Bird's and Trane's saxes on AUCTION

[porcy62]

In occasions like this I would be richer...

http://www.guernseys.com/Auctions/Jazz/Featured.html#

Edited February 16, 2005 by porcy62

[AfricaBrass]

I've looked the auction items...

WOW!

To quote a young Indiana Jones, "These belong in museum."

If I was RICH, I'd start a jazz museum with this stuff.

WOW!

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

The funny thing is the letter from Hackett to Clark Terry, apologizing for introducing Terry to folks as "Harold Baker". He must have been draining quarts of gin that night.

[AfricaBrass]

The funny thing is the letter from Hackett to Clark Terry, apologizing for introducing Terry to folks as "Harold Baker". He must have been draining quarts of gin that night.

I missed that one.

I dig those Condon-ites!

[porcy62]

I've looked the auction items...

WOW!

To quote a young Indiana Jones, "These belong in museum."

If I was RICH, I'd start a jazz museum with this stuff.

WOW!

Actually, I would give the saxes at a Jazz Museum as loan, I couldn't resist to play a couple of notes on Trane's soprano now and then.

[sidewinder]

JJ Johnson's various trombones look pretty good too. I'm sure he was playing that Yamaha last time I saw him.

[7/4]

Dig it, 'Trane's horn:

Edited February 17, 2005 by 7/4

[mjzee]

Here's Nat Hentoff in today's Wall St Journal:

Up for Bid:

Intriguing Grace Notes

To the Magic of Jazz

By NAT HENTOFF

February 16, 2005; Page D10

New York

The first auction wholly dedicated to jazz -- ranging from John Coltrane's tenor and soprano saxophones and more than 100 pages of his handwritten music to Thelonious Monk's Stuyvesant High School notebook on what makes a good newspaper -- will take place on Sunday, Feb. 20, with previews on Friday and Saturday, in the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall, Broadway and 60th Street.

Arlan Ettinger, owner of Guernsey's Auction House, assembled the 430 lots, amounting to thousands of items, most of them from the families of the musicians. Guernsey's previous singular auctions have included those focusing on John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley, as well as the first auction of Soviet Union artwork (held during the Cold War).

"But this one," Mr. Ettinger told me, "gave me a particular thrill because I was able to get to visit the homes and families of these musicians. Also, since these items did come from the families, there is no question of their authenticity." For instance, in the auction is the upright player piano from John Coltrane's childhood home, on which he first learned to play music.

The player piano came from Coltrane's cousin, Mary Alexander, to whom he dedicated "Cousin Mary" on one of his breakthrough albums, "Giant Steps."

What gave me a thrill are scores by Luckey Roberts, the dean of the swinging stride school of Harlem pianists. Roberts influenced James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. I recorded Luckey Roberts in 1958 for the Good Time Jazz label and marveled at how he created an orchestra from the piano. One of the auction items is inscribed to Luckey by W.C. Handy. While a last-minute dispute between family members and the seller may keep these scores out of the auction, at least historians will now know that these important pieces of jazz history exist.

At my preview of the auction at Guernsey's, I saw the drum sets of Buddy Rich and Roy Haynes; an array of Benny Goodman's clarinets; correspondence by Dexter Gordon and by that prolific, buoyant letter writer, Louis Armstrong. "The name of this great POET who is so anxious to book my ass, in Siberia (of all places)," Armstrong wrote to his booking agent, "[is] Yougeny [Yevgeny] Yevtushenko," who courageously denounced Stalinism.

An especially rare item in the auction belonged to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson -- his tap shoes, which he gave to another legendary dancer, Howard "Sandman" Sims, in 1931. As a child, I went to see Shirley Temple in the movies, but it was the magical "Bojangles" Robinson who stayed in my mind.

The nearly 200-page catalog for the auction will be an instant collector's item and, I expect, will someday be part of a lot in an auction. Among the extensive illustrations are historic photographs and reproductions of Miles Davis's original paintings and Franz Klein's "The Jazz Murals." In the text, the meticulous descriptions of the items, placed in historical context, are useful additions to the history as well as the lore of the music.

There is "Charlie Parker's King Super 20 Alto Sax: The Holy Grail." It was made specifically for Parker by the King Instrument Company and became part of his legend as its "broad internal bore, enlarged bell and silver plating served to enhance and project Parker's robust tone quality; and the instrument's key mechanism, modified to provide a faster action than before, was perfectly suited to a man whose effortless dexterity redefined notions of virtuosity in music."

