Don Pullen-Milford Graves at Yale: Big Bucks

[Mark Stryker]

This copy with a hand-painted cover is up to $6,100 in bidding at Carolina Soul. Anybody know how many of these were pressed or anything about the cover? I'm curious as to why the insane bidding...

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204404362114?mkevt=1&mkpid=2&emsid=e90001.m43.l1123&plmtId=700008&mesgId=3024&mkcid=8&ch=osgood&bu=44356787009&trkId=0a776638-7c2c-4019-9dd8-e32ef66cf5b9&cnvId=700003&recoId=204404362114&recoPos=1

[Dub Modal]

Carolina Soul has great eBay presence and their auctions tend to run high because of a large following that includes international customers. I just saw this today and will watch it just to see how much it goes for. 

[Eric]

10 minutes ago, Dub Modal said:

Carolina Soul has great eBay presence and their auctions tend to run high because of a large following that includes international customers. I just saw this today and will watch it just to see how much it goes for. 

Yes, they do.  I have bought a few things from them - rarely a bargain, but very good packaging, communication and fair grading.

Interesting record - and yes, that is a huge number, so far!

[mjazzg]

Well that edition has never sold through Discogs where 24 people have it in their collection but over 650 want it.

Notes on the entry suggest a copy sold elsewhere for $9k earlier this year.

Top price paid for the standard issue is £500. The power of bespoke art covers!

[jlhoots]

I'm happy with my CD reissue copy.

[Dub Modal]

9 minutes ago, Eric said:

Yes, they do.  I have bought a few things from them - rarely a bargain, but very good packaging, communication and fair grading.

Interesting record - and yes, that is a huge number, so far!

Yeah, I’ve bid on a few and won some from the cheap seats in the past. Their good rep has been well earned. They have albums from all genres that will creep into the thousands just about every auction. 

[mjazzg]

2 hours ago, jlhoots said:

I'm happy with my CD reissue copy.

So am I

[clifford_thornton]

4 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

This copy with a hand-painted cover is up to $6,100 in bidding at Carolina Soul. Anybody know how many of these were pressed or anything about the cover? I'm curious as to why the insane bidding...

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204404362114?mkevt=1&mkpid=2&emsid=e90001.m43.l1123&plmtId=700008&mesgId=3024&mkcid=8&ch=osgood&bu=44356787009&trkId=0a776638-7c2c-4019-9dd8-e32ef66cf5b9&cnvId=700003&recoId=204404362114&recoPos=1

I think around a hundred, maybe more, were done with hand painted covers, and another few hundred or so with the gold paste-on slick (which is the version I have). There was only one pressing of the vinyl, probably no more than 500.

I would expect this copy to land around $10K. Too much, in my opinion, but people with money like to buy things.

[AllenLowe]

for that kind of money you could have put these guys on a retainer and had them come over to the house and play every week.

[clifford_thornton]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:34 PM, AllenLowe said:

for that kind of money you could have put these guys on a retainer and had them come over to the house and play every week.

and just a little bit more money, perhaps they could've painted your living and dining room as well!

[Dub Modal]

Ended at $6100. Someone just paid Carolina Soul’s rent for the month. 

[clifford_thornton]

Lot of money for a record, but at the same time I thought it would go for a fair bit more.

[T.D.]

On 7/25/2023 at 2:26 PM, jlhoots said:

I'm happy with my CD reissue copy.

Me too.

On 7/25/2023 at 5:07 PM, clifford_thornton said:

I think around a hundred, maybe more, were done with hand painted covers, and another few hundred or so with the gold paste-on slick (which is the version I have). There was only one pressing of the vinyl, probably no more than 500.

I would expect this copy to land around $10K. Too much, in my opinion, but people with money like to buy things.

Some ambitious quant should develop a "vinyl price index". 😄 Something analogous to various crypto indices, S&P Global Luxury Index, fixed-income (bond) indices, etc. Maybe it already exists, but I'm not into vinyl and haven't seen anything.

There's already a luxury watch price index, for instance, but that was probably easier to set up since it uses 60 models from 10 well-known brands.

I'd be interested in seeing graphs of a "vinyl index" vs. luxury watches, housing prices, crypto, etc. 

[Added] Scarcity of the underlying vinyl seems much more important than the art. For instance, Alan Silva's 4-CD "Treasure Box" package doesn't sell at much of a premium to the 4 plain vanilla CDs. Hmm...maybe I should buy a bunch of the Silva boxes? 🤣...No way!

Edited August 8, 2023 by T.D.

[JSngry]

It's true in multiple many ways. 

