street singer

'Africaine' just added to True Blue's Running Low/Last Chance section...

Well, I found a partial answer to my question here. Still not sure about the Mobley, though...

I've managed to pick up a few used Blue Note CD's over the past year or so that have white jewel case trays. Some of these appear to be from the early Connoisseur batches, but I'm not certain of this. Can anyone confirm this? The CD's in question are as follows: CLIFF JORDAN / JOHN GILMORE - BLOWING IN FROM CHICAGO (1994) TINA BROOKS - TRUE BLUE (1994) ORNETTE COLEMAN - THE EMPTY FOXHOLE (1994) The actual discs contained within the cases are white w/ a blue label. I presume the above CD's are early Conn's - were these not labeled as being part of the Connoisseur series back when they were first released? I also recently received a copy of Hank Mobley's 'The Turnaround' that has a white jewel case tray. The back cover has a copyright date of 1989, while the actual CD (white w/ blue label) has a copyright date of 1995. Is this just a regular (as opposed to Connoisseur or RVG) reissue? What's the explanation for the white jewel cases on these? Not to nitpick or anything...just curious.

Well, I can't say that I've gotten any insanely good deals on eBay, but...I've gotten a few fairly good ones. Tina Brook's 'Minor Move' and 'The Waiting Game' for about $7 I thought was a good deal. I've picked up many in-print CDs for about $3 or $4, mostly browsing through the Ending Today and Going, Going, Gone stuff. I also have a large list of favorites that I continually revise, most of which I receive email notifications on whenever something new is listed that matches that description. That is a very handy tool that I've had some luck with. As stated previously, patience is definitely the key when buying on eBay.

Yeah, I've already downloaded most of the covers from that website. I was hoping that someone had some better quality scans, though - some of those require lots of touching up in PhotoShop. I don't mind doing it...it just takes me entirely too long to get them looking half-way decent.

64 very well spent dollars...

I've always been a night person. On weekends, I find myself staying up to 3 or 4 in the morning w/o realizing it. Just listening to tunes, reading, browsing online...whatever. During the week I have to be up by 6-ish, but I still rarely get to bed before 1 in the morning. 8+ hours of sleep per night is nice, but I apparently don't need that much to function. If I had it my way, I'd prefer to sleep for only an hour or so a day...or not at all, even. There's just too much stuff to do - and too much music to listen to!

Just finished reading 'Time Out of Joint' by Philip K. Dick. Now starting 'Counter-Clock World' by the same author.

Just got an email from EJazzLines stating that my order shipped complete today. Wow... That was quick! This batch of CDs should keep me busy for a little while...

Yeah, that's a great tune! One of the ones I forgot to mention in my previous post...

Uncle Skid, Yes, I'm enjoying the Blue Mitchell very much and am extremely glad that I was able to pick it up before it became unavailable. There are some absolute gems on these discs: "Alone, Alone And Alone", "Perception", "One Shirt" "Blues 3 For 1"...I'm still absorbing all this music, but those are the ones that really jumped out at me. I know there are ones I'm forgetting... The Mobley is, ofcourse, excellent. Out of all the Mosaics (in print and out of print), this is the one that I wanted the most. Mobley is simply without question, the man. If you're a Mobley fan, this is simply a MUST HAVE. The only other way to get the bulk of these recordings is to spend a lot more money importing them or get lucky and find them on vinyl. Do yourself a big favor: GET THIS SOON!!! What's next? Well, for me, it's definitely the Carmel Jones and Curtis Amy Selects. After that, I'm going to allow myself one Mosaic select per month, starting with #3, and continue in the order of their release. The price of these sets allows me to do that, and judging from the quality of the Mosaic sets I have so far, I simply do not want to miss any of these! As for the big boxes - there are many that look wonderful, but the budget simply does not allow for me to get every one that I would like! The ones that I will definitely get, at some point in the future (more than likely birthday/Christmas gifts), are these: Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams, Gerry Mulligan CJB, Tristano/Konitz/Marsh. I might be tempted to go for the J.J. Johnson when it's on the Running Low list. We'll see... A coworker of mine just received the Morgan/Shorter the other day and I can personally attest to the quality of that one. While I do very much prefer their later work, this one would definitely be a good one to have as well. You're right, this is an expensive hobby...especially when you include the "audio equipment" side of it...but, I can't think of a more rewarding and enjoyable one. Can you?

