For regular readers of this blog, recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder needs no introduction. In fact, aside from the musicians themselves, he is probably more known by jazz record collectors than any other figure in the music’s history. For collectors then, any question of Van Gelder’s importance will surely seem puzzling if not … More→
My relationship with the full-length album that contains this EP, Brown & Roach Incorporated, began very early on in my collecting years. I would have initially ripped the album from a CD checked out from the library and now I own that CD, which is the ‘official’ PolyGram… More→
If vintage jazz record collecting were a contest where collectors set out to prove just how much the act of collecting really is “about the music” and not about the object, Tarik a.k.a. @araggywaltz wins, by a long shot. I’m sure many of us could admit that collecting feels slightly competitive at times … More→
A couple years ago I switched up my philosophy of collecting, moving away from chasing expensive, high-demand vintage jazz LPs and working harder to find less expensive, less sought-after records that managed to bring me an equal amount of joy, if not more. This is… More→
Though this seven-inch EP only contains two songs, they are both outstanding picks from an album that shares the same cover art. I had an encounter with an original pressing of the full LP about a year ago. The European seller graded it NM/M- on Discogs and it played with absolutely terrible distortion on the trumpet. When I asked the seller about… More→
For our next installment of Jazz Collectors of Instagram, we have a very special collector indeed. While Dott was the first collector to be featured in the series who lives outside of the United States, Japan’s Ako Nakagawa is now our second! Ako is relatively new to the scene, and over the past … More→
Last spring I got a Columbia GP-3, the workhorse portable record player made in Japan that has been serving beatdiggers and the like for decades. Finances were good at the time and I had been trying to find ways… More→
Deep Groove Mono is back with another round of collector interviews! We’re kicking things off with a true legend, Italy’s Giorgio Sarchi a.k.a. “Dottor Jazz”. With over five decades of activity, Dott is one of the hobby’s real O.G.’s, and of course he has the jaw-dropping collection to prove it. I became familiar … More→
In my time collecting vintage jazz LPs I have always been curious about jazz from the bebop era, which for the most part was originally released on 78 R.P.M. shellac disks. Listening to digital reissues of music from artists who thrived in the 1940s like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Lester Young was … More→
For a picky, minimalist collector like myself, collecting Monk on vintage vinyl has proved challenging. Never a fan of collecting compilations on vinyl, I have never pursued the early Blue Note LPs (BLP 1510/11). While the performances are undoubtedly world-class (and my… More→