A $2,000 Record

After I posted yesterday’s item about the $1,000 Gil Melle record, I did a quick search of jazz records recently sold on eBay with a price tag of $2,000 or more. The result?  This copy of Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims on Blue Note 1530 sold for $2,534, with 15 bidders. I also spent some time looking ahead on eBay for the remainder of the day. There’s a nice copy of John Coltrane’s Blue Train coming up later, and one seller has a bunch of nice 10-inch LPs, but the price tags are way high in comparison with their value.  We’ll keep you posted as we find interesting items.

A $1,000 Record

You don’t see too many jazz records selling for more than $1,000. Here’s a recent Gil Melle, Patterns in Jazz, Blue Note 1517, that sold for $1,225. It helped that the record was in mint condition, was an original and was being sold by a highly reputable dealer. Back when I was doing the site regularly, there was huge discussion when a copy of Monk’s Music, Riverside 342, sold eBay for $3,061.50. Here’s what I wrote at the time: Read more

A Bulls-eye for Giant Steps

When we started the newsletter last year, a few readers gave us a hard time for paying $50 to get a stereo copy of John Coltrane Giant Steps, Atlantic 1311, with the bulls-eye label. Well, here’s a copy in worse condition that recently sold for $129.17.

 Here are some of the other items that we’re loading into the Latest Prices and Price Guide for Jazzcollector.com

 Hal McKusick, Triple Exposure, Prestige 7135. This was in near mint condition and sold for $371.60. This is a higher price than we’ve seen before, but the record looks very clean.

 Here’s one that broke the $200 price range: Joe Henderson, In ‘N Out, Blue Note 4166. Price: $215.50

 And another one that came close: Beverly Kenney Sings for Johnny Smith, Roost 2206. Price: $190.50

 

 

 

More on the Great eBay Debate

Jazz Collector Newsletter, June 2002

 

We have some positive changes coming at Jazz Collector. We’re updating the Jazzcollector.com Web site and starting Monday we’ll be posting new items each weekday. Plus, we’ll be giving away free collectibles from the site periodically. Finally, we’re going to post more articles and commentaries from readers and increase activity on the site’s Forum. The hope is to create a hub for the Jazz Collector community, so please use the site and offer up any suggestions. The site upgrade won’t affect the newsletter, which will still come out once a month. We have more than 800 subscribers now and the roster keeps growing. Obviously, jazz vinyl is alive and well.

Read more

Quiet Kenny and a Few Blue Notes

eBaying

 Missed out on a few interesting items the past few days. In some cases the prices got a little too rich for my blood, in others I forgot to bid. My friend recommends buying Sniper software, which I plan to do today. I’ll let you know how it works out. Anyway, it was a busy weekend on eBay for some high-end collectibles. Here are some examples.

Kenny Dorham, Quiet Kenny, New Jazz 8225

 This was an original pressing in M- condition, record and cover. Price: $787.

If you watch eBay very closely, your point of view can get distorted. Case in point: Read more

The Gift Of Hindsight

One of the pleasures of having an extensive jazz collection is that it gives you the opportunity to go back and review the history of jazz in real time, as it was happening. This is particularly the case when you look at old issues of Downbeat or Metronome, or review old liner notes, an art form that began approaching extinction with the advent of the compact disc format. In any case, allow me to share some interesting stuff from my archives.

           

Downbeat, January 18, 1962

Review: John Coltrane, Africa/Brass, Impulse 6

 

This record was a departure for Coltrane: The first time he ever played with a brass section. It is now regarded as a classic, rightfully so, particularly the title cut, which makes up the entire first side of the album. At the time, however, the Downbeat reviewer, Martin Williams, didn’t see it that way.  He gave it only two stars, out of a possible five. Here’s a sample from the review:

           Read more

Hot Records, High Prices

Back home after a weekend away. Let’s see what happened on eBay the past few days.

 The seller JBLD44000 out of Seattle, who has been selling some nice records the past few weeks, had a bunch of items up this weekend, with mixed results. A few of the records sold for high prices, including:

Hank Mobley, Soul Station, Blue Note 4031, for $1,337.28

Kenny Drew, Walkin’ and Talkin’, Jazz West 4, for $532

This dealer also had several high-ticket items that didn’t get bids at all. Based on our previous experience watching his auctions, we anticipate that these records will be back on eBay in the near future with somewhat lower start prices and, perhaps, Buy-It-Now prices. Among those records are: Read more

A Potpourri of LPs

I went away for the long Memorial Day weekend and didn’t look at eBay for three days. Here are some of the things I missed:

 

Howard McGhee, Music From The Connection, Felsted 7512. This was in nice condition and sold for more than $1,000.

 

Benny Carter, Cosmopolite, Norgran 1070. This was an original yellow label copy, autographed by Carter and, according to the dealer, directly from Carter’s own collection. A nice collectible, indeed. Read more

Remembering Elvin Jones

Today we turn things over to some readers. The death of Elvin Jones inspired a couple of people to write: “The loss of Elvin Jones is indeed a blow to the jazz world.  I feel lucky to have seen him for the first time in Minneapolis last fall.  I was downtown and, to my surprise, The Dakota, formerly a St. Paul jazz club, had opened a club right on Nicollet Mall, just a few blocks from my hotel.  I thought they were expanding. As it turned out, they had moved their location.  To my surprise, the Grand Opening act was Elvin Jones and The Jazz Machine.   Being a swing drummer, Elvin was not at the top of my list of influences, but I knew enough to know that if I ever wanted to see him, this was the time.   Read more

Goodbye, Elvin Jones

I was poring through eBay this morning, preparing today’s update, when my wife came into my office. “Did you see The Times?” she asked. “There’s an article that Coltrane’s drummer died.”

 It’s not surprising that The Times would refer to Elvin Jones as “Coltrane’s drummer.” That’s the way many of us came to find his music, on those great Atlantic and Impulse LPs of the early and mid 1960s. Jones’s contributions to Trane’s seminal quartet did more to influence the music than anything he might have accomplished before or since. Jones, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison – they all must have known at the time that Trane was taking them on explorations that were redefining the music.

 I turned to my record collection and searched for my favorite Elvin moments from that era. Two albums caught my eye: Africa/Brass, Impulse 6, about which, ironically, I wrote last week; and Coltrane Live at Birdland, Impulse 50. The live LP, particularly the track “Afro-Blue,” exemplifies the way in which Jones drove the quartet to places no other drummer of the era could have taken them. Here’s an excerpt from the original liner notes to this 1963 LP, courtesy of LeRoi Jones: Read more

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