For anyone who's still interested in these Spanish Blue Notes, E-JazzLines still has a great number of them available. I was only recently made aware of these hard-to-find sessions being released in Spain, so, in order to snatch these up while they're still around, I went absolutely nuts tonight and ordered the following: THAD JONES - Detroit NY Junction ART BLAKEY - Like someone in love LEE MORGAN - The cooker JOHNNY COLES - Little Johnny C. LEO PARKER - Let me tell you bout it HORACE SILVER - Further explorations CURTIS FULLER - Curtis Fuller 3 IKE QUEBEC - It might as well be spring PETE LA ROCA - Basra HORACE PARLAN QUINTET - Up and down FREDDIE ROACH - Down to earth JIMMY SMITH - Softly as a summer breeze CLIFFORD JORDAN - Cliff Jordan REUBEN WILSON - Love bug SONNY RED - Out of the blue LONNIE SMITH - Turning point All of these were listed as being in stock w/ the exception of the Blakey - this one "usually ships in 7 days", it says. I will post an update in the next few days to advise how many have actually shipped... These were slightly more expensive than Dusty Groove (~$11.50 as opposed to $9.99), but Dusty Groove only had about 5 of these discs in stock. I've never ordered from E-JazzLines before, so...I'll keep my fingers crossed. Now, who's got some good, full-color high-res scans of these album covers so that I can start making some "real" covers to hide those awful blue ones?! Seriously... Anyone?

Uncle Skid, Seems you and I have very similar taste... The Moncur Select was my first Mosaic purchase as well. Followed by the Mobley (Christmas gift) and, most recently, the Blue Mitchell. Mine's #3475, by the way.

Well, as stated previously here, the second season of Twin Peaks. I hate to even think of the possibility of this not being released... I imagine it must be horrible for someone to have bought the first season without ever having seen the second season, and then to just be left hanging like that. Jeez... C'mon, release this stuff already!!! And a complete 'Northern Exposure' set sure would be nice as well. I miss that show terribly...

Everyone knows that the Connoissieur editions are limited, but does anyone know just how limited? Anyone have any numbers? Also, do they press the same amount of all releases? Or do they press different amounts based on how many they think they can sell? If a certain releases sells out...do they ever repress additional copies of it? The reason I'm asking this is because something caught my attention recently and I've been unable to find an explanation. Some of the Conns don't last but a couple of years...the latest examples of this being the George Braith and Don Wilkerson 'Complete Blue Note Sessions'. Why is this? Were these two releases so popular that they simply sold that quickly? I doubt this... Or, were there simply less of these two made to begin with? Then there are other releases that hang around for years. Bobby Hutcherson's 'Components', for instance. This was released TEN YEARS ago in the first batch of Conns...and it's still readily available! What's the deal?! Any ideas? (As an aside to this - how reliable is True Blue in determining when these things are going OOP? Have there been any recent examples of releases going OOP without being mentioned in the Running Low/Last Chance section at True Blue?)

Probably get the Mobley? Man, you gotta get the Mobley! You just GOTTA!!! He's in your avatar, for Chris'sake!

When will they get around to releasing the second series of 'Twin Peaks', I wonder? And how about the greatest television show of all time, 'Northern Exposure'? Is that even on the horizon?

One of my favorite albums (and bands) ever...

Thanks for the clarification, Swinging Swede. Yes, those must really have been the days!

Was going over the list of Connoisseur releases, checking off the ones I have and lamenting over the ones I don't have, and I noticed something odd. Back in 1998, Blue Note apparently released THIRTY CD's in this series - is this correct? I wasn't following the series in '98, or even listening to jazz for that matter, so I have no way of verifying this. That just seems pretty incredible to me since they've only released 6 per year for the past few years. Was there a reason so many were released that year? Any chance we'll see that many (or even half that many) released in a year's time in the near future? 1998. 30 Connoisseur re-issues. Wow... What a year that must've been!

Need good quality cover scans for Curtain Call and Poppin' in order to make CD-R covers from the Mosaic set. Have been able to come up with covers for the rest of the albums in the set but not having much luck with these two. The only images of these I've found on the web are too small and would result in poor quality when blown up to CD size. Can anyone help? Thanks!

Bought this one immediately upon seeing this thread. Thanks for the heads up, guys...(and a snide, tongue-in-cheek "Yeah, thanks a LOT..." from my bank account!). I've been meaning to pick this one up for a while now. Looking forward to hearing these albums as I am only familiar with Blue's work as a sideman.

Thanks very much, cuow! The covers you uploaded were much better than the ones I had. I did manage to touch up 5066 and 1540 using Photoshop, but still am not completely happy with 5066. It's good enough for my purposes, however... Thanks again!

Thanks for all the responses, everyone. As an update to my original post... I was in Best Buy yesterday looking around and found a package of Memorex CD Jewel Case Inserts. It was $9.99, so I figured what the heck. It came with the ExPRESSit software mentioned by shdlu. I've been playing around with this and have come up with some fairly decent results. The software is easy to use and the labels are perforated on the edges for easy tearing. I'm pretty happy with this as a solution and think I'll stick with it. Now, does anyone have better scans of Hank Mobley's 'Hank Mobley Quartet' (Blue Note 5066) and 'Hank Mobley Sextet' (Blue Note 1540)? The ones available from here are not that great. Also, anyone upload a good image of the Blue Note logo for use on my back covers to make them truly authentic looking? It seems that this would be easy to find on the web, but I have been unable to do so.

I've had to wait between 3-4 weeks to receive items on a few occasions. Usually it takes between 2-3 weeks.