This week I indulge myself with a show for my very own birthday. In the past I’ve played tracks recorded on Feb. 4, including Miles Davis Milestones. But two years in, I’ve dipped into that well too often. So this year, the focus is on the year I was born, 1953. As I say on the Podcast, it was a very good year for jazz and boys from Queens. Also a great chance to focus on 10-inch records from the collection. Featured artists include Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Percy Heath, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Curley Russell, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Shavers, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Joe Dodge, Ron Crotty, Jay Jay Johnson, Jimmy Heath, Gil Coggins, Tadd Dameron, Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Gigi Gryce, Charlie Parker, Red Garland, Roy Haynes, Chet Baker, Russ Freeman, Carson Smith, Larry Bunker, Shelly Manne, Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Jummy Giuffre, Bob Enevoldsen, Marty Paich, Curtis Counce, Phil Woods, Jon Eardley, George Syran, Teddy Kotick, Nick Stabulas.

This one is a Blue Note: Lou Donaldson, Swing and Soul, Blue Note 1566. This is an original West 63^rd Street pressing. The record and cover are listed in VG+ condition, although that may be generous for the cover. Based on the pictures, I would rate it VG. The start price is $1,000 and there are no bidders with more than two days left on the auction. This one has sold for as much as $1,575 in the past, according to Popsike, but the condition was a lot better. I will be surprised if this one gets the asking price, but our Jazz Collector world is full of surprises these days, right?

Hank Mobley with Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan, Blue Note 1540. This is a West 63^rd Street pressing, which, if you follow the logic of the thread on the previous post, is not an original original, if that makes any sense. An original original would have the Lexington Avenue address. In any case, the seller grades the record and cover as VG+, but that is about as clean a cover as you will normally see for this record. The bidding is in the $700 range with more than two days left on the auction.

Miles Davis, Steamin’, Prestige 7200. This is an original New Jersey yellow label pressing. The record and cover are both listed as VG+. Bidding is in the $160 range, with the auction closing today. Another Prestige: Tadd Dameron, Fontainebleau, Prestige 7037. This looks to be an original New York pressing listed in VG+ condition for the record and the cover. The start price is about $180 and so far there are no bidders with more than two days left on the auction.

By now, I’m sure most of you have heard the news that Wayne Shorter died. When I think of Wayne Shorter records, I think of the Blakey and Blue Note era, so I would have to say those are my favorite recordings. But that’s the era I love in general. I’m curious what post-Blue Note and post-Miles recordings some of our readers would recommend. Perhaps with links to YouTube?

Here’s another seller with some nice jazz vinyl this week, including Sonny Rollins, Tenor Madness, Prestige 7047. This looks to be an original New York yellow label promo, listed in what looks to be VG++ or M- condition for the record and VG++ for the cover. Can’t figure out what the seller is doing with the pictures – still scanning them perhaps? – and that might have an effect on the bidding, but so far there are no takers with a start price of about $500. To me, this is one of the seminal records of the era – Newk and Trane together, with the Miles rhythm section. It does not get any better, trust me. Is it possible this record has never made its way into the $1,000 bin? According to Popsike the highest recorded price has been $958. From the same seller, with the same weird photo crops comes Tadd Dameron, Mating Call, With John Coltrane, Prestige 7070. This is also an original New York yellow label promo copy that looks to be in M- condition, or close, for the record and the cover. This one also has a start price of about $500 and so far there are no bidders. Can’t imagine our community would let these gems pass by without a bid. But, we’ll see.

Here’s a 12-inch Lexington Avenue Blue Note: Lee Morgan, Indeed!, Blue Note 1538. The record is listed in VG+ condition and the cover is VG+ with the bottom seam completely split. It’s good that the seller included that detail, so you can be the judge. The VG+ grading is always in the eye of the beholder, IMHO. Based on the pictures, if the only flaw is the bottom seam split, I’d be comfortable with VG+ as a buyer. The bidding on this one is in the $300 range with more than four days left on the auction.

Here’s a nice one: Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners, Riverside 226. This is an original white label pressing, which you don’t see very often. The record is listed as VG++ with clean sound, and the cover is also graded as VG++. The bidding is in the $430 range and the auction closes later today. I recently picked up a nice blue label copy of Brilliant Corners as an upgrade from my previous copy, which had the blue labels but was clearly a third or fourth pressing. When I brought the new record home, I played it and was instantly reminded why it is a classic. Like many of you, I’m sure, I need to go back more frequently to the great records in my collection and play them more frequently. As I said recently here, I feel like I’ve forgotten more than I remember.

