The record store in question was Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon, New York, which is somewhat along the way from Manhattan to The Berkshires, and it was pretty easy to convince The Lovely Mrs. JC that, “oh, wouldn’t Beacon New York be a lovely place to stop for lunch. Oh, and by the way, there happens to be a record store there.” It’s a very nice store, well organized, a nice inventory and fair prices. I can see where Clifford is a big fan, because they have a fantastic selection of free jazz. I am less of a fan and collector of that genre of music, but the store has a broader selection, and I like buying records, so I bought a few, because, well, that’s what I do.

There was a copy of Pres and Sweets on Verve, and I thought I could upgrade my cover. I put the record on when I got home. Is it just me, or does Pres sound pretty bad on this record? Like, they were happy to get a few takes out of him, but he certainly was not playing his best. I also got a mono pressing of Lookin’ at Monk! By Lockjaw Davis and Johnny Griffin. This was an upgrade for me and when I put the record on the turntable, I was not disappointed. Solid record. Finally, I picked up an original Fantasy record of Fatha Hines playing Fats Waller.  This was an original red vinyl pressing from 1956, very nice cover, liner notes by Ralph J. Gleason, and, what the hell, it was only $10. Also a nice record, with some surprisingly refreshing guitar by Eddie Duran.

Anyway, it was fun to go to a nice record store. As for the rest of the day, we never did have that lunch in Beacon New York. I guess we’ll have to do that next time.

Most of my inbox is filled with releases from a guy named Jim Eigo at Jazz Promo Services, a service I used a couple of years ago to try to bring greater attention to the post I wrote after the election called Chasing Trane: A Review, an Appreciation, a Spiritual Awakening. It looks as if Mr. Eigo has taken the plunge that has often been a pipedream of my own and has opened a brand new vinyl record shop called Original Vinyl Records in Warwick, NY.

This is yet another town in the Hudson Valley of New York, which, for some unknown reason seems to have become a mecca for vintage vinyl shops. According to an interview in Goldmine, Eigo chose this location for a pretty simple reason: It’s a minute from his home and the price was right.

A quick search tells me this store is about an hour and 10 minutes from my apartment in Manhattan and another two and a half hours to my house in the Berkshires, so I will have to add it to my Hudson Valley itinerary on my travels along with Spike’s Record Rack in Catskill, NY, and Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon, NY. I will make sure Mr. Eigo is there on my travels so I can chat with him about what he may have in store for us.

In the meantime, he has been using his own service to send out promotions about the store, including the pictures accompanying this article of records from several newly purchased collections. Looks like some interesting stuff, further fueling my interest in getting to the store soon, which, of course is the intent. I’m sure if you contact Jim at the store or at Jazz Promo Services, he would be happy to add your name to his mailing list.

Speaking of record stores, there was this notice that the original proprietor of Bleeker Bob’s, Robert Plotnik, passed away earlier this year. I was in that store dozens of times and never bought a single record there. But that was me. Of course, it made it into Seinfeld, so it will live forever.

There’s a new biography called The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon written by his wife Maxine Gordon. Looking forward to reading it after seeing this review in The New York Times.

If you want insight into the mind and music of Billy Strayhorn, you can now access his archives at The Library of Congress.

The media company Vox has done a video series on jazz, including this one on Blue Note album art.

Finally, there is this animated infographic on The Top 20 Jazz Pianists of All Time.The young woman who created this sent me a link and I said if I got a chance I would post it. So I did.

But I knew the music wasn’t going to knock my socks off and it didn’t. I had a much better experience with the Mulligan Plays Mulligan record on Prestige, which I probably hadn’t listed to since I first purchased it more than 30 years ago. Great record, both sides, the tentette as well as the quintet/sextet. It’s hard to believe the ensemble sides were recorded in 1951, they still sound so fresh and innovative. And Allen Eager was a mother. It was eye-opening to sit back and really listen to him play. So that inspired me to put on a bunch of other ensemble records, including Miles Davis Birth of the Cool and Benny Golson The Modern Touch, two of my favorites. All in all, I spent a couple of days listening to new records, sorting out duplicates and following the inspiration from discovering a new record then moving to a record in my collection and generally having a good old time just listening.