I did not expect to find, from an auction catalog, this clue to that stunningly creative dexterity that has never ceased to exhilarate me whenever I play a recording by "Bird," as he was called by his colleagues and lay admirers.

This catalog and its forms are required for anyone who wants to participate in the auction. For complete details on how to get it and on the various ways one can bid -- the auction is open to the public as well as to institutions -- Guernsey's can be reached by phone (212-794-2280); fax (212-744-3638); and on the Web (www.guernseys.com1), where you can see a number of the items in the auction. The auction house's email: auctions@guernseys.com2).

For those who can't get to the auction, there is an Absentee Bid Form toward the end of the catalog that can be FedEx'd, mailed, or faxed to Guernsey's before the auction. Or you can contact the auction house to find out how you can bid by telephone during the auction.

There is yet another alternative. In "real time," you can be part of the auction online through eBay Live Auctions. All the other terms and conditions are in the catalog or can be clarified by contacting Guernsey's directly.

Although I was impressed seeing the storied instruments of musicians who have become vital parts of my life, what most moved me during my preview was a "Negro History" book made by fifth-grader John Coltrane. He had cut out red letters to place on its blue construction paper cover; and the 12 pages include newspaper clippings about Booker T. Washington and Joe Louis; and copies of Langston Hughes's "The Negro" and "O Southland" by James Weldon Johnson.

Guernsey's Mr. Ettinger told me that for years he had thought of composing, as it were, a jazz auction. "In the auction world," he said, "we're pioneers in introducing topics, such as popular culture, that had not been considered important enough by the other major auction houses. That's how the Elvis Presley, Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mantle auctions came about, and now this one."

In the introduction to the catalog, Ashley Kahn, who is an occasional contributor to this page and author of the deeply researched "A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's 'Signature Album'" (its scores are a significant section of the auction), writes: "Jazz is such ephemeral stuff: improvised, of the moment, here and gone. Few and valuable are the objets du jazz that hold on to that fleeting magic: a saxophone; a smoking jacket [like Thelonious Monk's gold brocade favorite attire]; a simple, timelessly significant piece of staff paper."

It turns out there are many more than a few of these valuable finds -- intriguing grace notes to the music of these musicians who were, in Duke Ellington's phrase, "beyond category."

I'm tempted to bid on Charlie Parker's gold pocket watch. It still keeps, like Bird, the right time.

[skeith]

I've been following this in the New York Times. My understanding is that a lot of the Trane stuff was put up by Alice Coltrane and what I don't get is why Alice Coltrane would part with these treasures? Or wouldn't Ravi have wanted these?

[BbM7]

I didn't think Bird had any horn (his own or anyone else's) for more than a week. Does this one come with a pawn ticket?

(Sorry for the Thursday sarcasm; some days are just like that.)

[alankin]

I'll pay you $6000 on Tuesday for a saxophone today.

[mikeweil]

I'd rather see these instruments owned by a foundation lending them to young talented musicians, complete with a maintainance contract. They should be played and not gather dust in a colleczion or museum, private or public.

[BFrank]

I saw the preview of this. It was great to see the stuff and I picked up the catalog, too.

There were actually THREE Coltrane horns. A tenor, alto (?), and soprano.

As for the Bird alto, regardless of how long he owned it, it had his name engraved on the bell and an engraved plate on the case. Pretyy impressive.

At least 2-3 Elvin Jones drum kits were on display, too - including one that was never used. Those were interesting to see.

Here's more info on the auction:

NY Times

February 21, 2005

Jazz Enthusiasts Pick Up a Few Lingering Echoes

By BEN RATLIFF

The serious bidding got under way quickly at the big jazz auction yesterday afternoon, at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater.

The auction was front-loaded with Louis Armstrong items, and the first lot contained a four-page handwritten letter from Louis Armstrong to his booking agent Joe Glaser, asking about the possibility of a gig in a Broadway theater: $3,500. An Armstrong telegram to Mr. Glaser about dental problems and a lack of cash: $1,600. The awesome lot No. 10, a bawdy 32-page handwritten letter to Armstrong's manager, Oscar Cohen: $25,000.

Guernsey's, the auction house that held the event, hatched the idea 10 years ago; in the meantime they have had auctions centering on Elvis Presley and the history of rock. But over the past year Guernsey's has made a concerted effort to contact the families of a select list of great jazz performers, living and dead, for the biggest auction yet exclusively dedicated to jazz artifacts.

