what happened to all the Blue Note lps?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i have a question. what happened to all the blue note lps. why when a copy of Lee Morgan Indeed! goes on ebay, it closes for over 1500 dollars? i recall hearing a while back cetain releases like "Hank" only sold 500 copies...but what happened to the rest. what about copies of bn lps sold, why are they so hard to find. surely there more somewhere....

[Big Beat Steve]

Are you really serious?

Since BN has been such a fetichist label for such a long time, it's been the holy grail for many - not only original pressings but also slightly later pressings, Japanese pressings, etc.

And this not only with collectors who either truly go for hard bop and the music that is on BN or who somehow have a habit of building "label collections" (where BN cannot be missing) and who therefore are dead serious about it, but also for collectors who have been lured into the "reasoning" that any self-respecting jazz collector has to own a sizable cross-section of all those "classic" BN items (no matter whether those items sit on the shelves most of the time afterwards because their favorite listening consists of other facets of jazz).

So even when somebody clears out a massive jazz vinyl collection the BN's go out first almost automatically.

And then there are (or have been) those well-off yuppies and self-proclaimed hip dudes who believe in accumulating artefacts of a certain 60s-style or "post-modern" lifestyle that they want to embrace and, above all, be identified with. This not all that rarely seems to include a good selection of BN's and Impulses too. Believe it or not, I've been told on more than one occasion by record dealers (in unrelated places) that they've been doing excellent business with BN and Impulse (originals or second pressings or, in a pinch, Japanese reissues) not only to the typical collectors but also to lifestyle-conscious people who had those dealers compile a set of "BN essentials" for them to store, stow (and display? and hopefully listen to as well) as part of their "hip" apartment furnishings. Sounds crazy? And all this because they figured this was the kind of cool music they were supposed to listen to in the setting they wanted to build for themselves at home. Do your cooking in those all-stainless steel kitchens or your office paperwork to some Trane background music? Seems to be not all that unlikely.

Sounds crazy? It is. But that seems to be part of the story of where those BN's go.

So now you may go ahead and guess where they all are ...

[Shrdlu]

As one who was around when the BN LPs first came out, I think that all this worship of them is ludicrous.

Yes, they were and are great, but there are lots of other equally good LPs from the period that no-one seems to fuss over. What about the Impulses, for example? Just as good as the BNs (both done by Rudy for the most part), yet they go for about $20 on eBay.

Dare I also say that although the BN LPs sound great, for me there isn't a massive difference between them and, say, the Japanese "Blue Note Works" CDs. I also really like a large number of the RVG CDs.

It's mainly hype.

[clifford_thornton]

I think chewy is asking about why certain titles are rarer than others. Some were done in much smaller runs and only once. You can find a fair amount of W. 63rd copies of Cool Struttin' that were actually pressed later in the 1960s after Liberty bought the label, using (I assume) leftovers of the old label and jacket design. Other titles were less in demand at the time and were not repressed - thus you might have 500 copies of a Hank Mobley or 1000 of the Tina Brooks. I think I've seen a non-DG of the Brooks so it probably had a second pressing.

Certainly, if a title is selling poorly it is either cut out or returned to the manufacturer and "destroyed." Supposedly the latter reason is why a lot of major-label psych records are so hard to find. The same might go for certain jazz titles.

Hopefully Chuck weighs in here with some manufacturing tidbits that will fill in all these holes.

[AndrewHill]

Yeah, I'd think the 12 inch Lexington address (up to BN 1542, Sonny Rollins Vol. I?) and the W 63rd titles are among the rarest, because of the original maunfacturing and pressing of the these products, such as the flat edge, the ear, the deep groove, microgroove, mono, etc., and the number that were actually pressed. I could be wrong about this, but that seems to be the case when these BN's are auctioned off on Ebay. It seems that BN 1542, 1560 (the Mobley) and Tina's True Blue are among the rarest.

[Chuck Nessa]

Do they sound better? Are you interested in "editions" or music? If your answer is editions, that's fine - just understand your priorities. Some (not all) later pressings/masterings sound better. If you want a collection of "first editions" understand this has nothing to do with music or music reproduction.

Maybe I'll invest in tulip bulbs. I hear the ones from Holland are best.

I do not intend this as an insult to anyone - I do understand both sides. I just want to point out differing interests.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i believe you chuck, i mean when i see a Blue Note 60s pressing, i think, well its notan orginal 1950s, but its still a hell of a lot of generations aside from the cd.........