Advanced Jazz CD Collecting: A Quick “How To”

The basis for my jazz music collection has always been the Penguin Jazz Recordings Guide’s “Core Collection”. Remember that I started out in jazz without owning a single jazz album, except for three culled from a Wall Street Journal article about “must have” jazz recordings and some average stuff borrowed and burned from the library (I don’t do that anymore, so don’t call the FBI.) . So using the core collection of the Penguin Guide eighth edition, I began buying jazz CD’s.

As is to be expected with a list like the core collection, probably more than half the CD’s are common, relatively inexpensive, and easily found on amazon or ebay. But as you pick what I call the low hanging fruit, you are left with high hanging fruit that gets increasingly harder to find and more and more expensive. Some of the recordings are downright rare, and as I’ve written before, some can’t be had for love or money. They just aren’t out there. Be that as it may, I am dangerously close to completing the core collection with only one or two substitutes, but no integral gaps from the 188 selections.

Notice there that I say “selections” because some are multi-disc sets and some recordings are now available either as parts of boxed sets or other compilations. That complicates matters. So here’s the “how to” for completing the core collection:

1)  Get the easy ones first. Lots of artists can be had for just a couple of bucks: Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, etc. Most every selection on amazon will have a “People who bought this also bought…” underneath with a bunch more of the selections you will need to complete the collection. Pick up what you need.
2)  Buy used. Used CD’s are almost always half the price of new, or less. There are some CD’s I literally picked up for the cost of shipping. 
 3)  Keep track of what you have and what you don’t. You will quickly form a mental database that will help guide your search and will alert you when you come across something rare or hard to find.
4)  If you see one of the rare ones, buy it. You have to convince yourself that money is not an issue here, because there are some that I have seen and failed to purchase because I thought it too expensive, and then I never saw the thing again. It’s frustrating. More frustrating than breaking the budget.
5)   Search ebay and amazon everyday. The foreign amazon sites are also worthwhile. I found some on amazon Japan that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Use the wishlist (amazon) and watchlist (ebay) to keep your eye on prices and availability.
6)  Spend the time and money.
7)  Listen and enjoy your collection. You deserve it.

Depending on the availability of one or two CD’s and whether I opt to substitute or not, I should finish my core collection by the end of March. I plan to take a picture of me sitting in the middle of all those CD’s. It’s going to be exciting.

Something else that is nearing completion

At the end of last year, I tallied up the number of CD’s I have from the Penguin Core Collection (Eighth edition) and found I had reached about 75% completion of the 188 or so CD’s. And as I have said in the past, all or nearly all of the ones that I have are “low hanging fruit”: easily purchased from amazon or ebay for a few, or sometimes maybe twenty, dollars. Now, I’ve got around 40 to go to complete the collection, and I’ve begun pushing it. In fact, I was lucky to find some of the missing ones for as low as $5 here and there, usually on ebay. Some of the others are semi-low hanging fruit, in that they require some surfing around and they are often expensive (more than $20, sometimes $50 and up), but at least they are out there and available. That can’t be said for all of the remainder. Some are as rare as a unicorn and cannot be had for love, money, or anything else.

A good example of the latter is the Art Ensemble of Chicago 1967-68 CD. I’ve only ever seen two. The first was on ebay for “$125 or best offer”. I offered $77 but it ended up selling for $100. The other was listed for $200 and it sold in a day. I haven’t seen one since. Another one I’ve never seen is Humphrey Lyttelton’s Parlophones, volumes 1-4. I’ve only ever seen volume 1, and they were asking $100. That would push the price of the set up to $400, (if you could find the other three in the first place). That’s just not worth it. I suppose if I get all the others and  it comes down to it, I might spend that much to complete the collection. (After all, if they are selling for that much, they can probably be resold for that much, or possibly even more, at some point in the future.) Personally, I just want to see the collection laid out on the floor to see what it looks like. I think it will make an awesome picture. (I plan to sit down in the middle of it.

I briefly toyed with the idea of downloading MP3 for some of the ones missing from my collection. I nixed that idea because usually, the recordings are esoteric enough that the MP3 isn’t available either, but I also felt that downloading MP3’s constituted a bit of cheating or forgery. Having collected stamps for forty years now, I would never stoop to making a color copy of a stamp just to fill a space in my album. That just doesn’t make sense. I considered an MP3 file that same thing: it’s a color copy of an original, and just not the same.

Although I have nothing against Martin Luther King Day, with so many CD’s in transit, I’m aggravated that there won’t be any mail delivery today. I’m itching to size up my current purchasing activities, narrow down my focus, and do what has to be done to complete the collection. Not getting mail or package deliveries slows down my efforts. I did, however, get my oversized tuning pins and shims on Saturday, so I have plenty of other things I could be doing, if I felt up to it. I’m saving that for Saturday though. Honestly, it just feels good to write about something other than my goofed up piano.

Yoity Tot Big Band CDs

So, as I said some time ago, I thought that in order to get more CD’s on the Yoity Tot list, but to be fair to all, (that is, never have to relegate any CD from the list because I come across something I like better) I thought it expedient to break the list into two. One is for “regular” jazz CD’s, the other for big band CD’s. (I could go even farther in expanding genres, and I might someday as the list expands.) My big band CD collection is not that big (oops) yet, so the list is basically everything I own that is big band. The regular list is my top 25 as I see them today.

I still have some CD’s I haven’t even listened to yet, leftover from my crazy buying spree a month or so back. I’m having fun and enjoying them, going through them slowly, finding gems, learning things, just loving jazz.

Anyway, check out the lists over on the right.

Admitting to going a little crazy of late

The job is literally killing me, sending me to the doctor every week as bad things happen to my body, such as my arm going numb one night (better now, thanks), gaining eight pounds in two weeks (dropped four since), and even losing a crown from my wisdom tooth. To cope, I just decided to keep myself occupied with music. And since I’m studying jazz arranging, I’ve been focusing on big band stuff to keep my muse energized. Here’s what I’ve acquired, just in the last two weeks:



By far the CD getting the most listening right now is Abdullah Ibrahim’s Bombella. The WDR Big Band just blows Ibrahim’s arrangements right out the door and halfway up the street. If you could hear the sound of energy, this is what it would sound like.

A close second is the Bill Holman Big Band compendium. Talk about fun music! I’ve only listened to about five songs so far because I can’t stop myself from going back for seconds and thirds. The thing is just amazing.

In third, I have to go with Buddy Rich for two reasons: one, he and his bands embody the west coast sound and are similar enough to Stan Kenton as to be confused with those great works, and two, his version of Love for Sale is probably the best ever recorded. Brilliant.

And this recent trend gave me a good idea that I’m happy to announce here: I’m doing away with the Yoity Tot “B” List and breaking it out into The Yoity Tot Big Band CD list and the “regular” Yoity Tot CD list. It’s going to take me a little bit to put those together, so keep watching this space for that change.

Keep it jazzy, folks!