COMING IN FIVE WEEKS! The 47th NJ JAZZ RECORD COLLECTORS BASH!

I started collecting jazz records in childhood and can still recall the thrill of the pile of 78s at the antique store, the Salvation Army, and from the Seventies on, visits to jazz collectors’ meetings. Before there was YouTube or eBay, if you wanted to expand your collection, you went where the collectors assembled — perhaps monthly — and you went home with treasures. I can point to records that are dear to me: an autographed Eddie Condon Decca, a Teddy Wilson V-Disc with Joe Thomas, Ed Hall, and Sidney Catlett — that came from the once-yearly Record Collectors’ Bash. And it’s back!

Recollections by my friend Dave Weiner . . . .

GETTING BASHED FOR (ALMOST) A HALF-CENTURY
I first attended the NJ Jazz Record Bash in 1975 at a hotel on Route 1. I think that was the second year it ran. Jazz film expert Ken Crawford had started it as a way for vintage record collectors to buy, sell, trade and schmooze over a weekend in June. The highlight of each event would be an evening of jazz movies, chosen by Ken from his massive collection. To me, it was an amazing experience, the first time I saw vintage 78s and LPs for sale in quantity. Previously I had found such discs occasionally in thrift shops and flea markets. My first purchase there was a Bunny Berigan 78, which still looks better today than I do.

I made many friends of long standing as the years passed. Numerous celebrities, musical and otherwise, visited over time – actor Matt Dillon (a formidable Latin jazz collector), Michael Feinstein, bandleader Vince Giordano, writers Charles Delaunay, Stanley Dance, Frank Driggs, Dan Morgenstern and Russ Connor. As the decades passed, other collectors stepped up to run the yearly event – Russ Shor, Joe Lauro, Howard Berg and Art Zimmerman. The Bash continued regularly until Covid hit in 2020.

Three years passed with no Bash – until now. My partner Barry Miller and I have picked up the threads and have scheduled the latest Bash for June 22-24. Maintaining the tradition, schmoozing and film showings are still in the mix. Many older collectors will attend along with a happily growing contingent of younger folk, who dig the vintage jazz and pop music we all love.

For full information, check our website, jazzbash.net.

And here are the details . . .

Dear Friends,

Hey! Hey! Hey! Only FIVE WEEKS to go before the sensational NJ JAZZ RECORD COLLECTORS BASH returns for its 47th year!

The Bash runs from Thursday evening, June 22nd through Saturday evening, June 24th, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Edison, NJ.

If you’re a vendor, let us know soon if you’d like to reserve 1, 2 or more tables, because space is limited. Below you’ll find complete details.

If you’re a collector, you’ll find thousands of vintage 78s, LPs, 45s, cylinders, CDs, DVDs, books, sheet music, catalogs and more.

Three exciting two-hour vintage film and TV programs have been scheduled for Friday evening and Saturday afternoon & evening.

Check the jazzbash.net website for details and don’t hesitate to contact David Weiner at njjazzbash@gmail.com if you have any questions. You can also visit the “NJ Jazz Record Bash” Facebook page for regular updates.

Best regards, David Weiner – (see details below)

47th NJ JAZZ RECORD COLLECTOR’S BASH DETAILS

HOURS

· Thursday, June 22nd – 8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. (Early Buyers Only)

· Friday & Saturday, June 23rd & 24th – 8:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. (General Public)

GENERAL ADMISSION

· $42 for Thursday Evening Early Buyers — 8:00-11:00 p.m., plus

Friday & Saturday all day/evening

· $22 — all day & evening Friday & Saturday

· $12 — Friday evening after 5 p.m. + Saturday all day & evening

VENDOR DETAILS

Vendors can reserve tables*, which are available on a first-come basis, and cost:

· For Thursday evening, Friday & Saturday all day/evening — $110 per table

· For Friday all day & evening only — $74 per table

· For Saturday all day & evening only — $46 per table.

*Tables range from 6 feet by 3 feet to 8 feet by 3 feet depending on hotel availability.

A 50% deposit is required to reserve your table(s).

PAYMENT METHODS

Advance payments can be made via check, money order or PayPal.

Please make checks or money orders out to “Fun Trends USA, LLC” and mail to:

David Weiner

Fun Trends USA, LLC

7004 Boulevard East, Suite 25E

Guttenberg, NJ 07093

Or pay via PayPal:

Please email your PayPal payment to the following account — barry@miller-weiner.com — “as a friend,” so no commission is deducted.

