Teasing the Korean

I learned about him through The Real Book. There were two short pieces on one page, one by Dave Holland, and one by Karl Berger, with a note at the bottom reading, "For information concerning concerts by these artists, please write: Creative Music Studios, PO Box 671, Woodstock, NY 12498." I never tried to book them in concert, but I did attempt to solo over "Perfect Love" as an exercise. RIP.

And tell us about the French wines.

It was a Nance-only release. I'm here through Friday.

Long before that. I am comparing my more recent trips to my first visits in the 1990s, during the Great Vinyl Purge.

Yes, that is true also! I remember picking up the Nick Drake Fruit Tree box set on vinyl, sealed, for $20. And lots of other stuff being dumped by record labels.

What years are we talking? You may have missed the golden era. In the 1990s, everyone was ditching vinyl for CDs, the internet hadn't caught on, and the WWII generation was either downsizing or dying. All three of these factors converged to produce a flood of LPs - cheap, desirable, and often in very clean condition. Most of my LPs were acquired during this time. It is hard to describe this amazing blip in time to those who either weren't there or engaged in other interests.

I still have dreams about Stereo Jack's dollar bins!!!

A friend of mine in SoCal says that the vinyl market there is comparable to what it was everyplace else in the 1990s. But in every place I've lived or visited frequently, it has dried up. The glory days of the dollar vinyl bins are long behind us.

On my last visit, they had far fewer dollar albums, and the selection was not as good. This says less about Princeton than it does about market changes. There was a brief period where all these LPs were available, and few people wanted them.

I don't know if anyone here remembers Princeton Record Exchange during its heyday, but on a typical Saturday trip, I would spend literally the whole day on the floor buying from the dollar boxes placed under the regular racks. It was unbelievable. When I made it through the dollar boxes, after slowly standing up and remembering what it was to walk upright, I would spend about one hour going through their regular jazz section. And whenever I would go to Stereo Jack's in Cambridge - which was weekly, at one time - I would routinely look through their dollar jazz, dollar classical, and dollar vocals bin. Everything was always in great shape - it was just stuff that they either had too many copies of, or things that didn't move. To say nothing of the dollar records I've picked up at thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales over the years... All that said, my vinyl buying days slowed down considerably about 6 years ago.

I have tons of Duke, but that was a combination of very intentional buying and it randomly showing up for low dough. For a while, I was finding all of his Columbia LPs for a dollar.

Understood. Either way, I still left them behind in the dollar bin.

In an alternate universe, I may have included Stan Kenton on the list, but in this reality, I exercised a lot of restraint with his records. But they were everywhere for a dollar, especially the cheapo 70s reissues with the generic ugly cover art.

Worth keeping for Sandy Warner on the sleeve, if nothing else!

The live and Latin albums on Capitol are worthwhile, as is the debut, "The Shearing Spell," the Capitol studio album closest to his jazzier MGM stuff.

Also: Dorothy Ashby/Frank Wess - Hip Harp (Prestige, mono)

Last night: The Betty Miller Trio - A Jazz Piano Heatwave (Foremost, mono). Includes a nice version of Harry Revel's "Jet."

Me too. I ultimately unloaded most of the schmaltzy Capitol albums. I held on the MGM albums, live albums, Latin albums, Bossa album, solo piano albums, the one with Sandy Warner on the cover, and the groovy MPS album where they do "The World is a Ghetto." That's still around 20 or 25. I have space for a few more more albums than 370, not that this is necessarily a good thing.

Right, this is more about accidental accumulation as a result of price and frequency of encountering the records. Albums by the four artists I listed were all routinely available for a dollar or two for a long time.

Anita Ellis - I Wonder What Became of Me (Epic, mono) Arrangements by Luther Henderson.

Yup!

Yeah, I accumulated lots of Cannonball and Jimmy Smith also! I can probably add Wes Montgomery to that list.

Last night, Ms. TTK and I had her brother and his girlfriend over for dinner. We all love jazz and we are all vinyl hounds. At one point, I put on an Ahmad Jamal LP (At the Top: Poinciana Revisited) and we started talking about artists in our accumulations for whom we have acquired many, many LPs, without really trying or being aware of it. The four artists in particular we we agreed upon were: Ahmad Jamal Ramsey Lewis George Shearing And, of course, Herbie Mann During the Great Vinyl Purge of the 1990s and early 2000s, albums by these artists were everywhere for low dough. I think I have 16 Ahmad Jamal LPs, and probably around 30 by each of the other artists, or at least I had 30 at one time, before thinning the herd. What is funny is that this occurred without any of us really trying. We just woke up one day realizing we had accumulated huge catalogs of these artists. Wondering if this is the case for anyone else, or if you would add others to this list.

Last night, Ms. TTK and I had her brother and his girlfriend over for dinner. Our musical all-vinyl choices were as follows: Ahmad Jamal - At the Top: Poinciana Revisited (Impulse!, stereo) Gil Melle - Tome VI - (Verve, stereo) Dave Pike - Jazz for the Jet Set (Atlantic, stereo) Dorothy Ashby - Afro Harping (Cadet, stereo) Gary McFarland - Today (Skye, stereo) Gabor Szabo - Bacchanale (Skye, stereo)

I just learned there was an LP of Lalo Schifrin's Starsky and Hutch music. This music has never been released on LP, CD, or download. If I weren't for a recent home remodel project and an aging cat who requires medication, I would have been tempted to go out yesterday to find this.