This week’s theme: Thelonious Monk Plays Standards. Featured artists include Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Wilbur Ware, Art Blakey, Charles Rouse, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, Gerry Mulligan, Shadow Wilson, Butch Warren, Ben Riley.
This week’s theme: Clifford Brown, Early Recordings.
Featuring 10-inch Blue Note and Pacific Jazz recordings, originals and Mosaic reissues/newly discovered tracks. Featured artists include Lou Donaldson, J.J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Jimmy Heath, Art Blakey, Zoot Sims, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Percy Heath, John Lewis, and more. Also some discussion of Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic.
This week’s theme: Sonny Rollins, European Tour 1959. Featured artists include Sonny Rollins, Henry Grimes, Pete LaRoca, Joe Harris, Kenny Clarke. Music from the recently released boxed set Freedom Weaver, The 1959 European Tour Recordings, on Resonance Records.
Here’s a nice one that I don’t recall seeing in the past: The Essen Jazz Festival All Stars, Debut 131. This record features Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Oscar Pettiford and Kenny Clarke. I’ve always known this by the Fantasy issue in the U.S., which, if I recall, was colored vinyl in the original pressing. This looks to be the original Dutch Debut pressing, which was in stereo? Not familiar with it, although it is somewhat surprising that stereo would be the original release in 1960. Anyway, I like this cover a lot better than the U.S. cover. This copy is listed in M- condition for both the record and the cover and has a start price of $400 with nearly six days left on the auction.
I was going through my records the other day and came up with this interesting discovery: This Savoy LP by Kenny Clarke featuring Cannonball Adderley was issued with two different covers. I discovered this accidentally because I had one filed under Cannonball and the other under Clarke. The one with the better cover — ‘better” in terms of a great picture on the front — is the one entitled Bohemia After Dark Featuring Cannonball. The other one is also titled Bohemia After Dark, but that’s just on the back cover: The front cover just lists it as The Jazz Corner of The Villiage, Cafe Bohemia, Featuring Kenny Clarke. Both are Savoy 12017 and both have the same tracks and liner notes. If I had to guess which was the first pressing, I would have said the second one, the one
As I’m going through some of the items I’ve been watching on eBay, I’m actually finding less evidence than I expected of this supposed shift into a two-tier market. There is still a lot of high-priced bidding among the non-Blue Note labels and artists. Perhaps it’s just by comparison that the gap is widening because some of the Blue Note/Prestige prices have been skyrocketing lately. We’ll keep watching, but as you guys see evidence of a real drop-off in prices of second-tier labels, please post them on the site as a comment. Here are some items we’ve been watching that may give you an alternate view versus my comments and others of the past couple of days:
Red Mitchell, Bethlehem 38. This was an original red label pressing, deep groove. It was in M- condition for both the record and the cover. It sold for $190.93.
Lee Konitz with Marne Marsh, Atlantic 1217. This was an original black-label mono pressing. It looks to be generously graded at VG++. It sold for $149.99.
Here’s one that would support the theory of a developing two-tier market:
We posted that item about Savoy the other day and got the following email from Rich, one of our loyal readers. He poses some questions about Savoy. I figured I’d post the question here, also in the interest of making the results easily searchable. Hopefully this will generate some insight about the Savoy label:
“Did you notice that the Klook’s Clique Savoy from the same seller as the Mobley’s Message 2 just went for a few bucks. I have a good copy. I did not have a chance to bid. Even with a good copy I would have gone to $100 anyway. Read more