For final payment, cash and checks will be accepted at the Bash.

HILTON GARDEN INN RESERVATIONS

The Hilton Garden Inn offers Bash attendees the special reduced room price of $139 per night. Make your reservations here.

Postscript from Michael: if you see this at the Bash, at a reasonable price, please pick one up. I can always use an extra copy.

May your happiness increase!

GLENN MILLER’S “UPTOWN HALL GANG” on the RADIO: MEL POWELL, PEANUTS HUCKO, BERNIE PRVIN, DINAH SHORE, NAT PECK, LARRY HALL, CARMEN MASTREN, TRIGGER ALPERT, RAY McKINLEY (England, 1944)

The UPTOWN HALL GANG was a small group out of the overseas Glenn Miller orchestra.  They made a dozen or so studio recordings in 1945, plus four famous sides with Django Reinhardt as a star, but the material here comes from radio broadcasts, and I must thank the deep Miller collectors Tommy Burns and David Weiner for the music, which I have saved since 1984.

The collective personnel is Mel Powell, piano and arrangements; Bernie Privin, trumpet; Nat Peck, Larry Hall, trombone; Peanuts Hucko, clarinet and tenor saxophone; Addison Collins, French horn, Carmen Mastren, guitar; Trigger Alpert or Joe Shulman, string bass; Ray McKinley, drums.  Dinah Shore and Johnny Desmond sang.  The music occupies a fascinating middle-ground between Fifty-Second Street jam sessions and early harmonic experimentations of bebop, with touches of boogie-woogie and echoes of the Goodman small groups.

Here is an hour-long anthology of broadcast performances (with some announcements) taken off the radio in England from mid-1944 to he next year.  The songs are BLOW TOP / WHERE OR WHEN / HOW HIGH THE MOON / NIGHT AND DAY (Dinah Shore) / ROSETTA / LADY BE GOOD / YOU GO TO MY HEAD (Privin) / EMALINE / AS LONG AS I LIVE (Hucko) / THE SHEIK OF ARABY / SHANDY / PLEASE DON’T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE (Privin) / I MUST HAVE THAT MAN (Hucko-Powell-McKinley) / TRIPLE X / SHOEMAKER’S APRON (trio) / PLAIN AND FANCY BLUES / JERRY’S AACHEN BACK / AFTER YOU’VE GONE / PARACHUTE JUMP / HALLELUJAH! (Powell feature with the orchestra) / I WANT TO BE HAPPY (same) //

 

 

Delightful music and not well-known: thanks to the musicians heard here, to Tommy and Dave and the Miller collectors worldwide.

May your happiness increase!

THE TREASURE CHEST REOPENS, or HOLY RELICS, CONTINUED

Less than a week ago, I published a post here, marveling at the riches made available in an eBay auction by “jgautographs” which have been all bought up now, including this glorious relic. 

and this:

I don’t know how much Lester’s signature fetched at the end of the bidding, but Mr. Page’s (with the telltale apostrophe, another mark of authenticity) sold for $147.50, which says there is an enlightened and eager audience out there.  That auction offered more than 200 items, and I would have thought the coffers were empty.

Now, the gracious folks as “jgautographs” have offered another seventy items for bid.  I can say “gracious with certainty,” because I’ve had a conversation with the head benefactor.

This is the eBay link, for those who want to get in line early.  The new listing has only one item held over from the past sale, and it is full of riches (including blues luminaries).  I’ll mention only a portion: Ellington, Brubeck, Armstrong, Cootie Williams, Paul Gonsalves, Johnny Hodges, Horace Silver, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Desmond, Don Byas, Dizzy Gillespie, Cat Anderson, Alberta Hunter, Little Brother Montgomery, Coleman Hawkins, Sippie Wallace, Rex Stewart, Ruby Braff, Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Jay McShann, Flip Phillips, Billy Butterfield, Phil Woods, Buck Clayton, Buddy Tate, Benny Carter, Bud Freeman, Thad Jones, Charlie Ventura, Teddy Wilson, Eubie Blake, Roy Eldridge, Sweets Edison, Erroll Garner, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Dorham, Sonny Rollins — you can explore these delights for yourself, and if you have disposable income and wall space, some treasure might be yours.  Those whose aesthetic scope is larger than mine will also see signatures of Chick Corea, Archie Shepp, and Keith Jarrett among others . . .

