How best to track down/acquire old & out-of-print jazz albums?

Cafe Society
1

The title pretty much says it all. I know we have a couple of music collectors on these boards, hoping someone can at least point me in the right direction.

I’m looking for some old and out of print jazz albums. I have the title, label, catalog number for each.

Are there any good resources for tracking down copies of these albums? A good number of the labels are defunct, and while I could probably track down who owns the rights, it won’t do any good, as they almost definitely won’t have copies on hand.

A couple in particular are pretty important to me, so I’ll post them, in hopes somebody with better resources and google-fu than me might know where to get 'em.

Jim Hall The Bridge - RCA: LPS 2572
Kenny Burrell The Best of Kenny Burrell - Prestige: 7448
Jim Hall & Bill Evans Undercurrents - United Artists: 14003 & 15003

Thanks in advance!

Note to mods: I want to BUY these albums. I’m not looking for downloads or anything illegal.

2

Check out gemm.com. I was able to find two of the three albums you are looking for there. Undercurrents must be quite a collector’s item - one seller has a VG/VG- copy for $44, and another has a VG+/VG copy for $60.50.

3

Thanks, Jeff. Undercurrents is indeed fantastic and rare. And I am fully aware that if I spend $60 on a record I am, in fact, a dead man. :frowning:
Anyone else got any good leads or resources as well?

4

Ha! Call Mr. brown. He has a large collection of jazz albums which he is in the process of e-baying, a bit at a time.

5

Do you have to have actual record albums, or would CDs suffice? And can they be used?

6

actually, Lou, CDs would be preferable, as I want these for listening, not collecting.

The only benefit to LP is they tend to retain their value a little better, but I’ll end up burning them to disc anyway.

7

whoops.

And used is fine.
I’m also willing to trade rather than purchase.

8

Just off the top of my head, have you checked eBay, Amazon.com Marketplace, and Half.com?

9

ebay and amazon, yes - half.com, no.

I’ll look into it. The problem with most of these discs I’m looking for is that they are loooong out of print, and almost all copies are in the hands of private collectors.

10

I have a Blue Note (90583) CD of the Evans and Hall Undercurrent . Evans is one of my top 10 jazz artists with some 25 albums) though most is from his pre-1970 period.

Interested in any older Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, or John Coltrane (along with Adderley, Blakely, & Ellington) records as I have a decent collection of CD’s and albums by them?

11

Sorry, I forgot to mention that there is an excellent record/CD store called Jazz Record Mart with a real storefront and a website listed below at 444 North Wabash in Chicago that has an awesome collection of jazz and blues records.

http://jazzrecordmart.com/

12

The Bridge is by Sonny Rollins. Here it is for 15 bucks at ubl, now artistdirect.

Here’s an Ebay search for Undercurrent.

http://search.ebay.com/undercurrent_Music_W0QQfromZR41QQsacatZ11233

13

It looks like the Undercurrent CD is available at Amazon. The version available was re-issued by Blue Note and has been re-mastered. One of the reviewers said that it was greatly superior to the previously issued CD.

(Maybe you searched for UndercurrentS instead of Undercurrent?)

The Best of Kenny Burrell seems to be available at Fantasy Jazz. (At least it’s titled that and is from Prestige – you might want to check and see if it matches the track listing you have.)

As for The Bridge by Jim Hall, BestPrices.com say they have 1 in stock.

If that doesn’t pan out, try CD Universe. (They also list the Burrell CD and the Undercurrent CD, but they don’t always have everything in stock that they list.)

14

If you’re willing to live with the hassle of a music club, Jazz Heritage sells a lot of CD reissues of classic jazz. The hassle? They send you 13 catalogs a year, and if you don’t send back the refusal card, you automatically buy the selected CD for that catalog. They will let you quit, though.