This week’s theme: Jazz With Strings. Featured artists include Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles McPherson, Bill Evans, Kronos Quartet, Ben Webster, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley, Clifford Brown, Sarah Vaughan.
This week’s theme: Two-tenor LPs. Featured artists include John Coltrane, Paul Quinichette, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Rouse, Ben Webster, Sonny Stitt, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Paul Gonsalves, Hank Mobley.
This week’s theme. Welcoming in 2024, with 24-related jazz vinyl. Hint, Swing, Swang, Swinging’ and A New Perspective on Blue Note. Featured artists include Jackie McLean, Donald Bird, Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley, Al Sears, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Stitt, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, Oscar Pettiford, Oliver Nelson, Kenny Dorham.
This week’s Theme: The BeBop Songbook
Let’s start by looking in the Jazz Collector inbox to see what treasures and wisdom might be awaiting us. I see that our old friend CeeDee has a few links for us, starting with another WOW: Sonny Stitt Plays, Royal Roost 2208. This was an original deep groove mono pressing listed in VG++ condition for both the record and the cover. The cover pictures could indicate some optimistic grading. The final price was $760. It went from $219, which is pretty high for this record, to the final price in the last few seconds of the auction. There were 12 bidders altogether. This has to be the highest price ever for a Stitt on Roost record. So, let’s swing over to Popsike and . . . . Indeed, it is not just the highest price for a Stitt on Roost, it is the highest price for any Stitt. Hey, it’s a great record and he was a great player. Read more
Once again relying on our friend CeeDee to keep me apprised of jazz vinyl happenings on eBay while my work prevents me from being as active as I would like. The first one is a record I’ve never heard of by an artist that is not familiar to me: Bjarne Rostvold Trio, Tricrotism, RCA Victor 9955. This was an original mono German pressing sold by vinyl-house-uk.The record was listed in EX+ condition and the cover was EX. The final price was $503. Is this a bass, drum, trumpet trio, as it seems on the cover? I’m trying to think of other records with this personnel and I’m coming up empty. There surely must be more out there, but I can’t think of them. Read more
Interesting discussion on the previous post about buying/selling records on eBay and dealing with returns. I haven’t sold on eBay in about six years, ever since my real business took off, but when I did I offered a full return policy and typically also included postage. I had a couple of people take advantage, but most transactions went very smoothly. Like Bill, I tended to under grade the records a bit just to avoid any problems. If I felt anyone was scamming me, or if they were returning records frivolously, I blocked them so they couldn’t bid on any more of my records. Anyway, back to business: Sonny Stitt, Stitt’s Bits, Prestige 7133. This was an original New York yellow label. It was listed in M- condition for the record and the cover, but it’s clear from the photos that the cover is not M-. This record sold for $405. I don’t recall too many of the Stitt records selling for this amount, and not this one. I’m a Stitt fan, but I know he’s never been popular among collectors, so what is the story here?
This one also fetched a relatively hefty price, all things considered: Read more
So now some of the best records from the Uncle Bruce Baltimore collection were in my apartment and it was about 1 in the morning and, of course, I couldn’t sleep knowing the records were sitting there waiting to be perused. I moved the records from boxes to crates and began just looking through them one more time, this time with no hurry, no rush. It was a great moment, a man, a dog and his score. I didn’t listen to any of the records at this point. There was just something about keeping them as a whole and letting the feeling linger that I didn’t want to disturb.
When morning came I had to get ready for the WFMU Record Fair. I already had 14 boxes of other records in my cramped apartment. I started looking through the Baltimore collection to see if there was anything obvious I could pull out and possibly sell at the record show. I found a few items: There were three Sonny Rollins Blue Notes I now had in triplicates; the copy of Mating Call was an upgrade from my copy; I already had two mint copies of Study in Brown, so I could sell a spare. Same with John Coltrane with the Red Garland Trio, Prestige 7123, and one of the Bud Powell Blue Notes
I spent 24 hours on eBay. Well, not really. What I did was I looked at 24 consecutive hours worth of jazz records listed on eBay. I used to do this every single day, particularly when I was active buying and selling. But it’s not the way I look anymore. It was kind of fun. I put a few records in my watch list, which I will share momentarily, and I even bid on a couple of records, which will be the subject of another post. The thing that was most striking was the staggering percentage of records listed on eBay that just will not sell. This is primarily because there is no market for them, but there are others priced so ridiculously out of sync with the market that the seller is just wasting his time and money listing them. What is it, 90% of the records won’t get any bids? That’s my guess. It would be interesting if someone spent some time and did a study.
Anyway, here are a few that either closed earlier or are closing soon, starting with Art Tatum. Benny Carter, Louis Bellson, Clef 55. This was an original pressing with a nice cover by David Stone Martin. There’s really very little interest in Tatum these days, which I will never understand, so I wanted to watch this and see if it would sell. It did, for $42.12 in Ex condition for the record and the cover, VG+ in my language.
These next two surprised me. They are not records I normally watch because they don’t typically fetch collectible prices. They didn’t here, but they also sold for more money than I would have expected:
Here are some odds and ends we’ve been watching:
Kenny Burrell, Blue Note 1543. This was an original pressing with the Lexington Avenue address, the last of the Lexington Blue Notes. It also has the cover by Andy Warhol. The seller has his own grading system and he labeled the record and cover in the VG++ range, but based on the description of the record and his system, it sounded to me like the record was more like VG and the cover was somewhere between VG and VG+. It sold for $510.
I’d have thought this would see more action, but it didn’t: Stan Getz, Interpretations, Norgran 1000. This was an original pressing with the deep grooves and yellow label and it was listed in M- condition for the vinyl. The cover looked to be about VG+. The start price for this was $50 and there was only one bid and it sold for $50. Someone got a great record for a nice price.
Here’s another great record often available at a nice price: Sonny Stitt, 37 Minutes and 48 Seconds, Roost 2219. The early Stitt Roost LPS like this and Sonny Stitt and the New Yorkers feature
