I asked the question the other day: Does anyone out there collect 78s? No one replied, so I figured I would get the ball rolling.

The answer to the question, for me, is that I don’t collect 78s. I do, however, have more than 1,000 78s. The reason I say I don’t collect 78s is because if I did collect them, I’d be obsessed about them and worried about filling in my collection and getting all the Blue Notes and searching for 78s and hunting them down on eBay. That is what I do with my LP collection. I have never done that with 78s. Yet, through the years I have accumulated them.

It started back in the 1980s. There was an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper. A guy had a collection of jazz 78s and wanted to get rid of them. Normally I wouldn’t have cared, but I was curious: What if there were some original Bird 78s on Dial? So I called him and, indeed, there were some original Bird 78s on Dial: Yardbird Suite, Moose The Mooche, A Night in Tunisia. Holding these in my hand, it really felt like I was holding a piece of jazz history. The guy had about 1,000 78s and wanted $100 for them. That night I walked into the house and began unloading crates of 78s. Mrs. JC just looked at me and sighed.

Then, of course, I had to get a 78 player. I still have the first one I ever purchased: A crank-handle

RCA. It sounds great. I eventually purchased a used Thorens turntable and hooked that up to my regular stereo system, but that didn’t sound good at all. Through the years, I’ve discovered that the best players for 78s are the ones that were designed to play 78s in the first place, with the heavy tone arms and 78 needles. Right now I use an old Califone record player that they used to use in public schools (perhaps they still do) and I find that it is terrific. They are readily available on eBay, usually for $50 or so.

Anyway, I had these 1,000 78s back in the 1980s and I figured that was it for me. I had a few Birds, and Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul, and some Billie Holiday and Ella and Louis Jordan and, really, what more could I want? Then, in the early 1990s I went to Chicago for business and, a few blocks from my hotel, there was the Jazz Record Mart on Grand Street. I went there and the prices for the LPs were a bit too high for my tastes, so I kind of browsed and saw this huge section of 78s, rows and rows and rows. And, on the bottom row, near the floor, I pulled out a mint copy of Twisted by Wardell Gray on Prestige. It was priced at $1. Cool. So I looked some more and, literally, there were hundreds of Prestige 78s all in mint, unplayed condition, all priced at $1 each. I called my friend Dan Axelrod and told him what I’d found. “Bring them home,” he said, “And bring some for me.”

So I went out and bought a rolling carry-on suitcase and went back to the Jazz Record Mart on Grand Street and bought a couple of hundred mint Prestige 78s and I loaded them into the suitcase and rolled them back down Grand Street to the Hilton Hotel. The toughest part was lifting them on the plane and putting them in the overhead rack. A couple of hundred 78s is quite a load.

Now, I really thought I was done with 78s. Why would I ever need more? I had Bird and Hawk and Billie and now Prestiges with Miles and Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt and Ammons and Wardell Gray. But it’s never enough, is it, with us collectors? Whatever we have, it’s never enough.

So, through the years, I’ve accumulated more and more 78s. A few Blue Notes here and there. A few more Billie Holidays, and Louis Jordans. An Ike Quebec boxed set on Blue Note (see the picture with this post). There was a guy who had a store – really more like a museum – in the Empire State Building. His name was Morty Savada. It was said he had something like a million 78s. I went there one day. Just to look. Of course I came home with a pile of records.

Wouldn’t you?