This week’s theme: A potpourri of jazz songs that have crossed over into the mainstream in some way. For example, Mercy, Mercy Mercy, The Sidewinder, or The Girl From Ipanema. Featured artists include John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Steve Davis, Vince Guaraldi, Monte Budwig, Colin Bailey, Herbie Mann, John Handy, Wes Montgomery, Ron Carter, Ray Barretto, Billy Taylor, Ben Tucker, Grady Tate, Les McCann, Eddie Harris, Benny Bailey, Leroy Vinnegar, Donald Dean, Stan Getz, Jaoa Gilberto, Astrid Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Joe Morello, Eugene Wright, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Bob Cranshaw, Barry Harris, Billy Higgins, Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Victor Gaskin, Roy McCurdy.

This week’s theme: Standards played by Charlie Parker and others. Featured artists include Charlie Parker, Scott Hamilton, Chris Flory, John Bunch, Phil Flanagan, Chuck Riggs, Sarah Vaughan, Clifford Brown, Roy Haynes, Paul Quinichette, Carmen McRae, Anita O’Day, Tony Aless, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Dave Lambert, Sonny Rollins, Barney Kessel, Hampton Hawes, Leroy Vinnegar, Shelly Manne, Herbie Mann, Max Roach, Al Haig, Percy Heath, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Steve Davis, Lou Donaldson, Blue Mitchell, Horace Silver, Art Blakey,  Booker Ervin, Richard Davis, Tommy Flanagan, Alan Dawson, Bill Evans, Eddie Gomez.

This week’s theme: It’s summertime, and we are focusing on live recordings made at the Newport Jazz Festival, covering the years 1956 to 1968. Featured artists include Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Rouse, Paul Desmond, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Lambert Hendricks and Bevan, Count Basie, Jo Jones, Roland Kirk, Herbie Mann, Chick Correa and many, many more.

This week’s theme: Jazz Vinyl recorded or released in 1965. Artists include Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis, George Coleman, Anthony Williams, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Ray Bryant, Pete LaRoca, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Mann, Paul Desmond, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, and many more.

This week we do the first in a new Unsung Artists Series, focusing on the Vice President, tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette. Featured artists include John Coltrane, Charles Rouse, Sarah Vaughan, Clifford Brown, Herbie Mann, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Brooks Kerr, Gene Ramey, Sam Woodyard,Jimmy Jones, Joe Benjamin, Roy Haynes, Webster Young, Mal Waldron, Joe Puma, Earl May, Ed Thigpen, Count Basie, Buck Clayton, Dickie Wells, Gus Johnson, Al McKibbon, Walter Page, Freddie Green, Sonny Payne, Thad Jones, Nat Pierce, Joe Newman, Paul Chambers, Wynton Kelly, Charlie Shavers, Clark Terry, Jimmy Cleveland, Jimmy Cobb, Barry Galbraith, Cecil Payne, Hank Jones, Jo Jones, Sweets Edison, Snooky Young, and more.

Next up? The Lovely Mrs. JC, of course. I told her that there was an interesting collection that someone had sent me on email. She saw the familiar gleam in my eye.

“Where is it?”

“Baltimore.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it really good?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to the guy yet.”

“Well, I trust you. Do whatever you need to do.”

Doesn’t get any better than that, does it? The Lovely Mrs. JC gets my vote for the Wife Hall of Fame.

I was ready to have the conversation with Rob. In a situation such as this, I want to assess whether the records are originals, whether they are in good condition, whether the seller wants to sell them all at once, and whether his/her expectations for price are reasonable. I don’t want to overpay for the records. I want to pay a fair price and be honest with the seller without necessarily sharing every bit of knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past 43 years of jazz collecting. Beyond that, I’d rather not talk about price in this forum, since it’s really between the seller and me. Suffice to say, I believe I pay top dollar for any collection I buy, and certainly more than the prices I’ve seen from dealers.