From the same seller comes Tadd Dameron, Fontainebleau, Prestige 7037. This is an original yellow label pressing with the New York address. The record and cover are both listed in VG++ condition. Bidding is in the $130 range. This is one I haven’t listened to in probably 30 years, but I will more likely listen to Mating Call if I go to Dameron, because that is a fantastic record with some really great early Coltrane. I’m sure Fontainebleau is great as well, right?

Man, Ike Quebec is more popular now than he ever was when he was alive: Ike Quebec, Blue & Sentimental, Blue Note 4098. This is an original New York USA pressing with the ear, RVG and what looks to be deep grooves. The record is in M- condition and the cover is VG++. The bidding has already surpassed $500 with nearly four days left on the auction. What do we make of the spike in prices for Ike Quebec Blue Notes? Is it because they are Blue Notes, or is Ike getting some love all on his own?

Finally, here is a favorite of mine and, after all these years, one in which I don’t own an original pressing: Jackie McLean, A Long Drink of the Blues, New Jazz 8253. This looks to be an original mono pressing with the purple labels and the deep grooves. The record is VG++ or M- and the cover is VG++. The bidding is in the $425 range, also with nearly four days left on the auction.

Here are a couple more nice Prestiges from the Jazz Collector era:

Webster Young, For Lady, Prestige 7106. This is an original New York yellow label pressing listed in VG++ condition for the record and vG+ for the cover. The bidding is in the $250 range and there are about two days left in the auction as of this writing. Tadd Dameron and John Coltrane, Mating Call, Prestige 7070. This is an original New York yellow label pressing. You’ll have to read the seller’s description to assess the grade. The record is somewhere between VG+ and VG++ and the cover is VG++. The bidding is in the $200 range with two more days before the auction closes. Quick question for those of us fortunate enough to own this record: If you file by artists, as I do, where to you keep this one? Under Coltrane or under Dameron? Mine is with the Coltranes.

And what would a Monday at Jazz Collector be without a couple of Blue Notes, starting with Sonny Red, Out of the Blue, Blue Note 4032. This looks to be an original West 63rd Street pressing listed in VG++ condition for the record and VG+ for the cover. The price is in the $200 range, but I expect it to sell for quite a bit higher, particularly after that copy a couple of weeks ago sold for $1,802. Thad Jones, Detroit New York Junction, Blue Note 1513. This is an original Lexington Avenue pressing that is described to be in VG+ condition, although potential bidders would be advised to look at the picture of the cover to draw your own conclusions. The bidding is in the $300 range with more than a day left.

That autographed Thelonious Monk record, At the Blackhawk, Riverside 323, wound up selling for $697. Based on the comments from the previous post (thank you again, Don-Lucky), this seems to be a legitimate autograph and it seems to be a good price for the buyer.

One more for today: Lou Donaldson, Wailing With Lou, Blue Note 1545. This was an original pressing with the New York 23 address. The record was M- and the cover was VG+. The price was $438. Given what original pressings of Blue Notes are selling for this days, this seemed pretty reasonable to me, given when the record was released and the fact that it’s a darn nice record.

The second record I played was one of my all-time favorites, Sonny Rollins Plus Four, Prestige 7038. I put this one on because I hadn’t actually sat and listened to it in a while, and I wanted to listen to something that I knew was great. And, boy, is this great. Rollins and Clifford Brown play off each other so incredibly well, it’s as if they could read each other’s minds. Clifford, in particular, is in staggering form, each phrase fresh and  compelling. I would daresay that of all the horn players of that particular era, he was perhaps  the most consistently vibrant and brilliant and technically adept  in his expressing his ideas and in constructing solos. So I listened to the album with a big smile on my face and occasionally I would laugh out loud at the absolute amazing-ness of it all. I think when I did a Top 5 Desert Albums list a few years ago, this one was on it. No need to change that.

As I said, I had fun with my records last night. Maybe I’ll make another date for tonight.

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 put those records in a separate box and brought them to the fair. I set up my table at about 2:30 and by 4 p.m. most of those records were gone, sold to a couple of dealers from Japan. By the end of the day Saturday, they were all gone.