[clifford_thornton]

44 minutes ago, T.D. said:

 

[Added] Scarcity of the underlying vinyl seems much more important than the art. For instance, Alan Silva's 4-CD "Treasure Box" package doesn't sell at much of a premium to the 4 plain vanilla CDs. Hmm...maybe I should buy a bunch of the Silva boxes? 🤣...No way!

Well, Milford also had two separate but related museum retrospectives (one in Philly, one in NY/LA) in the US during the last few years. Milford is also more of a story, via the Full Mantis documentary and other cultural appearances, to those outside the music and a recognizable name among hip cognoscenti. Obviously he is a great musician and a fascinating figure, but the cache is there too -- Silva, who I find just as fascinating for similar and different reasons, does not have the cache. 

[JSngry]

He does have epic teeth, though. That should be leverageable in today's world. 

[T.D.]

17 minutes ago, JSngry said:

He does have epic teeth, though. That should be leverageable in today's world. 

 I couldn't help noticing Silva's teeth in a free jazz documentary. [I thought I had it bookmarked, but apparently not...was it "Inside out in the open?" Somebody once posted a link on the forum and I watched the whole film.]

Not sure how leverageable! They certainly wouldn't serve as a recruiting poster for free jazz as a career. 😢

[JSngry]

It starts with a logo... 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, T.D. said:

 I couldn't help noticing Silva's teeth in a free jazz documentary. [I thought I had it bookmarked, but apparently not...was it "Inside out in the open?" Somebody once posted a link on the forum and I watched the whole film.]

Not sure how leverageable! They certainly wouldn't serve as a recruiting poster for free jazz as a career. 😢

My wife refuses to listen to Paul Bley because of how awful his teeth were in Imagine The Sound. Yellow and rotten.

[colinmce]

2 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

Well, Milford also had two separate but related museum retrospectives (one in Philly, one in NY/LA) in the US during the last few years. Milford is also more of a story, via the Full Mantis documentary and other cultural appearances, to those outside the music and a recognizable name among hip cognoscenti. Obviously he is a great musician and a fascinating figure, but the cache is there too -- Silva, who I find just as fascinating for similar and different reasons, does not have the cache. 

Silva absolutely needs his due.

[T.D.]

17 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

My wife refuses to listen to Paul Bley because of how awful his teeth were in Imagine The Sound. Yellow and rotten.

There's a boatload of free jazz interview footage that shows really alarming sets of teeth. I find it striking and more than a little scary.

As a fan of many of the musicians, will pass on dropping any more names.

Edited August 8, 2023 by T.D.

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, things were different back then. I think he was able to get them fixed eventually.

Silva's story is pretty interesting, too, don't get me wrong -- his mother was a real heavy in Brooklyn Civil Rights; he was (and still is) an abstract painter; studied trumpet with Donald Byrd before switching to the bass; cofounded the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with Burton Greene, Jon Winter, et al.; worked steadily with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler; decamped to France and founded a music school called the Institute of Art, Culture & Perception, along with being at ground zero for the Actuel activities and running Center of the World with Frank Wright, Bobby Few, and Muhammad Ali... the cat is very, very accomplished. He was talking in the 90s about having "sound galleries" where recordings of improvised music and their hand-decorated jackets could be displayed and sold for collector prices... (I remember this from a great interview he did with the late Larry Nai for Cadence). But some people present more easily as a package and I don't think Silva is that guy.

[Rabshakeh]

12 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

But some people present more easily as a package and I don't think Silva is that guy.

With the earlier free jazz groupings, I tend to find that they divide into two: the legends who recorded for Impulse! or Blue Note and the forgotten schlubs who recorded for other labels.

I'm not sure there is anything more in it than that. Look at the gap in recognition between Grachan Moncur and your namesake Clifford Thornton, or between Archie Shepp and Frank Wright.

Silva is on the wrong side of the retrospective recognition line. No amount of Seasons is going to shift him.

Edited August 9, 2023 by Rabshakeh

[clifford_thornton]

right, well, Moncur and Shepp could also walk the line between straight-ahead and free; Silva didn't really do that (although some of his post-Seasons orchestral works had modal and swing sections), and Wright didn't until the 1980s. Thornton, like Wright, had bands that were inside/outside though he was in no way an "inside" player. But it's not entirely about what's being played, either -- it's something else, and we see that today just as much as people did 50 years ago.

I suppose one could attach it to press as well -- Milford and Shepp were in the magazines and contributing articles back in the '60s. Milford had an awareness of the avenues in which his ideas and craft could be presented, and not every artist has that approach boiled down.

Edited August 9, 2023 by clifford_thornton

[JSngry]

Shepp seems to have been very publicity conscious. Seems like he was "always available".

Never underestimate the power of flattery. It's a game to be played, one of many games.