![]() Now we know what they have, we can look at it, we can study it."įor some buyers, the auction was the end of a long quest. ![]() "But I say, what was your plan for unearthing these things? All we know is that the families have something in the attic. "I got e-mails from people all over the country saying, 'It's terrible, they're spreading this stuff to the four winds,"' he said. Lewis Porter, a Coltrane scholar and music professor at Rutgers, who attended the auction, was not alarmed by the fact that so much memorabilia was going to private collectors. She bought John Coltrane's dog tags from the United States Navy, for $9,000, among other items, but for her own museum. To that end, Guernsey's arranged for a letter to be sent to the winning bidders, suggesting that they consider donating the items to the Smithsonian when they no longer want them.īut Juanita Moore, the executive director of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., might beg to differ. ![]() The Smithsonian's American Music Collections depend almost entirely on donations. It has detailed notes in Coltrane's hand indicating that he planned five other percussionists for the piece besides his core quartet.) (One piece, Coltrane's original arrangement for his most famous composition, "A Love Supreme," is an example. Scholars worried that the items would be taken out of the United States or otherwise never be made available again. A few items came with minimum-bidding levels and did not sell among them was one of Wes Montgomery's guitars, offered at $300,000.īefore the auction, jazz scholars expressed concern that many items had not been given directly to the Smithsonian or a comparable institution by the musicians' families. Known to be Parker's primary instrument in the 1950's, it sold for $225,000, to another unidentified phone bidder. The highest price paid was for a King alto saxophone owned by Parker. 944 also bought one of Monk's high school notebooks, in which the 15-year-old Stuyvesant High School student wrote in a fabulously rococo hand about why "Everyone Should Read Good Newspapers," as well as a book report on "A Tale of Two Cities." Bids started at $3,500 and finally stopped, 110 head-spinning seconds later, at $60,000.Ī representative from Guernsey's explained that the bidder wished to remain anonymous, and provided only the statement, "I am a Monk fan who went to Stuyvesant." That ruled out three famous and wealthy jazz lovers, Clint Eastwood, Bill Cosby and Wynton Marsalis.Īmong other things, the auction was a gauge of cultural capital, and Armstrong, Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker seemed to rate highest. Monk, who was at the auction, explained that "Can't Call It That," which dates to the 1940's, was really the famous Monk tune "Straight, No Chaser." His father, he said, retitled the song so it could sit on the piano at Monk's home, where Thelonious Monk's mother wouldn't be offended by the real title's reference to alcohol.īidder No. He or she bought the long Armstrong letter, and paid $23,000 for Thelonious Monk sheet music titled "Can't Call It That." The orchestra seats were full of bidders, and many bids came in over the telephone or the Internet, which made bidder No. ![]() But once word spread widely in mid-January, the interest grew high enough to move it to the 1,200-seat Rose Theater. The auction was originally scheduled for the 500-seat Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. But over the past year Guernsey's has made a concerted effort to contact the families of a select list of great jazz performers, living and dead, for the biggest auction yet exclusively dedicated to jazz artifacts. Guernsey's, the auction house that held the event, hatched the idea 10 years ago in the meantime they have had auctions centering on Elvis Presley and the history of rock. 10, a bawdy 32-page handwritten letter to Armstrong's manager, Oscar Cohen: $25,000. Glaser about dental problems and a lack of cash: $1,600. The auction was front-loaded with Louis Armstrong items, and the first lot contained a four-page handwritten letter from Louis Armstrong to his booking agent Joe Glaser, asking about the possibility of a gig in a Broadway theater: $3,500. The serious bidding got under way quickly at the big jazz auction yesterday afternoon, at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater.
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