Artists of Whom You Accumulated a Zillion LPs Without Really Trying

[Teasing the Korean]

13 hours ago, JSngry said:

Ha! Yes. I found that one and bought it for the WTF? factor and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be up to the task of positively paralleling the product!

I just learned that there was a Burt Bacharach Placidyl album!  It was an abridged reissue of his 1960s Kapp album, but with cover art that makes it look like a 70s A&M album.  Not sure if that one includes a note inside. 

[JSngry]

Is the Peggy Lee a compilation from other albums? 

[Teasing the Korean]

16 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Is the Peggy Lee a compilation from other albums? 

Yes.  Her version of "Make it With You" is fantastic.

[JSngry]

Any idea what original albums were used for the compilation? 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

So I somehow ended up with 14 Gene Ammons LPs & going through them right now, I can't even remember when or where I got some of them. I have a version of "Funky" with an alternate cover that I forgot existed and the version of "Jammin' With Gene" that's titled "not really the blues" and the back has "Jack Woker" in block letters at the top.

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Any idea what original albums were used for the compilation? 

I'd have to check.  Mostly if not all from the early 70s, maybe late 60s.

27 minutes ago, bresna said:

So I somehow ended up with 14 Gene Ammons LPs & going through them right now, I can't even remember when or where I got some of them.  

I got a lot inexpensively at Stereo Jack's in Cambridge, MA!

[Kevin Bresnahan]

12 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I got a lot inexpensively at Stereo Jack's in Cambridge, MA!

I'm sure that I got a majority of mine from there as well but I have some newer reissues that I likely got elsewhere.

[Teasing the Korean]

22 hours ago, bresna said:

I'm sure that I got a majority of mine from there as well but I have some newer reissues that I likely got elsewhere.

Between 1997 and 2003, I made it a point to hit Stereo Jack's once a week, either on my lunch break or after work. Could we have crossed paths? You would probably remember me from my profile pic.

[Teasing the Korean]

Buddy Rich, apparently.

[rdavenport]

Last year I bought an unseen collection of jazz LPs very cheaply on Ebay, whereupon I found myself suddenly in possession of 78 Stan Kenton LPs.

Kenton not being my thing, I tried to sell them to someone, anyone, who would appreciate them. I tried them singly, in small batches and in one whole lot, and very cheaply too.

I gradually discovered that if you wanted to find the polar opposite of goods which sell like the proverbial hot cakes, then Stan Kenton LPs might just be that.

[Rabshakeh]

39 minutes ago, rdavenport said:

I gradually discovered that if you wanted to find the polar opposite of goods which sell like the proverbial hot cakes, then Stan Kenton LPs might just be that.

That's really funny. Sorry for the shelves.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Rabshakeh

[jazzcorner]

On 4/24/2023 at 7:59 PM, JSngry said:

Those were "reissues' in only the most literal sense. They were Kenton issuing his old records on his own label, on his own dime. He bought(?) his old masters from Capitol to get them back in the market again.

At the time, all that reminded in print was a Duophonic repackaging of Artistry In Rhythm and a Greatest Hits package.

Do yeah, those Creative World reissue covers were ugly/generic but as tangible statements of an artist's self-determination, they were a real statement. The whole Creative World enterprise was, really. 

Yes I like those comments. The question of the coverart is very simple. Capitol didnt allow those copyright protected typical Capitol covers to be duplicated by Stan. It certainly was also a money question.

 

[Ken Dryden]

I am probably well short of a ziillion LPs by any artist, particularly since many of my LPs were replaced with better sounding CDs with bonus tracks. But I still have a good amount of Tohshiko Akiyoshi, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner, Stephane Grappelli, etc.

[Big Beat Steve]

On 10/2/2023 at 8:52 PM, jazzcorner said:

Yes I like those comments. The question of the coverart is very simple. Capitol didnt allow those copyright protected typical Capitol covers to be duplicated by Stan. It certainly was also a money question.

 

Yes, most Creative World covers are boring and can be a turnoff, but is it really so that it was a copyright question and not rather a money question? Visibly Capitol did NOT object to the artwork of the "The Kenton Era" 4-LP box set (of all Capitol originals ...) being used by Creative World (although the CW reissue was in black and white instead of part-color, and with overall somewhat below-standard printing quality of the booklet compared to the Capitol original).
Besides, several Capitol original LPs (reissued by CW with the same contents) were pressed with widely differing covers over time, and some of these covers should have been accessible to CW (if Kenton had wanted to ...) because they were fairly generic even in their day? And then there were some compilations on Creative World that never existed as Capitol originals (such as the entire "By Request" series, "The Lighter Side", "Some Women I've Known", and others). So Kenton had to use his own artwork for these anyway. And who knows - maybe he just stuck with variations on the same 3 or 4 basic themes for the rest?

 

On 9/12/2023 at 10:24 PM, rdavenport said:

Last year I bought an unseen collection of jazz LPs very cheaply on Ebay, whereupon I found myself suddenly in possession of 78 Stan Kenton LPs.

Kenton not being my thing, I tried to sell them to someone, anyone, who would appreciate them. I tried them singly, in small batches and in one whole lot, and very cheaply too.

