JAZZ

Jazz

Our catalogue seeks to evoke the ephemeral moment and improvisatory spirit of jazz with a gathering of 50 remarkable items. There are rare original acetate recordings of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Charlie Parker’s “Cherokee”; striking photographs of some of the genre’s greatest performers, including John Coltrane, Lady Day, Chet Baker, and Duke Ellington; concert posters and fragile handbills; signed and inscribed material; and some truly outstanding mementos, among which are a pair of trademark sunglasses owned by Miles Davies and a remarkably evocative “relic”, perhaps the only survivor of Billie Holiday’s trademark gardenias.

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“Writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture”

– T. S. Monk

Our senior specialist and resident jazz enthusiast Glenn Mitchell writes about collecting jazz pieces.  

By Glenn Mitchell 

When we set out on this project a lot of people quite reasonably asked: how can you collect jazz? Music is just wiggly air anyhow, and this stuff is not even scored; its keenest advocates consider the evanescence, the ephemerality of jazz, the “in the moment” thing, as the absolute essence of the form. Bottle that lightning, put it in a vitrine and show it to your friends. Go on, dare you.

For ten years or so, I was immeasurably fortunate to have had the gift of working with Charlie Watts – the world’s greatest drummer, “the realest guy I ever met”, to borrow from Keith Richards, and a collector without compare – in developing his jazz collection. Charlie knew more about collecting things that he didn’t collect than most do about their primary passion, always enquiring into the why and how things were made the way they were, connecting “cultural artefacts” –  as he would never have called them – with their contemporary and historical contexts. To see him hold a piece added a dimension to your definition of “to cherish”.

“For ten years or so, I was immeasurably fortunate to have had the gift of working with Charlie Watts – the world’s greatest drummer, “the realest guy I ever met””

From the outset, Charlie made it clear that he wanted material that took you to the time and place, that put you in the room, to that particular table, just off the stand, where you could see and hear everything: listen to the band, watch the crowd, smell the reefer and spilled booze, take it all in. Sure he accumulated some wonderful inscribed books and signed discs, original Charlie Parker tapes, acetates, a Downbeat Award or two, and a briefcase of Basie scores, but also table cards – “2 Drink Minimum” – photo-folders and matchbooks from clubs famous and infamous, noisemakers from the Cotton Club – “Duke Ellington Orchestra – Two Entirely Different Shows” – a fan from Josephine Baker’s short-lived Parisian boîte, a handbill for a Scottsboro Boys benefit at Small’s, one of Monk’s ties, all things that fed into his almost psychometric “read” of the world of jazz.

It was an immense satisfaction to find that something that we had given him as a gift – and he the gift-giver extraordinaire – a small, deckle-edged snapshot photograph of Ella Fitzgerald, had found a special place on the shelves of his library. It is an unassuming little thing, Ella stepping into the sunshine outside Radio City, squinting slightly at the brightness, and smiling broadly for a fan’s camera. The picture had Ella’s autograph on the back, so the photographer had got their snap developed and had taken it with them when an opportunity presented to get it signed. Not a thing of importance, but a perfect little vignette, a true record of an encounter, full of character and way more telling than any glossy studio 8 x 10.

“Not a thing of importance, but a perfect little vignette, a true record of an encounter, full of character”

For me personally, the piece on our current catalogue that most perfectly encapsulates this approach to collecting is Billie Holiday’s gardenia. A frail, dead, brown thing, the epitome of ephemerality, so carefully kept and now so resonant. When I bought it in New York I didn’t stow it in our flight cases, but went back to my hotel and sat with it in the dark, drinking warm gin and watching the lights of the traffic on Park Avenue, and by some wonderful synaesthetic evocation it was “Autumn in New York” and Billie’s careworn insouciance filled the room.
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