The auction was originally scheduled for the 500-seat Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. But once word spread widely in mid-January, the interest grew high enough to move it to the 1,200-seat Rose Theater.

The orchestra seats were full of bidders, and many bids came in over the telephone or the Internet, which made bidder No. 944 a mysterious minicelebrity. He or she bought the long Armstrong letter, and paid $23,000 for Thelonious Monk sheet music titled "Can't Call It That."

The jazz great's son, T. S. Monk, who was at the auction, explained that "Can't Call It That," which dates to the 1940's, was really the famous Monk tune "Straight, No Chaser." His father, he said, retitled the song so it could sit on the piano at Monk's home, where Thelonious Monk's mother wouldn't be offended by the real title's reference to alcohol.

Bidder No. 944 also bought one of Monk's high school notebooks, in which the 15-year-old Stuyvesant High School student wrote in a fabulously rococo hand about why "Everyone Should Read Good Newspapers," as well as a book report on "A Tale of Two Cities." Bids started at $3,500 and finally stopped, 110 head-spinning seconds later, at $60,000.

A representative from Guernsey's explained that the bidder wished to remain anonymous, and provided only the statement, "I am a Monk fan who went to Stuyvesant." That ruled out three famous and wealthy jazz lovers, Clint Eastwood, Bill Cosby and Wynton Marsalis.

Among other things, the auction was a gauge of cultural capital, and Armstrong, Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker seemed to rate highest. The highest price paid was for a King alto saxophone owned by Parker. Known to be Parker's primary instrument in the 1950's, it sold for $225,000, to another unidentified phone bidder. A few items came with minimum-bidding levels and did not sell; among them was one of Wes Montgomery's guitars, offered at $300,000.

Before the auction, jazz scholars expressed concern that many items had not been given directly to the Smithsonian or a comparable institution by the musicians' families. Scholars worried that the items would be taken out of the United States or otherwise never be made available again. (One piece, Coltrane's original arrangement for his most famous composition, "A Love Supreme," is an example. It has detailed notes in Coltrane's hand indicating that he planned five other percussionists for the piece besides his core quartet.)

The Smithsonian's American Music Collections depend almost entirely on donations. To that end, Guernsey's arranged for a letter to be sent to the winning bidders, suggesting that they consider donating the items to the Smithsonian when they no longer want them.

But Juanita Moore, the executive director of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., might beg to differ. She bought John Coltrane's dog tags from the United States Navy, for $9,000, among other items, but for her own museum.

Lewis Porter, a Coltrane scholar and music professor at Rutgers, who attended the auction, was not alarmed by the fact that so much memorabilia was going to private collectors. "I got e-mails from people all over the country saying, 'It's terrible, they're spreading this stuff to the four winds,' " he said. "But I say, what was your plan for unearthing these things? All we know is that the families have something in the attic. Now we know what they have, we can look at it, we can study it."

For some buyers, the auction was the end of a long quest. Norman Saks, a Charlie Parker collector from San Diego, bought several items, including two unreleased Parker tapes, one of them a first-generation live recording from the Symphony Ballroom in Boston, circa 1951.

"I've been chasing them since the late 1970's," he explained. In 1994 the writer Stanley Crouch called to tell him the tapes would be auctioned at Christie's in London. Mr. Saks happened to be in London at the time and bid on them unsuccessfully. Nine months ago, again by chance, he bought a plane ticket to New York, as luck would have it, in time for the auction. He bid on the tapes and bought them for $3,500. How did he feel? "Incredible," he said. "It's kind of like a sense of calm. The chase is about three-quarters of it."

A few notable musicians were in the house. Dave Liebman, the saxophonist, who has studied Coltrane as rigorously as anyone, sat on his hands during the offering of the Coltrane sheet music. "Yeah, right," he laughed, when asked if he bid. "If there was something in the $500 range, I would have loved a piece of music."

[Lazaro Vega]

http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayIS...item=6507672910

Bird's alto, $261,000. Trane's tenor didn't reach the $500,000 minimum bid. The manuscript from A Love Supreme, $129,500.

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.js...storyid=2699210

[Dmitry]

I attended the auction yesterday. It is all that was written about it - and more.

I shot a video of all the items they had on preview.

Mouth-watering items, many of which really belong in a museum.

An unforgettable event.