This week’s theme. Jazz vocals and instrumentals from the Great American Songbook. Featured artists include Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Red Garland, Jackie McLean, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, Scott Hamilton, Art Pepper, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Dizzy Reece, Stan Getz, and many more.
This week’s theme: Dexter Gordon on Prestige, late 1970s, early 1970s, with a little extra thrown in. Featured artists include Dexter Gordon, James Moody, Gene Ammons, Kenny Drew, Barry Harris, Buster Williams, Tootie Heath, Dizzy Reece, Slide Hampton, Neils-Henning Orsted Peterson, Arthur Taylor, Tommy Flanagan, Larry Ridley, Alan Dawson,Jodie Christian, John Young, Rufus Reid, Cleveland Eaton, Wilbur Campbell, Steve McCall, Karin Krog, and more.
This week’s theme: Riverside Records, Part II
I went a few weeks back to clean out my eBay watch list and found a few items to share before moving forward. Here are some high-end items from the seller 1molecularrman, starting with Webster Young, For Lady, Prestige 7106. This was an original New York yellow label listed in VG++ condition for both the record and the cover. The final price was $2,175. I didn’t recall ever seeing a higher price for this record, but I don’t watch eBay every day the way I used to. Checking with Popsike . . . . yes, this is the highest price ever recorded for For Lady. Read more
Pardon the interruption. Since I last posted, I’ve driven back and forth to Chapel Hill, written about a dozen papers for work and even tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. It’s been busy here and I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time on my records or on Jazz Collector. Having said that, I plugged back into eBay this morning and pulled a few records to share with you, starting with Kenny Drew, This is New, Riverside 236. This is an original white label pressing and it looks to be in VG+ condition for both the record and the cover. This is a nice quartet/quintet record featuring Donald Byrd and Hank Mobley. Put it on Blue Note with this personnel from this era and you have a record that would be a regular in the $1,000 bin. On Riverside, the bidding is in the $275 range with the auction closing later today. Read more
After buying, curating and eventually selling the Ornette Collection from Dee, I felt myself gripped in that very old, very familiar, somewhat obsessive feeling of wanting more. Not necessarily more records because, Lord knows, I have enough records. No, it was all about wanting more action. So, I reached out to my friend here in The Berkshires who is planning to sell his collection at some point, but he said he isn’t quite ready yet to part with them. Then, out of the blue, another friend up here sent me a note with a link to an online auction of jazz records that was being conducted locally. The site was something called Caring Transitions, so I clicked the link and this is one of the pictures I saw:
Back to eBay with four Blue Notes that come to you straight from my want list, leading off with Sonny Red, Out of the Blue, Blue Note 4032. This looks to be an original deep-groove West 63rd Street pressing that appears to be in M- condition for the record and VG++ for the cover. The bidding is now in the $300 range with four days left on the auction. This is a record that has sold for more than $1,000 several times in the past, with a top price of $1,802, according to Popsike. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see this copy end up in the $1,000 bin. This is a record I once owned and stupidly traded away back many years ago – I would say nearly 40 years? – when I was transitioning from fan to collector and I had set out to fill in all of the first 200 or so yellow-label Prestiges. Read more
I don’t know what to say about my extended gap(s) between posts, so I will just apologize and hope to do better. I have somewhat of an excuse for the latest gap, sort of, in that part of that time has been in pursuit of a small record collection that has resulted in success, sort of, in that I am in possession of the records. Whether I want to be is another story, and what I will do with the records is also another story, and, sorry to do this to you, but I am not in a position to tell any of the stories yet, because we are still in progress. But all the stories bill be told in time, when they are complete. In the meantime, let’s get back to basic business, i.e,. looking at records on eBay.
Here’s a nice 10-inch Blue Note that caught my eye: Introducing the Kenny Drew Trio, Blue Note 5023. This is an original 10-inch Lexington Avenue pressing, in what looks to be M- condition for the record and VG+ for the cover. The bidding is at $250 with more than three days left on the auction. The record is from the Jazz Record Center, so, naturally, I clicked over to their other listings, and these are some of the items I saw: Read more
If only I’d been prescient enough to record my calls with Debbie, then I’d be able to provide an accurate blow-by-blow account of the roller-coaster ride she took me on over the next six weeks, but, then again, reliving it in all of its sordid detail might have proven too much for my sanity. I had a pretty good sense of what was to come during our first phone call. I was feeling things out, not necessarily interested in buying the collection for myself, but genuinely interested in providing help and guidance. For all I knew she was a widow who desperately needed the money.
Turns out her hub, as she called him, was alive and relatively well, at least as far as I could tell, and, while I never did actually speak to him, there were several phone calls where I could hear him yelling in the background advice to the effect that I was trying to rip them off because I was telling her that the Japanese pressings of Blue Notes were not of the same value as original pressings, even though, as hub said, they were great records and should be worth a lot. But I am getting ahead of myself.
We’ll start today with a few from the Prestige label, opening with Zoot Sims Quartets, Prestige 7026. This is an original New York pressing that looks to be in about VG+ condition for the record and similar for the cover. It’s not a record that we’ve written about much. We don’t see it on eBay that often and it doesn’t typically command high collectible prices, compared to other original pressings from the era. This one has a start price of $200 and so far there are no bids, with the auction closing in two days. I happen to own a copy of this record, but haven’t listened to it in like 30 years. Maybe I’ll try it later. Zoot is always worth a listen, IMHO. Read more
