[JPL] This Brings Tears To My Eyes: Any Suggestions?

[Bobby Jackson]

Larry,

Contact me.  I may have a solution.

Bobby Jackson
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "JASS" <jassav at comcast.net>
To: "Jazz Programmers Mailing List" <jazzproglist at jazzweek.com>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 7:27 PM
Subject: [JPL] This Brings Tears To My Eyes: Any Suggestions?


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> Hi Larry
>
> We haven't met, Larry; I'm an exercise class friend of Joanie's. I know 
> you're a jazz guy, so that's why I'm writing. My father, who now lives at 
> the Marshes, has been a jazz fanatic all his life. He's 92, so of course 
> his favorite periods were the 30's and 40's, and some of the 50's and the 
> less "out there" 60's.
>
> When he was preparing to move to the Marshes, he spent a couple of years 
> burning all his 78's onto CD's (obviously this would be the older stuff; 
> he started collecting around 1933), so he'd have less to move, and so he 
> could maybe get rid of that 78 needle that is so hard to replace whenever 
> it wears out.
>
> Somehow he had met Rob Gibson (Note:  Formally of Jazz at the Lincoln 
> Center), who put him in touch with another fellow who said he'd help sell 
> all the 78's on Ebay. He did slowly sell a number of them, and for some 
> astonishing prices (many of them were in the hundreds of dollars each; I 
> think maybe one or two in the thousands...to a collector in Japan). But it 
> turned out this man got too busy with some other projects and just didn't 
> have the time to keep doing this (he was offering only a couple at a time, 
> I think), so he has now given back 8 or 9 boxes of records to my father.
>
> Daddy is at a loss as to how to sell them. He thinks one of those 
> run-of-the-mill Ebay places is kind of a rip-off and also wouldn't know 
> enough about what they were selling to do them justice. I'm just wondering 
> if you have any ideas for someone I could put my father in touch with who 
> might be helpful. I have no idea what's in the boxes, as I'm in Maine (as 
> are my parents), and the boxes are in their apt. at the Marshes. My 
> parents will go back to Savannah in late Sept., when this problem will 
> confront them again.
>
> (Note: Does this sound familiar to anyone?-Larry)  It would be hard for me 
> to explain how much my father loves jazz. My entire childhood, he would be 
> downstairs with jazz on the record player from before I woke up in the 
> morning (6 a.m.) till he left for work, and then the same again in the 
> evening, till after I went to bed. When there wasn't music on the record 
> player, he'd be drumming his fingers on something, obviously hearing some 
> favorite in his head. He has a meticulous filing system for his list of 
> records, cross-referenced by artists and titles and recording dates. He's 
> got hearing aids in both ears now, can hardly see, has a pacemaker, and 
> walks with difficulty (he's had Parkinson's for 10-12 years).
>
> My mother insists he's deaf because when he was in college in Boston, he 
> went to every jazz club and dance band performance and stood right in 
> front of the bandstand the whole time. Every house we lived in had to have 
> special shelves built to hold all his records. (He also has a lot of 
> classical music.) He's just a really sweet old gentleman, and I wish I 
> could help him with this, since I live too far away to be much help with 
> all the other aggravations in my parents' lives.
>
> He cherished his records, and it sort of breaks his heart to think of no 
> one out there in the world being able to appreciate them as he did. At the 
> same time, he knows they ought to be worth something, so he hates to just 
> give them away. Most of these have not been reissued, so they're not 
> available as 33's or CD's.
>
> Well, think it over; I'll be curious to know if you have any suggestions 
> for us. If you want more detail about exactly what musicians we're talking 
> about, I doubt we'd know till Oct., when Daddy can look to see what's in 
> the boxes. He didn't have time before they left Savannah for the summer. I 
> haven't told him I'm contacting you, since I have no idea if this will 
> result in anything, and I didn't want to build up his hopes for a 
> solution.
>
> Thanks for your time---I appreciate just your bothering to read all this 
> yammering on and on....
>
> (Name Withheld)
> ________________________
>
> Larry Dane-Kellogg
> WHCJ  90.3 FM
> Savannah, Ga
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