A Record Bash & (Another) Adventure in Jazz Collecting

As I write this, there is a gathering of jazz collectors taking place 50 miles from me in the wilds of Iselin, New Jersey. This would be the annual Jazz Record Collector’s Bash, which, according to the promotions, has been taking place annually for 35 years. The event actually began last night with the dealers setting up and continues through today and tomorrow, starting at 8 a.m. each day. For more information, you can go to their Web site by clicking here. I used to attend this event fairly regularly when it was in East Brunswick, NJ, which, of course leads to a story. I have been a jazz collector for nearly 40 years now and have never thought of myself as a seller of jazz records. Perhaps that is why I call the site Jazz Collector as opposed to Jazz Seller. Anyway, like many of you I’m sure, through the years I had accumulated

many duplicate copies of my collectible records. In the days before eBay, there was no simple way of disposing of duplicate copies. You could go to a store or a reputable dealer such as Red Carraro or Fred Cohen, but they would rarely give you what you thought the records were worth. I remember one time having Red come to my home and I had a bunch of really nice duplicates. He picked up a copy of Webster Young, For Lady, Prestige 7106. It was in beautiful condition. This was in the mid 1980s.

“Whaddya think, Red?” I asked.

“Nice record,” he replied. “I’ll give you ten bucks for it.”

I loved Red, but I was not selling him For Lady for ten bucks. At that point I decided I’d rather keep my duplicates and even take them to the grave with me, rather than give them away for nothing. But there was an alternative: Record Shows. I could clean them up, price them up, pack them up and put them on a table in a hall and sell them to other collectors. So, for a while, I did that, hauling my boxes of records into Manhattan and, for these Record Bashes, all the way to the wilds of Jersey.

So the first year I did the Jersey gig, I was one of the first to arrive: I figured, hey if I’m hauling all the way to Jersey I may as well see if there are records to buy. And, indeed, there were: After I was there for about an hour, the guy with the table next to me arrived.

“I guess I’m here,” he said. “Yup,” I replied. “Can I help you out?”

He said he was going to go out and bring his records in and as he was loading, could I watch his records. “Sure,” I said. “Mind If I look at them?” He replied: “Sure.”

This was a guy who had never sold records before. He was getting rid of his records to help pay for his kids’ college tuition. He had no idea what the records were worth, so he priced everything the same: Five bucks a record. I started going through the records. What he had that was nice and compelling, was a great collection of Prestige Swingville Records, all in pristine mint condition. There were records by Al Sears and Jimmy Hamilton and Claude Hopkins and Coleman Hawkins. I took them all, plus a beautiful 10-inch Sonny Criss on Mercury and a few Lester Youngs on Norgran.

It was quite a nice little score and I remember Red Carraro stopping by afterwards. “Whaddya got there?” he asked. I showed him the records. “Pretty nice,” he said. “I’ll give you five bucks apiece for them.” Gotta love Red for trying.

Anyway, this gathering is going on now and I will make an effort to re-arrange my schedule and pop over there sometime today. If I do, I’ll give you a report tomorrow on the site. If not and if any of our readers is over there and would like to tell us about it, please feel free to write a comment on this post.