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Hardbopjazz

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Posts posted by Hardbopjazz

  1. Auctions...

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    I think it is also worth it to be patient. Even "rare" lps will show up again.

    This is true. I had placed bids on 2 LP with a starting price of 4.99. I made a max bid of 24 dollars for both. Went to bed with 1 hour to go and both were still at 4.99. When I woke up, I lost both.

    Wait till they appear next time. I'll hold my bidding till the end.

  3. Auctions...

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    When bidding on something you see on Ebay, what's the best way to increase your chances of winning?

    Is making a high bid better then waiting to the last moment to make a bid? I recently made to high bids, the most I was willing to pay for albums, and when the auction ended for both, I lost out. Someone came in with less the 2 minutes and out bid me on both items. This leads me to believe, waiting till the end would give you a better chance of winning. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

  11. Estate sale...

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    This reminds me of a thread that someone else started awhile ago about his last will and testament as regards to his CD collection.

    Personally, when I'm dead and gone I don't care if my family gets $2 per CD or $20. What difference does it make? I'm dead.

    Why are you freaked out that a fellow music lover might get a nice Mosaic box set at a bargain price from your family after you're gone ?

    Because, they will then go and sell it at a higher price. If they were to keep it for themselves, I cool with that. I know someone who did buy a large collection from an estate sale at a real low price, and he went and so most of it on ebay for a lot more.

  13. Estate sale...

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted · Edited by Hardbopjazz

    How many of our wives, if we were to up and die tomorrow, would know what to price our jazz collection at? Would someone going through the estate sale water at the mouth, knowing he’s going to make a kill? My wife said to me last Friday, "I bet if you sold your 2000 plus CD’s you could get about $200.00". My Mosaics would get me more then $2000 alone. My albums, many OOP, would also get me about $2000.00. I hope I live long enough so I don't have to worry about this. How to educate her on the value of music collection?

    This all came about when I saw in the local town paper where I live, an estate sale the next town over for a Nathanial Washington. The six-line blab in the paper said there were records and CD’s being sold. With a name like Nathanial Washington, got me thinking I could find something good there. As blunt as this made seem, this is where you can find some gems. Well anyway, I never made it to the sale.

  14. Duke Ellington

    in Artists

    Posted

    Rare auction spotlights African American treasures

    Original Duke Ellington scores, for sale in a rare auction, show his creative process

    BY KARIN LIPSON

    STAFF WRITER

    February 26, 2004

    Auction consultant and musician Wyatt H. Day got a phone call that left him stunned: The caller owned some original musical scores by jazz legend Duke Ellington and wanted to put them up for sale.

    "My mouth hung open," Day recalled. "This is the kind of stuff that you just don't see."

    When he did see them - arrangements for brass and reeds, handwritten by Ellington in pencil, jotted with instructions to his band members and, in one case, signed with a distinctive flourish - Day's excitement level jumped a few more octaves: "It was like handling a Mozart score," he said recently.

    Maybe Mozart jamming at the Cotton Club, the jazz nightspot where the suave Ellington and his orchestra held sway, first in Harlem and later downtown, starting in 1927. At least three of the scores, which will be auctioned Thursday at the Swann Galleries in Manhattan, were created for the Cotton Club.

    That swank nightclub figured large in the early Ellington sound, said the scores' consigner, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were the house band at one of the most popular clubs in Harlem, where the elite would go," he said. "So they became very famous very quickly, and also Duke had the opportunity to try out different arrangements with the orchestra."

    Although it was seen as the Carnegie Hall of nightspots, the Cotton Club was hardly demure. "There was drinking, debauchery, music - it was heaven," the scores' owner said. "It was where everybody wanted to be."

    Gift from son

    A musician himself, the consigner said he got the scores as a gift from Ellington's son, Mercer, with whom he worked closely as a musical assistant.

    They range from a reworking of Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather," which Ellington recorded in 1933, to the classic Ellington hit "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" (1941).

    Offered in six lots estimated to sell for $2,000 to $6,000 apiece - and presented as the first original Ellington scores ever to go up for auction - they're part of a sale of African- Americana organized by Day.

