potentially promising leads. In previous posts, I have documented my screening techniques. I don’t like to ask too many questions or ask for too many pictures before I see the goods. Just enough information to validate that jazz means something other than Enoch Light or Jackie Gleason, and that some of my favorite labels and/or artists are there. I especially like to ask about the history of the collection and the provenance. That often tells me about the likelihood of finding some hidden gems. With this screening approach, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Read more

A Comprehensive Guide To French Vogue

Our friend Rudolf Flinterman has written a comprehensive treatise/opus/tribute to the French Vogue label and has graciously asked us here at Jazz Collector to publish this and make it available to fellow jazz collectors all over the world, which we are pleased to do. We are attempting to publish this in two formats here, one as a post, below, and separately as an attached PDF file that you can download and print and save. So, without further ado, we turn it over to Rudolf, with all due respect and appreciation:

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JR Monterose In Action, Redux

Got two notes recently from Jeff Barr, a long-time jazz writer, DJ, collector, producer and seller of rare vinyl. The first note was asking to inform my readers about his site, www.jazzrecordscene.com, which is worth checking out because there’s some very nice vinyl there. I’ve added a link to this site from Jazz Collector, so you can find it easily from the home page whenever you come to visit it, which we hope is quite often. Jeff also posted a comment giving some more history on the J. R. Monterose In Action LP that I wrote about last week. Here’s Jeff’s comment, which will also come up as a comment on the previous item:

“Peter Jacobson and Jeff Barr started VSOP in 1980 in Washington DC, where Barr was a jazz disc 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 the Studio 4 label, was reached after contacting Jimmy Sota, the original producer of the LP. Jimmy was coming off a run of semi-successful 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, two boxes of unused originals…which in 1980

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Mingus, Big Maybelle and Other Points of Interest

We all appreciate knowledgeable dealers who understand what they’re selling and can provide us with insight about the collectibles market. Here’s an example: I was recently looking through eBay and saw a Charles Mingus record I had never seen before. The title is “Music Written For Monterey, 1965. Not Heard … Played In Its Entirety at UCLA,” East Coasting 12.001.

 The dealer offering this LP was Stereojacks, which I happen to know through my many travels to Boston.  Stereojacks is based in Cambridge and is one of the more reputable and knowledgeable dealers in the country. This is their explanation of the record: Read more

Goodbye, Elvin Jones

I was poring through eBay this morning, preparing today’s update, when my wife came into my office. “Did you see The Times?” she asked. “There’s an article that Coltrane’s drummer died.”

 It’s not surprising that The Times would refer to Elvin Jones as “Coltrane’s drummer.” That’s the way many of us came to find his music, on those great Atlantic and Impulse LPs of the early and mid 1960s. Jones’s contributions to Trane’s seminal quartet did more to influence the music than anything he might have accomplished before or since. Jones, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison – they all must have known at the time that Trane was taking them on explorations that were redefining the music.

 I turned to my record collection and searched for my favorite Elvin moments from that era. Two albums caught my eye: Africa/Brass, Impulse 6, about which, ironically, I wrote last week; and Coltrane Live at Birdland, Impulse 50. The live LP, particularly the track “Afro-Blue,” exemplifies the way in which Jones drove the quartet to places no other drummer of the era could have taken them. Here’s an excerpt from the original liner notes to this 1963 LP, courtesy of LeRoi Jones: Read more

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