This, of course, inspired me to take another trip back to Spike’s Record Rack to see what I may have missed and that was the inspiration behind the second story I posted on Jazz Collector, Feeding the Obsession, Yet Again, in which I wound up reorganizing all of my 78-RPM records and my 10-inch records and generally making a mess of things, what with slicing the paper sleeves of 300 78s and stuffing the records onto my shelves. The second visit to Spike’s brought a new round of records, including the 10-inch Blue Note James Moody and His Modernists, as well as a few others that filled gaps in the collection. Writing about the trips to Spike’s Record Rack also elicited an invitation from the owner of another record store in the general area, Hudson Valley Vinyl in Beacon, NY, and, of course, how could I pass I an invitation to a record store I had never before visited, particularly one that had previously been recommended to me by our friend and sometimes contributor Clifford Allen.

So a few days later I was back in the car with Marty the dog on my way down the Hudson River to lovely Beacon NY to look at more records, the results of which can be seen in the picture at the beginning and end of this post. For me, the highlights of this excursion were the Gene Ammons Prestige and the Dave Brubeck Plays Leonard Bernstein. The Ammons was only $8, which felt like a bargain, considering that the condition was excellent. It is one of the only records that features John Coltrane on alto sax and, for that reason alone, is a worthy addition to any collection. I listened to that one first when I got home and was also pleasantly surprised. Coltrane on alto is quite interesting, and you can hear that he kind of approached it the way he later approached the soprano, with a lot of energy, hard blowing and a lot of notes. He doesn’t really sound like any other alto player you could readily identify.

I was pleased to get a copy of the Brubeck record because 1: It was an original pressing and sealed and 2: It has become one of my favorite listening records, the side with the West Side Story music, and I wanted to have a copy for my studio apartment in New York. Call me greedy, what can I say. For $20 it was well worth it. I’ve become swept away by the creativity of Paul Desmond’s playing over the past few years and he has become one of my absolute favorite artists, and he shines particularly well on this record. I also want to commend the owners of Hudson Valley Vinyl – nice store with an excellent collection of jazz vinyl at fair prices. I would recommend that Jazz Collector readers go there, although that belies my general instinct to keep these places to myself, although in this case I know it’s way too late to harbor any such illusions. Seems like I’m the last one to know about this store.

I am now a couple of weeks past these sprees and I have many more records to place on the turntable and perhaps I am not done yet with this latest round of purchsasing. There is still the local guy with 1,500 records who is not returning my calls and a collection of 10-inch LPs and 78s somewhere in the middle of the country that may have some promise. Stay tuned.

I was not disappointed on any level. It was a sunny day, late afternoon, and the scenery was absolutely spectacular, particularly going over the bridge, where you could see the fall colors in all of their brilliance for miles and miles up and down the river. Then I crossed the bridge and made my way to Catskill, just a couple of miles south. I remember Catskill from about 25 or 30 years ago as a really depressed, downtrodden, sleepy town that seemed to be headed toward oblivion. I had known that Hudson, NY, had undergone a gentrification transformation over the past dozen years or so, but I had not realized that Catskill fell into a similar category, starting a bit more recently. What had been a really rundown town is now quite vibrant with nice restaurants, artsy shops, a bookstore, even a theater. And, of course, it’s very own record store. Again, referring to Chronogram, Catskill is becoming to Hudson, what Brooklyn is to Manhattan. That is, a bit cooler and a bit hipper, still on the rise, not quite settled yet, but brimming with potential.

Anyway, I was able to park across the street from Spike’s and walked into a small but very neat, tidy and well-organized shop. I noticed the jazz right away towards the back on my left. There, above the several rows of records, was a wall display that was quite impressive: Max Roach and Clifford Brown at Basin Street; a nice Stan Getz on Norgran, and a few others. To be honest, I didn’t make more than a mental note of the wall display because they were all records I already own. But, the fact that each one on the wall was a true original collectible gave me cause for encouragement. No Blue Notes, but, nobody’s perfect, right?

I started going through the bins, the “New Arrivals” first and I was amazed at how many original pressings were in the lot, one after another, a bunch of Cannonball Adderley’s on Riverside and Mercury, some Gene Ammons. Again, I didn’t take much note of specific records because I had them. But then I started coming upon a few records I didn’t have. I checked out the prices on the back, and, they were actually quite fair. Not cheap, but not outrageous the way you see in some stores, where the owner has no idea what he is doing with jazz and just takes the older volumes of the Goldmine Price Guide or the highest prices on Popsike and tries to milk each record for all it’s worth.

