How Jazz Record Collecting Happened

How Jazz Record Collecting Happened
(with apologies to Marc Myers’ Why Jazz Happened)

Since I started taking an interest in modern  jazz on vinyl five years ago, a lot of things have sort of clicked into place. Nothing hugely profound, and perhaps all common knowledge to those on a lifelong journey, but it seemed a good time to take stock.

I have always been cursed with a desire to understand things, how they come about, how things work, why they are what they are, and not something else.

So in simple pictures, the recipe, the basic important ingredients that made record-collecting possible. Leave out any one of them and we would not be here where we are today. I may have missed things out, may be don’t understand other things, but with the wisdom of hindsight, this is what it looks like from where I stand now.

All these things had to happen to create modern jazz on vinyl.

The 50′s musicians playing small groups itself is a story, musicians plucked out of large dance bands, work around union restrictions, a  free college education for troops returning from military service – musical education, the musical training found in army marching bands (Sergeant Cannonball Adderley, ‘ten..shun!), radio stations that allowed musicians to hear other musicians, live jazz clubs, and the evolution of music to listen to not just to dance to. And the financing – royalties system and record label contracts that enabled musicians to afford to continue playing.

All of this might have happened and today we would be none the wiser, but for recording technology: the new valve-based German Telefunken U47 and AKG C12 microphones replacing puny ribbon mics, Ampex tape recorders, durable magnetic tape, Scully lathes and record mastering technology  And of course the sound engineer heros that deployed the technology – Rudy van Gelder, Roy du Nann, Richard Bock, Tom Dowd, employed by the entrepreneurs that put together the independent record companies and labels to promote and sell recorded jazz: Alfred Lion, Bob Weinstock, Lester Koenig, Orin Keepnews.

The magical era of record pressing by pressing plants and vinyl pressing machines. All feeding the demand for home listening, made possible by home ownership of affordable radiograms and portable record players. The fruit of free market enterprise, whilst the only contribution of Government was to imprison some of the musicians for minor narcotics offences.

And so it came to pass:

Not to forget mention in passing of the transaction enabling Paypal service, and the wonders of the world’s postal delivery services, obstructed by grasping tax-collectors.

The Time Machine

And the essential home vinyl listening sytem, all British components (apart from the Dynavector Japanese cartridge). Todays  ”time machine” that takes you back to 1956,  in its Victorian London home setting (1890-2013).

Amen

Crank up the vinyl. Let the music begin…