“Peter Jacobson and Jeff Barr started VSOP in 1980 in Washington DC, where Barr was a jazz disc jockey and record seller, and Jacobson was on the staff of the Smithsonian as a legal consultant. The deal to acquire the license to reissue J. R. Monterose, on the Studio 4 label, was reached after contacting Jimmy Sota, the original producer of the LP. Jimmy was coming off a run of semi-successful low-budget spaghetti westerns in Italian with subtitles, and was glad to let us have the deal…we paid $1750.00 to get the rights and the tape, and, oh by the way, two boxes of unused originals…which in 1980

went for $400-900, up to $1,200 or $1,500. So the record was in the black. We did the same thing when VSOP secured the rights-to-release and original tape for the two Elmo Hope Trio LPs on Beacon and Celebrity (Here’s Hope and High Hope). The deal was done in the offices of a couple of tune traders who made their money off of “Sesame Street”…$1,500 was the fee for the license for each, but we got 37 fresh originals that had been acquired from the estate of the producer, Joe Davis, who was famed for putting buxom nudes on the covers of Wurlitzer organ solos and marching bands…The Hope reissues weren’t recognized in the profuse vinyl market of the day and only sold in the low 1,000s, but the 37 originals were all immediately purchased by Barr’s network of worldwide jazz collectors.”

Thank you Jeff.

Before closing . . . I’ve also got another hot item on JR Monterose, which I’ll be posting in the morning. Please stay tuned, you’re gonna love this one.

a reissue from the Very Special Old Phonography label. Oh well. I’m sure the record is nice and I will play it and listen to it sometime soon and give you all a report. One of the nice things about having the record, even if it’s a reissue, is having access to the liner notes, which help to explain what J. R. Monterose was doing in Cedar Rapids in the first place, playing with the world famous Joe Abodeely trio. Here’s some quotes from J.R. from the liner notes: “From the time I started to play, I was under the impression that New York City was the place for jazzmen.” Then, he moved upstate and played in Albany and, eventually did 16 weeks in Ocean City, Md. “The tourists really dug it,” J.R. said. “The same thing happened in Albany. So, I decided to keep my eyes open for places in smaller areas where I could play my kind of jazz.” That led him to The Tender Trap Night Club in Cedar Rapids, where he had been playing for ten months at the time of this recording in 1964. So there you have it.