    In an event that includes boldly colorful movie posters featuring Lena Horne and Paul Robeson and a pastel by Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas, Ellington's slightly smudged, penciled scores may not be the most visually arresting material up for grabs. They are, after all, just notes on a lined page, mostly quick sketches to be fleshed out later. (Was it haste that led Ellington to spell his song title "I got it Bab" instead of "Bad"?)

    For Ellington lovers and other jazz buffs, however, the scores provide windows into the mind of an American icon. "You can put him up there," said Monk Rowe, director of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive of videotapes in Clinton, N.Y. "If you're going to name American composers, you can name Aaron Copland, and you can name [Leonard] Bernstein, and you can name Duke Ellington and [George] Gershwin."

    To jazz historians such as Rowe, the scores ("Oh, wow!" he said on learning of them) help illuminate Ellington's combination of creative genius, canny management and bonding with fellow musicians.

    Such scores let us "see his thinking process," Rowe said. "Ellington was famous for writing for individuals, not just instruments." Unusual for seeking out players with a distinctive sound, rather than mere technical prowess, Ellington wrote to their strengths, incorporating their styles in his music and allowing them ample solo time. Many band members stayed with Ellington for years, even decades.

    There they are, woven right into these scores: "Cooty ad lib," Ellington writes, a notation to trumpeter Cootie Williams; or "Bridge to Rab," referring to saxophonist Johnny "Rabbit" Hodges. Instructions to sax players Harry Carney and Ben Webster, trombonist "Tricky Sam" Nanton and clarinetist Barney Bigard also pepper the manuscripts.

    Smithsonian's trove

    Though the scores may be rare on the open market, such Ellingtonia abounds in the Smithsonian Institution's Duke Ellington Collection. "We have 200,000 pages of documents, half of it unpublished music" composed or arranged by Ellington and his bandmates, said John Edward Hasse, an Ellington expert who is curator of American music at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

    With its trove of Ellington scores, the Smithsonian material "would probably duplicate these things," said Day, of Swann Galleries. "Just like a writer, [a composer] wouldn't just scribble it out. There would probably be different treatments of the same tune."

    And, of course, recordings. "Ellington is probably one of the most well-recorded artists in the history of jazz," said Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.

    The interplay between manuscript and recording is important, Day agreed. In fact, it's pretty much the point. "We knew what he sounds like. This is what it looks like." Hear daily radio features commemorating African-Americans at www.newsday .com/entertainment.

  15. Musical instruments you could do without in jazz.

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    I would have say bagpipes.

    But... Sonny Rollins used bagpipes during his 1974 European tour. Can't image someone soloing on bagpipes.

    http://montreuxsounds.com/

    SONNY ROLLINS

    Jul 6, 1974

    Congrés Montreux

    Sonny Rollins (ts)

    Rufus Harley (bagpipes)

    Stanely Cowell (p)

    Bob Cranshaw (B)

    Masuo (g)

    Mtume (congas, perc)

    David Lee (dr)

    1. The Cutting Edge (06:35)

    2. A House Is Not A Home (05:57)

    3. Direct Line (06:45)

    4. Swing Low Sweet Chariot (19:30)

    5. Alfie's Theme (10:52)

    6. To A Wild Rose (08:25)

    7. Don't Stop The Carnival (Calypso Everywhere) (05:35)

    8. Sonnymoon For Two (19:03)

  22. Which to see?

    in Live Shows & Festivals

    Posted

    Assuming the Ray & Lou are at Avery Fisher, just be aware that the acoustics are among the worst in the world. If you've never seen Ray Charles live, I'd say that's the priority (though his show is so slick & planned that there's a certain degree of going through the motions). Lou Donaldson is not very good these days, but he always hires good bands.

    I saw Jimmy Smith once. He complained about the lighting and insisted on playing in the dark, so for most of the show I heard him but didn't see him. He insulted the tech crew throughout the show and told infantile dirty jokes. No way I'd ever see him again.

    I've seen Lou 5 times. I never seen Jimmy Smith or Ray Charles. Avery Fisher Hall is where they are at. If the acoustics are as you say, I'll go see Smith. Plus t is a lot less money then Avery Fisher Hall. $27.5 compared to $75 per ticket.

    Lou is not like the past? What is it, his age? He always was swinging when I've seen him.

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