Jerry Valburn D.R.I.P.

[Christiern]

Jerry Valburn passed away. One less light-fingered collector to worry about.

Hey, I wasn't his only victim.

[brownie]

What was your problem with him, Chris?

Met Valburn at a record convention in New Jersey several years ago and found him a very nice man!

[AllenLowe]

he was no Frank Driggs................

[marcello]

Was he the one who issued "The Count at the Chatterbox"?

Basie didn't seem to mind.

[JSngry]

Don't know that the "problem" was what he issued as much as how he came by some of it...

[brownie]

Valburn's series of releases on his Merritt label was outstanding.

I hope his death won't mean the end of the Duke Ellington DETS CDs series!

[Patrick]

Have no idea who this is, and I don't think I care, but I'm guessing the "D" in the title does not stand for "definitely".

[Christiern]

Well, actually, it stands for Don't

I posted elsewhere a brief recollection of how Valburn stole all my 78rpm test pressings (a few hundred). He had volunteered to transfer them to tape, he came to my apartment, we made several trips carrying the discs to his car and I never saw my records again. In fact, he claimed never to have taken them! I was a true bastard and I am not at all sorry that he is gone, albeit far too late. His girlfriend, Rosetta Reitz was another one who blessed us with her departure—they deserved each other.

I am by no means his only victim. Here's a post from an Ellington forum:

You want a respectful comment? Well, here it is. Jerry Valburn was a crook and a swindler and I hope that he rots in hell. I met him through other collectors in the 1960’s. He pretended that he was a friend. He came up to Montreal with his wife Barbara to convince my wife and I that I should go into the record business with him. I was much younger than him and trusted him. I spent six or seven thousand dollars and had the first 4 LP issues on the Jazz Gulld label manufactured here (2 Duke Ellington and 2 Artie Shaw), brought them to a local transport company and had them shipped to Valburn. He sold them to various dealers and distributors. He told me that he had the rights to the material. (I later received an invoice from someone in Florida for $3,000 for the Shaw material with a note that I should pay him as that was the arrangement with Valburn.) ( Still trusting him, I even lent him $5,000 that he said that he needed to issue an LP with Marty Grosz and Wayne Wright for his Aviva label. Luckily, I was repaid the $5,000.) A considerable time passed and I never received one penny back on the money I put into the venture. He claimed that he did not collect from the distributors. I contacted the largest distributors and they showed me proof of having paid him. I telephoned him many times and asked him how he could do this especially to a friend . He usually laughed and would hang up on me. I recall also phoning Barbara. Her comment was that they had to take care of themselves first. He obviously knew that he had an east mark . My wife and I at the time had foster children as well as our biological children. I guess that he knew that being busy with the children and living in Canada that we could not afford to take legal action against him. I lost every cent that I put into the venture not to mention the work and aggravation. In later years I would see ads for the same material on other LPs and CDs. I could not help but wonder if he found other victims.

Marvin Ekers

Montreal, Canada

[Bright Moments]

Rosetta Reitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Rosetta Reitz

Rosetta Reitz with the Performers of the Blues is a Woman Concert at the Newport Jazz Festival

Rosetta ReitzRosetta Reitz (September 28, 1924–November 1, 2008) was an American feminist and jazz historian who searched for and established a record label producing 18 albums of the music of the early women of jazz and the blues.[1]

Reitz was born in Utica, New York on September 28, 1924. She attended the University of Buffalo for one year and the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years. After leaving college, she moved to Manhattan and worked at the Gotham Book Mart, later opening the Four Seasons, a bookstore in Greenwich Village she operated from 1947-1956.[2]. Throughout her varied career she worked as a stockbroker, owner of a greeting card business, a college professor and a food columnist for The Village Voice and authored a book about mushrooms Mushroom Cookery,.[1]

Ms. Reitz was one of the second wave of feminism's earliest theory writers as author of the 1971 The Village Voice article "The Liberation of the Yiddishe Mama" and was a member of New York Radical Feminists and co-founder of the Older Women's Liberation (OWL).[2]. She then wrote 1977 book Menopause: A Positive Approach, which was one of the first such books to have focused on menopause from the perspective of women, rather than with a medical approach.[1] While writing the book, she listened to her music recordings which told of the strength of women, not their role as victims.[1] Reitz noted that all the books she had read treated menopause as a dysfunction. She spent three years and spoke to 1,000 women in writing the book.[3]

