West Coast Jazz Record Shopping

We recently returned from a trip to California to visit friends and relatives.  While there, we spent a week driving down the coast from the Monterey Penninsula to San Diego.  The last time we had driven the Pacific Coast Highway was about 35 years ago (that time from south to north), and thought it was time to give it another go.  We stopped off in Monterey, Carmel, and Big Sur, did some wine tasting in Paso Robles, and finally spent a few days exploring Santa Barbara and San Diego.  We had visited L.A. a few years ago, so just breezed through the city this time.

Regular readers will not be shocked to hear that I spent some time shopping for records along the way.  It's always interesting to see how the LP selection varies in different parts of the country.  In numerous used record stores and antique malls along the California coast, I was struck by how different the selection of jazz titles is from what I'm used to seeing on the East Coast.  Perhaps not surprisingly, on this recent trip I found tons of albums by West Coast jazzmen like Bud Shank, Shelly Manne, Shorty Rodgers, Wardell Grey, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre, and Howard Rumsey -- albums that I hardly ever see in shops on the East Coast.  As a fan of West Coast/cool jazz, I was delighted and bought just about all I could carry.

My most exciting score was a group of five 1950s original deep-groove mono pressings (above) that I found at a flea market in Santa Barbara. The albums were all in VG+ to NM condition, and were grouped together in the middle of a bunch of pop and rock albums from the 1970s and 80s.  I had been flipping through the stacks pretty quickly, not seeing much in the way of jazz albums, but when I saw these my jaw dropped.  My jaw dropped even further when I saw that they were priced way, way below market value.  It was a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of deal.  I went back through all the records in the booth hoping that I might have missed more of these collectibles, but these were literally the only five jazz albums there.

In addition to the 1950s flea market gems, other finds included a group of four Marian McPartland albums at a different Santa Barbara seller (above), and four near mint Original Jazz Classics (OJC) from a shop in San Diego.  Two of the later were still in the shrink wrap with the distinctive OJC obi hype strips. (below)

If you're not familiar with OJC, it was (is?) a reissue label begun by Fantasy Records in 1982.  After Fantasy bought up the Prestige, Riverside, Milestone, (and eventually) Pablo and Contemporary labels, they created the Original Jazz Classics series in order to reissue the hundreds of classic albums that were now in their vaults.  One nice thing about the OJC series is that the artwork and labels are excellent reproductions of the originals.  And even better, at least until about 1987, the reissues were almost all recut in analog from the original master tapes and generally sound very fine. 

Original Jazz Classics OJC-001

The first OJC reissue (OJC-001) was Milt Jackson (left), originally released in 1956 on Prestige.  A VG+ copy of the original will set you back at least $100, while the 1982 OJC reissue can be found for about $15 in near mint condition.  I routinely find OJC titles in great condition for $20 or less, which makes them a screaming bargain.  I have about 150 OJC reissues in my collection and buy just about all that I find.

The OJC vinyl reissue series lasted nine years and ended (sort of) in 1991 when cassettes and CDs had nearly killed off the LP market.  The last US vinyl release seems to be OJC-655, Portrait Of Sonny Criss.  Fantasy (or perhaps their local partners) continued to release some new OJC titles on vinyl in Germany and South Korea as late as 1993, but the US titles after OJC-655 were released on CD and cassette only.  Be aware that over the years many OJC vinyl titles have been repressed -- some in my collection are dated as late as 2018 -- but they are all titles that were originally issued by 1991.  

Miles Davis Cookin' on groovy vinyl

From 2018-2020, a distribution and marketing company called Think Indie licensed a series of OJC Prestige reissues and released them as the "Prestige 70th Anniversary series."  There appear to have been about 15 titles, pressed on 180 gram colored vinyl.  The albums include such classics as the Miles Davis quadrivium of Cookin' (right), Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin', as well as John Coltrane's Stardust and Lush Life discs.  Apparently the albums in the series were not remastered, but simply pressed using the metal from the last OJC releases.

Craft Recordings CR-387

In 2004, Fantasy Records was itself bought out and merged into what is now the Concord Music Group.  Over the last few years, Concord has begun to reissue some of their vast jazz catalog on a new small-batch subsidiary label called Craft Recordings.  But given the runaway success of the various audiophile reissue series by Blue Note, Impulse, and other labels, it would seem to be an ideal time for Concord to get serious about remastering and reissuing a lot more of the classic albums from its back catalogs -- a sort of updated, audiophile OJC series, as it were.  Earlier this year Concord/Craft dipped a toe in the water with the release of the first six albums in a Contemporary Records 70th Anniversary series (left).  The albums were cut by Bernie Grundman and pressed at Chad Kassem's Quality Record Pressings in Salina, Kansas.  The two I have (Four! and The Poll Winners) are beautifully packaged and sound terrific.  Let's hope that this is the start of a concerted effort that will eventually make available more of the thousands of great jazz recordings on Riverside, Prestige, New Jazz, Milestone, Pablo, Fantasy, Contemporary and the many other labels that Concord controls.

Enjoy the music!