At this point, I decided it was time to introduce myself to the owner and mention, casually, that I happen to do a Web site focused on jazz records. The owner’s name, you guessed it, is Spike, and we got along quite well. Of course, he was there to sell records and I was there to buy records, so we had a bit of a shared mutual interest from the outset. But he seems like a very nice, self-effacing guy, excited to finally have his own store after years of selling records on eBay and other online venues. You can see that he has put a lot of care into the store and, in chatting, we realized we had at least one mutual acquaintance, Joe Schwab of Euclid Records in St. Louis and New Orleans.

Anyway, Spike and I were chatting as I was sifting through the bins, and he mentioned that he had purchased a big jazz collection earlier this year, including a bunch of beautiful, mint Blue Notes that he had already sold, some in the store, some on eBay. He said the owner of that collection stored the records on shelves that were protected by Plexiglass doors, so they were pristine, including the covers. It was obvious in going through the bins, that many of the records from the collection were still in the shop, judging by the condition of the original pressings. I mentioned to Spike that I thought his pricing was fair, not underselling, but not trying to oversell. He said he generally goes by Discogs, but sticks to the more conservative end. To me, this makes sense because it keeps potential buyers coming back to the store, knowing they can do better at the location than they can do on eBay. Of course, not everyone has easy access to Catskill, NY, so there is downside to that approach as well. But, I suppose, if I had a brick-and-mortar store, I would do the same, trying to build a base of loyal customers and becoming a bit of a destination for collectors who may be in Albany, The Berkshires or even New York City.

As we were talking and I was pulling records from the pins and starting to pile them up, Spike mentioned that he also had 10-inch LPs from the same collection, but he doesn’t put them out on the shelves because no one is really interested. Now, of course, this was music to my ears, so I asked if they were in the store and he reached under the counter and pulled out a pile of very nice, 10-inch records in excellent condition, Pacific Jazz, Clef, Norgran. There was even a James Moody 10-inch Blue Note, which I already own.

As I continued piling up records, I asked Spike if we could do some kind of package price and he seemed amenable, which sparked me to add a couple of records I might not have put into the pile. In going through this process, I realized that I still have something of a jones for some of the old Norgrans and Clefs. It’s not necessarily the artists, but the packaging, the heavy vinyl, the Stone Martin covers. I’d pick them up and think about putting them back, but then I’d look at the price and it was too tempting, so I’d just put them in the pile, Louis Bellson, Flip Phillips, Charile Ventura. Records that would be of little interest to me musically, but would give me great satisfaction, looking at the covers as I peruse my collection. I guess I’m a sucker. There were some nice Clef and Norgran records, including a 10-inch Stan Getz Plays, but the price was too much to spend just to have a duplicate copy, so I left it behind for someone else. No Lester Youngs, Birds or Billie Holidays to my recollection, for those I might have gobbled up, even to have duplicates.

In the end, I wound up with a pile of 15 records, many of which I just don’t have, including a couple of Gerry Mulligan 10-inchers, as well as the afore-mentioned Bellson and Phillips LPs. There was also an absolutely pristine copy of Mulligan Plays Mulligan on Prestige, and the price was right, so that also ended up in the pile, upgrading the copy in my collection. The 15 records are pictured at the beginning and end of this post and I thought I did well for myself and by Spike, paying an average of about $25 per record. He started off with fair prices and was very easy to deal with. I left behind a few records that I would have liked, but by this time it was getting late to pick up The Lovely Mrs. JC and, having spent nearly $400 on records, keeping her waiting was not a good idea.

Back home, I’ve listened to a few of the records at this point, about what would be expected. I put on the Flip Phillips Clef record and was kind of amazed at how poorly recorded it sounded. It was as if the musicians were in a room with the door closed and someone was taping it from outside the room. Certainly not a Van Gelder, but also not up to the standard I would normally expect from this label. By contrast, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the Ammons record on Moodsville. He was never a favorite of mine, but this album is all ballads and he certainly knows his way around a ballad. Not quite Dexter, but quite capable and listenable.

I am looking forward to listening to all of the records, and also to visiting again with my new friend Spike. I just found out that The Lovely Mrs. JC has a train ticket for two weeks from Friday so, if you want to beat me to the punch, you have two weeks to make your way to Catskill, New York.