For now, I will offer only five Ellingtonians.  And as David Weiner pointed out to me years ago, a sloppy signature is more likely to be authentic, since musicians don’t have desks to sit at after gigs.

Cootie:

Rex:

Cat:

Paul:

Johnny:

Incidentally, “jgautographs” has an astounding website — not just jazz and not just their eBay store: spend a few hours at www.jgautographs.com.

May your happiness increase!

APOLLO THEATRE, SUMMER 1947

The photograph is by the much-missed William P. Gottlieb, and I was guided to it by John Leifert and David Weiner:

My first reaction was, “When are we going?”  And after that elation died down, amusement that they had made Sid’s last name CATLET.  I thought, “I don’t care how it’s spelled . . . !” 

A few days later, I  looked at the picture and noted that the marquee had turned Arnett into ARNET . . . and then, as they say in the UK, the penny dropped.  Nearly forty years ago, I worked in a local movie theatre as a doorman / usher / all-around functionary in an ill-fitting black jacket.  It wasn’t a career, but a way to put gas in my Volkswagen Beetle and to buy records at Record World.  The minimum wage was $1.85 an hour. 

Once in a while I had the chance to make extra money “changing the marquee,” an annoying business involving ladders and sifting through piles of huge red plastic letters to spell out THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE or whatever the new feature was.  And it dawned on me that the people who changed the Apollo Theatre’s marquee for this week in summer 1947 were running low on the letter T — especially troubling because a marquee has at least two sides. 

It’s not a mystery that kept me up at night, but it’s today’s answer to an unasked question.

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME

Over the past forty years, I’ve spent many rewarding hours in front of the radio, listening to jazz.  My mother loved WPAT, a New Jersey easy listening station where the programmers had good taste and a real affection for Bobby Hackett.  Later, John S. Wilson played an hour of jazz once a week on WQXR.  Then, WRVR, with Ed Beach, Max Cole, and other luminaries; WBGO (thankfully still going strong with their jazz programming and “Jazz From the Archives,” often hosted by Dan Morgenstern).  There’s WKCR — with Phil Schaap, of course, but also Sid Gribetz, Ben Young, and others. Rich Conaty, of “The Big Broadcast” on WFUV and Jonathan Schwartz on WNYC still offer up the good noise.  Once in a while, I could even hear Humphrey Lyttelton on BBC shortwave.  And I am sure I have left someone out.

Thanks to Dave Weiner at Hofstra, who hosted his own “Swing Years,” I took my own leap into college radio, circa 1982.  I invented an hour-long show, “Rarities,” where I could play Thirties blue-label Deccas; consider the career of Lou McGarity, and amuse myself for a splendidly small audience.

Perhaps ten years ago, tuning around the bottom end of the FM dial, where the non-commercial radio stations huddle together for shelter, I heard an assortment of jazz records being played — no announcements, no explanation, and apparently no order.  I would turn to this station when I was ready to go to sleep, but (in that state of fuzzy half-awareness, so oddly precious) I noticed that some of their randomness seemed planned.  They would be offering the same groupings of music at the same time each night — for instance, an Arbors CD featuring Dan Barrett and Becky Kilgore.  Then the light bulb — admittedly one of low wattage — went on.  They had organized everything alphabetically by title: “I Thought About You,” “I Wished On The Moon,” “It’s Funny to Everyone But Me.”  Now, whenever I turn to the “Songs” listing on my iPod, I think of that anonymous radio station.

However, jazz on the radio is hardly proliferating now.  But some people have discovered that they can get around the costly necessities of a “real” radio station by means of the internet.  The OKOM people were perhaps the first to do this.

Now, I’ve learned that “PURE JAZZ RADIO” is coming on January 1, 2009.  Rich Keith, who also lives on this island, has let me know that his project will be to play jazz classics 24/7 with time for Frank Sinatra on Sundays.  Visit his site http://www.purejazzradio.com for more information. 

Some days I look at the pile of CDs next to the computer that have to be listened to so that I can review them, and those I’ve just bought, and think the heretical thought, “Is it possible you have too much music here?”  But even in those moments, a new jazz radio station devoted to jazz (!) is an enterprise worth investigating.  Good luck, Rich!