Old Vinyl, New Bottles, Craft OJCs

The Christmas holidays have always been a time when I liked to splurge on records. I think it goes back to an experience when I was living on Long Island, and I walked into the Titus Oaks store in Hicksville on the day after Christmas, and the owner/proprietor had just finished putting a bunch of records into the bins, and I was the first to see them, and among the records were original Blue Notes, maybe 15-20 all together, and they were all first pressings in mint, unplayed condition, and they were priced at $5 each. Yes, that really happened. It was the early 1980s, and it was not a dream. I think that experience has stuck with me the rest of my jazz collecting days and I always make sure to check out local record stores during the week before Christmas. As Christmas time approached a couple of months ago, I started feeling that old urge surging through my body. I tried a couple of the local record stores but, alas, no luck. I couldn’t shake the urge, so I went online, as I mentioned in a post back in December (New Old Jazz, Or Old New Jazz, on Vinyl). I went on a little spree. I meant to write about it earlier, but, as you may have noticed, I have not been doing much writing these days. Listening, yes, doing my radio show, yes, but writing, not so much. So, we’ll start catching up now and see if I can inspire myself to sit down and do so more writing in the next week or so.

In my online adventures I stopped at a few places, Blue Note, Craft, and a label called The Lost Recordings. I bought two vinyl reissue records from Craft: The Kenny Drew Trio originally on Riverside and Miles Davis, The Musings of Miles originally on Prestige. I think I paid $39 for Miles and $18 for Kenny Drew. I bought these two records for a couple of reasons. One was to check out the new version of the Original Jazz Classics series. I admit that I hated the original OJCs, which began in 1983. While I appreciated that the music was being made available, I never liked the packaging, i.e., the thin vinyl and thin covers. I would buy the OJCs because they were not overly expensive and they could fill gaps in my collection, but I always sought to replace them with original pressings. Of course. Wouldn’t you? I had reached the point where I didn’t own any more of the original OJCs. When Craft came out with the current OJC series, I reached out to their public relations people to get review copies, but, alas, I was not placed on the list, despite my seemingly stellar credentials as not just the owner of Jazz Collector dot com, but also as the host of the Jazz Collector Radio podcast. In any case, I wasn’t getting any free copies of anything from Craft, so when the urge to buy became too strong, I bit the bullet and ordered these two records, plus the Bill Evans boxed set called Haunted Heart, which I haven’t even opened yet.

I chose the Miles and Kenny Drew records primarily because of my radio show/podcast. I have an original pressing of The Musings of Miles, but I hate bringing some of these $1,000 records into the radio studio if I can avoid it. So I could kill two bird with one stone: I could check out the new Craft OJC Series and have an alternative to bring into the studio when it came time to play the Musings of Miles, which I did on the podcast called Old Vinyl, New Bottles. I bought the Kenny Drew Trio record because I don’t own an original copy and I had decided to do a radio show/podcast on Kenny Drew.  When I did do that podcast, Unsung Artists – Kenny Drew on Piano, I was able to use the Craft reissue and play a couple of tracks.

My opinion of the new Craft OJC series is different that that for the original OJCs. I really like these reissues. I liked that they used heavier vinyl, heavier cardboard, and they keep the original packaging. I’m no audiophile, but they sound great to me. There’s a slight mistake on the Kenny Drew packaging band – they refer to it is Kenny Drew’s first as a leader, when, to my knowledge, he had recorded two or three records as a leader prior to this one (a 10-incher on Blue Note, one on Norgran, and one on East-West?). But the band comes off, so it’s merely a packaging thing. For the Miles record, I had always felt that on the original record, Miles’ trumpet on the track “I See Your Face Before Me,” was recorded at too low a volume. I was hoping the reissue would fix that, but it doesn’t. Still, it’s a great record and package. Bottom line, for anyone who doesn’t own an original pressing and wants the music, I don’t think you can go wrong with these OJC vinyl pressings at their prices.

As always, I’m curious as to what others have experienced with these reissues, but I also realize that most of my most loyal readers are not here anymore since I stopped posting regularly and started doing more of the radio shows/podcasts.

BTW, in addition to the Craft reissues, I bought a few new/old Blue Notes. Hopefully, I will be inspired to listen to them and write about them sometime soon.