I gradually discovered that if you wanted to find the polar opposite of goods which sell like the proverbial hot cakes, then Stan Kenton LPs might just be that.

You didn't ask me!
Kidding aside, by that time last year I probably had largely completed my run of Kenton LPs I ever wanted (a bit less than 78 LPs overall ). But I do agree that even over here they are not that hotly disputed among the secondhand special offer bin contents - so you can grab what you want at very affordable prices.

As for "polar opposites of goods which sell like the proverbial hotcakes" - believe it or not, but I have found that one of the slowest sellers in my crate of Swing-era jazz duplicates is Duke Ellington!

Edited October 22, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

The Creative World Kenton Era packaging is severely lacking compared to the Capitol set.

 

[Big Beat Steve]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

The Creative World Kenton Era packaging is severely lacking compared to the Capitol set.

 

Well, in my above comment I was being polite.
I had bought a box of the Creative World reissue some 15 to 20 years ago (NM vinyl, box with just some shelf wear). Then a couple of years ago a Capitol original with OK vinyl and booklet (a solid VG+) but a box that had already disintegrated considerably at the edges, spines and seams came up in the jazz section of a local record shop but at a price that I considered too high for its overall condition. I watched it sitting in its corner among other box sets literally for years (and from time to time even picked up the torn-off shreds of the box spine etc. and put them back inside the box ), waiting for something to happen about the price (they do reduce certain items over time). So when I noticed about half a year ago it finally had been marked all the way down from 35 EUR to 5 EUR I had pity on it and took it home at once.

Apart from the glossy paper (which is better than on the Capitol original IMO) the packaging of the CW reissue does remind me of the typical results you obtain when you produce a photocopy of the original on a fairly good 80s photocopier. Something I had relatively often done myself back in the 80s and 90s with otherwise unobtainable OOP books so no big surprise nor shock. But the comparison with the Capitol original of course made it clear that this was an almost entirely different world ...
 

Edited October 22, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

I read somewhere that the hardest musical genre to sell on the second hand market is vocal jazz.

[rdavenport]

On 10/22/2023 at 8:42 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

You didn't ask me!
Kidding aside, by that time last year I probably had largely completed my run of Kenton LPs I ever wanted (a bit less than 78 LPs overall ). But I do agree that even over here they are not that hotly disputed among the secondhand special offer bin contents - so you can grab what you want at very affordable prices.

As for "polar opposites of goods which sell like the proverbial hotcakes" - believe it or not, but I have found that one of the slowest sellers in my crate of Swing-era jazz duplicates is Duke Ellington!

This collection contained a LOT of live recordings (private pressings or bootlegs, I don't know) which I guess would mainly appeal to superfans - Stan Kenton "stans" if you will. 

Alas, if such a person exists, they weren't looking on Ebay at the time. 

[jazzbo]

Dexter Gordon. So many new live releases have come out this century. . . I have a ton of Long Tall Dexter now.

[Ken Dryden]

Dick Hyman, especially the stuff never reissued on CD.

Edited February 14 by Ken Dryden

[Big Beat Steve]

On 10/27/2023 at 9:05 PM, rdavenport said:

This collection contained a LOT of live recordings (private pressings or bootlegs, I don't know) which I guess would mainly appeal to superfans - Stan Kenton "stans" if you will. 

Alas, if such a person exists, they weren't looking on Ebay at the time. 

I have lot of such live recordings on vinyl by the 40s and 50s Kenton bands, e.g. on First Heard, Duke, Artistry and other 80s labels (one reason being that they were/are all over the place in the secondhand shops for quite a while - at prices you can take chances at). So does that make me a "stan"?

[clifford_thornton]

On 10/22/2023 at 8:46 PM, Rabshakeh said:

I read somewhere that the hardest musical genre to sell on the second hand market is vocal jazz.

depends on the album. The more obscure the singer (especially female), the more collectible the record seems to be...

[Rabshakeh]

9 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

depends on the album. The more obscure the singer (especially female), the more collectible the record seems to be...

I mean swing and traditional pop, like Ella Fitzgerald on Verve or Anita O'Day records, rather than Jeanne Lee. Apparently they're hard to shift.

Speaking for myself I find that buyers often won't buy jazz from some artists like Lee Konitz or Phil Woods because they struggle to shift them. I've got three Phil Woods records sitting on top of a cupboard that I've been struggling to sell even to bargain places.

[clifford_thornton]

oh, yeah, I see what you mean. Sometimes I use records like that as packing material if there's literally no way to move 'em otherwise.

[rdavenport]

 

On 11/20/2023 at 10:18 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

I have lot of such live recordings on vinyl by the 40s and 50s Kenton bands, e.g. on First Heard, Duke, Artistry and other 80s labels (one reason being that they were/are all over the place in the secondhand shops for quite a while - at prices you can take chances at). So does that make me a "stan"?

I think it certainly does, in the context of the general population. 

In my experience, I reckon a majority of jazz vinyl buyers are buying the label rather than the artist, unless you're talking the big hitters (Miles and Coltrane, again in my experience).

I don't think it's as bad as classical vinyl, where if it isn't EMI, Decca or (to a lesser extent) Deutsche Grammophon or Philips, then forget it.

Edited January 3 by rdavenport