At 10:30 on Sunday morning November 17 I placed the call to Rob in Baltimore. We chatted for a while, about boxing and football and fantasy football, which is another obsession of mine. I got the sense he was a very nice guy. After a few minutes I asked him to tell me about the records. This is what he told me:

The records were owned by his uncle Bruce, his mother’s brother. Uncle Bruce died sometime in the mid-1970s and Rob’s parents ended up with the records. The records basically were sitting in the basement of his parents’ home untouched for nearly 40 years. When Rob’s father passed away last year, Rob ended up with the records. He had them in storage for a while, then he had them just sitting in his apartment. It was a lot of records, more than 20 boxes, and Rob just didn’t want to move them anymore, so he wanted to get rid of the lot. He and his brother had started compiling a list of the records, which was the list he had sent me, but it proved to be a more complicated and time-consuming process than they had anticipated and they were hoping to find someone who would take the whole collection and pay a fair price for it.

Uncle Bruce, Rob continued, was supposed to be a very serious collector. There was talk that his collection was one of the finest anywhere and that at some point a local paper had written an article about Uncle Bruce and the collection, but no one was able to locate the article. There was also speculation that after Uncle Bruce died a friend of his named Horace had gotten hold of the collection and taken out some of the choicest of the choice records, so perhaps the collection in Rob’s apartment was not all it could have been, but Rob could tell just from a quick perusal of Jazz Collector that there were certainly some records of value still in the boxes.

I told Rob that based on the list he had sent to me, it seemed, indeed, that there were records of value, depending upon their condition and whether they were original pressings. Rob said that Uncle Bruce seemed to be a stickler about the condition of his records, and most of the records seemed to be unplayed. He also said many were in plastic sleeves, particularly the titles that he had seen on Jazz Collector. He said the one potential problem was that Uncle Bruce had written in ink the date when he purchased the records on the back covers. This distinct mark was on most of the records.

I got the sense that the records were in good condition and I also had the sense that many were probably original pressings, based on when Uncle Bruce had died and when he had been collecting. But, before offering a price and planning a trip to Baltimore, I needed some more information. I asked Rob to try to find one record on the Prestige label and one on the Blue Note label.

The first one he picked was Herbie Mann, Flute Souffle. I asked him to look at the record’s label. What color? Yellow and black. What’s the address? 446 W. 50^th St., N.Y.C. Good, I said. It’s an original pressing. It’s not a very valuable record, but it’s an original. That’s a good sign. Now a Blue Note. Rob said he found one in the same box with a very nice cover. What was it? Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims. Good, I said. What’s the address on the label? 161 Lexington Avenue.

That was all the information I needed. I told Rob I would be interested in buying the collection and would be willing to drive down to Baltimore to pick it up, all of the records, including the classical box sets, so Rob wouldn’t have to worry about getting rid of them, I’d just pile them all in my car and take them off his hands. I told him I couldn’t set an exact price until I had actually seen the records, seen the condition, made sure the ones I wanted were original pressings, made sure they weren’t moldy from sitting in a basement, etc. I told him if the records were originals and were in the condition he had described I would pay him within a certain range for the entire lot. After a bit of discussion we agreed on a price range. I reminded him that he could get more money by cherry picking the best records and selling them on eBay, but he wanted to get rid of the entire collection, wanted to sell someone who would appreciate it, and realized that the price I had offered was much higher than what he could get from a dealer.

So, I asked, do we have a deal? Yes, he answered, we have a deal. When, he asked, do you want to pick up the records?

I had a crazy week before me. I was traveling to Boston for business on Tuesday and then working the WFMU Record Fair in New York the following Friday and Saturday. I also knew I would have to borrow a bigger car to haul all of the records. The earliest it seemed feasible for me to get a car and drive down to Baltimore was the following Sunday. I suggested that to Rob. Fine, he said. So we set a date. On Sunday, Nov. 24, I was set to drive down from New York City to Baltimore to pick up a collection of about 1,000 records, including Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims, Flute Souffle, Jackie’s Pal, Wailing With Lou and, of course, an Evening with Concertgeouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, and An Evening with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

What happened next? Stay tuned for Part 4 tomorrow

We also have a couple of interesting autographed items — one by Herbie Mann, Flute Fraternity, Mode 114. and another by Maynard Ferguson, Boy With Lots of Brass, Emarcy 36114.  I especially like the Ferguson autograph because it was signed and dated from New Year’s Even 1958 at the Cork ‘N Bib. The Cork ‘N Bib was one of the few jazz clubs on Long Island. My parents used to go there all the time. I remember one time from the early 1960s, my parents came home from the club with an autograph from Maury Wills, the shortstop from the Los Angeles Dodgers, who was obviously there enjoying some jazz. A nice memory.