Using $10,000 she borrowed from friends, Rosetta Records was established in 1979. She would search for lost music, most often from record collectors. The music that Reitz discovered was usually in the public domain, but she would try to determine if there were any current rights and ensure that royalties were paid to the artists.[1] Her music collections were built on old 78 rpm records of lesser-known performers including trumpeter Valaida Snow, pianist-singer Georgia White, as well as others, such as Bessie Brown, Bertha Idaho and Maggie Jones. She also found long lost songs from better-known artists such as Ida Cox, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Mae West. Her collecting covered the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, with particular attention to the Blues queens of the 1920s.[1][4]

She would remaster the recordings, research the background of the artists and write liner notes. She designed the graphics for album covers and included historic photographs. While early records were shipped by mail, ultimately there were more than ten stores that carried the Rosetta label. With changes in recording media, the label switched to tapes and later CDs. Though official sales figures were never disclosed, Reitz estimated that the four "independent women's blues" compilation albums each sold 20,000 copies. The last album released came in the mid-1990s, but older releases were available online and the artists she found had been picked up by a number of mainstream recording labels.[1]

In 1980 and 1981, Reitz organized a tribute to the "Women of Jazz" at Avery Fisher Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Called "The Blues is a Woman", the program, narrated by Carmen McRae, featured music by Adelaide Hall, Big Mama Thornton, Nell Carter and Koko Taylor.[5] Ms Reitz was the recipient of three awards—the Wonder Woman Award of 1982, a Grandmother Winifred grant in 1994, and the Veteran Feminists of America 2002 Roll of Honor for feminists writers.[2].

She died at age 84 on November 1, 2008 in Manhattan, New York of cardiopulmonary problems.[1] She is survived by 3 daughters and a granddaughter.

and from her NY Times obit:

For years Ms. Reitz lobbied for a postage stamp honoring Bessie Smith, which was issued in 1994.

[Bright Moments]

[Christiern]

I don't think "Sissy Man Blues" is among the albums Rosetta pirated. She was a horrid woman who twisted historical facts to fit into her very narrow feminist perspective. I all but threw her out of my apartment when she came to see me.

BTW, the Wikipedia piece was probably written by family—it is 90% bullshit

Edited April 3, 2010 by Christiern

[brownie]

Well, I am glad I did not have to do business with Valburn!

For a different view of the man (and for those who don't know who we are talking about) here is an 1991 article from The New York Times:

Ellington fan

[Christiern]

Yes, the NY Times is not immune to hype, nor—in recent years—known for fact-checking.

[AllenLowe]

he was no Bernie Brightman -

[Christiern]

Well, in some ways, he was, but Bernie had a Robin Hood streak in him, shall we say? He robbed the IRS and RIAA to benefit the fledgling record collector (as well as himself, of course). I wrote a couple of liner notes for Bernie, so I suppose I aided and abetted, albeit for orts.

[Ted O'Reilly]

Yes, the NY Times is not immune to hype, nor—in recent years—known for fact-checking.

Chris, fact-checking at the NYT is not a recent problem. I see that the 1991article noted above refers to pianist "Teddy Williams", and has Valburn listening to the "rare 1938 tape" at the L of C in 1945!

[Christiern]

I noticed that, too, Ted, but—perhaps due to my advanced age—I consider 1991 to be a recent year.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

whoa, thats a crazy story

Edited April 5, 2010 by chewy

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

ok what i really wanna know, is, whats happening w/ this guys collection? be on the lookout you guys, all this stuff is gonna be put somewhere.......chris should get his 78s back for sure, as for the rest of it, i wish i could have a crack at it.........

[Stereojack]

Valburn donated his vast Ellington collection to the Library of Congress a long time ago.

[Christiern]

How much did thy pay him for his "donation"?

[Stereojack]

How much did thy pay him for his "donation"?

I heard that he got a very large tax credit.

[medjuck]

Valburn donated his vast Ellington collection to the Library of Congress a long time ago.

I was going to post something about that but then I started to wonder how he then supplies the music to Storyville for the DETS and other Ellington releases for which he gets credit? Did he donate it but still have access to it?

[brownie]

How much did thy pay him for his "donation"?

Valburn 'was paid $250,000 for half of it and presented the other half as a tax-deductible gift' according to this 1991 AP story.

Also to answer medjuck's query, I have seen somewhere that Valburn had permanent unlimited access to his collection until he died.