The rest of the records in my apartment were sitting there, still unplayed through the weekend. I was still just looking at them, marveling at their condition, trying to figure out what to do with their packaging. Many were still in their original rice paper sleeves and loose plastic outer sleeves. These sleeves were all more than 50 years old. I couldn’t really keep the records in those old, dirty sleeves, could I? But they looked so good in those sleeves and it really did give me the feeling of walking into a record store and perusing the bins in 1957 or 1958. I moved some of the records to new inner and outer sleeves, especially those that didn’t have inner sleeves to begin with, and they certainly looked safer that way. But I didn’t go all the way. Even now, as the records sit in my living room nearly two weeks later, some of the records are in new sleeves, and some are still in the original packaging from the 1950s.

There was one other important matter, of course. My niece’s Toyota Highlander was sitting on 81^st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with 15 boxes of records from the era of classic jazz recordings, including three boxes of 78s whose contents were a mystery to me. And there was to be a point soon where my niece needed her car back. There was no room in the apartment for these records. The only options were to bring them to storage or bring them to my house in The Berkshires, where there is plenty of room. The decision was easy: If I put them in storage, I wouldn’t really get to go through them. The plan was to drive to The Berkshires and, at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, November 26, Marty and I got in the car and headed for the country.

I had a conference call with a client when I got there, then I was on deadline to do three other writing projects. But the records were too powerful a presence to ignore. I unloaded them all from the car, put the 12-inch LPs in one corner and isolated the three boxes of 78s that I hadn’t previously explored. Remember, I didn’t even know these records existed until I arrived in Rob’s apartment in Baltimore.The boxes containing the 78s were the same types of Home Depot boxes as those that had the LPs. They were not sturdy and were, literally, coming apart at the seams from the weight of the 78s. I opened the first one. There a bunch of 78s, no sleeves, wrapped in an old cloth, probably the same cloth wrapping for more than 50 years. Nothing special in this batch. A lot of gospel music, which didn’t interest me.

As a dug deeper into the Home Depot box, the findings become more and more interesting. A whole group of Prestige 78s, all in perfect, unplayed condition. As I was digging through the boxes, I realized I wanted to share this with Dan, who, like me, has a passion for 78s. I called him up. I’m going through the 78 boxes now, I told him. Then, as I kept going through records I would read him the titles. A bunch of Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt and even a few Sonny Rollins 78s on Prestige, and then, finally, the first of the familiar blue and white labels, the Blue Notes. Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron, Miles Davis. All in pristine condition.

As I was going through these records, with Dan on the line, there was one obvious gap that we both realized: Where were the Bird records, specifically the Dials? Uncle Bruce must have had at least some of the Birds. I told Dan I had to go, but would call him back if/when I found the Birds. Sure enough, five minutes later, I discovered an old Capital Records carton. On the outside, in Uncle Bruce’s now familiar handwriting, were the words:

“Chas Parker, Assorted Mercury, Dial, Savoy, 1-1-54”

I opened the box and called Dan.

What happened next? Stay tuned for Part 7 tomorrow.

Tadd Dameron, Fontainebleau, Prestige 7037. This is an original New York pressing that is in M- condition for both the record and the cover. This one is not usually among the higher-priced early Prestiges, but the bidding is already at $162, which is nice to see for a nice record.

Zoot Sims and Joe Newman, Locking Horns, Rama 1003. This is a rare record on a rare label. The vinyl is listed as M- and the cover is VG++. The price is nearly $300, with more than an hour left.

Miles Davis, Miles, The New Miles Davis Quintet, Prestige 7014. This is the album that introduced John Coltrane to

most of the jazz public at the time. It is a beautiful copy, according to Euclid, in M- condition for both the record and the cover. The price is $439.

This one is from Atomic Records: Curtis Fuller, Bone and Bari, Blue Note 1572. This features Sonny Clark on piano. This looks to be in VG+ condition and is currently at $300.

Here’s a tier-two item that might make someone happy: Arte Shaw and his Grammercy Five, Volume 4, Clef 645. This one features a great cover by David Stone Martin — somewhat risque even — plus the presence of Tal Farlow on guitar. This vinyl on this one is M- and the cover is VG+. The price is just $30 at this point and we’re not sure it will get all that much higher.