A Promo By Any Other Name
So now that I’ve been writing about promo copies for the past few days, it seems that every other item I’m watching on eBay is a promo copy. Just works out that way sometimes.
Barbara Lea with the Johnny Windhurst Quartet, Prestige 7065. This is an original New York yellow label pressing with a “Not for Sale” stamp on the back. I’ve never actually owned or even heard this record and I have no idea who Johnny Windhurst was, but it is, of course, a record I would love to have, it being an original Prestige and all. This copy is in M- condition for the record and VG++ for the cover and it looks quite nice overall. The start price is in the $300 range and that is already too steep for me.
George Wallington, Jazz For the Carriage Trade, Prestige 7032. This is also an original New York yellow label pressing with a “Not for Sale” stamp on the back as well as on the labels. The record is in M- condition and the cover seems to be VG++. The start price is in the $500 and there are no bidders with four days left in the auction. Perhaps I am wrong
in assuming that these “Not for Sale” records are promo copies and perhaps they are just cut-outs or records that were taken out of commission. Careful readers will recall that Rudolf once told a great story of going to the Prestige warehouse and walking away with hundreds of original pressings that had been otherwise targeted for the trash heap (Guest Column: Treasure Hunt — Prestige). Perhaps these are just cut-outs without the cut-out holes? I like to think of them as promo copies, as I’m sure the sellers do as well, along with anyone who buys them.
This one we know is a real promo copy because it has the infamous WLP designation: John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Impulse 40. This is also being sold by Euclid records. The vinyl is in VG++ condition and the cover is listed at VG+. The price is more than $250 and the auction is closing soon, and perhaps it will be closed by the time many of you read this.
Al : here’s Johnny Windhurst
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wYgF5FggK8
Al, I read Rudolph’s wonderful story when you first published it, I read it again, i’m still transported vividly, to that warehouse! Wow.
He who dares..wins!
I was always under the impression that the Prestige LPs stamped “Not for Sale” were distributed to DJs and record stores (mostly to DJs) because other labels added to that restriction, e.g., “Sample Copy – Not For Sale” (Savoy) or “For Demonstration Only – Not For Sale” (Norgran). In other words, the same as a WLPs, but rather than with a different label, with a stamp on label and the jacket.
Right, cut-outs or whatever, with Prestige, were usually stamped RW (record withdrawn), at least in my experience.
sometimes they’re stamped CO 86
Agree with Joe L. Regarding Prestige: later on the black stamp “Not for Sale” was replaced by a red one “PREVIEW COPY”.
Verve cut-outs CO 86.
i have a m-/m- copy of the lea lp if anyone would like to make an offer or trade. i’m too sick of eBay to go that route, and i’d rather send it to a good home where it will be listened to as opposed to sitting on a shelf after being checked off a hoarder’s list.
david: what sort of trade would you like to make? trout (at) susqu (dot) edu.
Johnny Windhurst was a highly regarded trumpet player. I never saw him perform in public but first learned of him through radio broadcasts from the Savoy Cafe when he was brought from New York to replace Bunk Johnson, and, over time, from other venues in the Boston area. One can hear suggestions of Ruby Braff in his playing (or the other way around since Windhurst was the older of the two). Braff played with Edmund Hall at the Savoy in 1949. For years, the Savoy was THE venue in Boston to hear traditional jazz until joined by George Wein’s Mahogany Hall, downstairs from his Storyville club.