Ahmad Jamal Plays Parrot Rare Jazz LP VG+ Complete

£ 200

$ 265

£ 200 Sold For

Aug 1, 2006 Sold Date

Jul 25, 2006 Start Date

£ 45 Start price

9 Number Of Bids

Great Britain Country Of Seller

eBay Auctioned at

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Description

This is the Holy Grail of Jazz LP collecting, with only an handful known to exist in private collections. The rarity of this record is legendary, as it was the first and last on the Parrot label. It is also the rarest and most valuable record in Goldmine.

The condition is VG+. I am not very keen on explaining condition, so I will let the pictures do the talking. If anyone want better photo's, or alternative angles, just drop me an email request. I must point out the record itself is in great condition, again, check the photo's.

The item will be sent VERY securely packed, using a signed for insured service.

For those who would like to know more about the history of this mysterious album....please read on!

A little bit more about the albums history that I discovered on the net...

The first Parrot LP has been ignored in every previous discography. It appeared under the title Ahmad Jamal Plays. We don't know the exact release date, but it was after October 1955 (when Parrot 818, "Excerpts from the Blues," was advertised) and before March 1956, when Al Benson sold the company. According to Zeno Okeanos, some copies of this LP, which was pressed on very thick vinyl, have no serial number; according to Robert Javors, other copies went by Parrot LP100.

The Parrot Jamal LP contains 9 titles, all of which the existing sources say were recorded on May 23, 1955. Jamal was still working with a piano-guitar-bass trio, but Israel Crosby had replaced Richard Davis on bass. A source of confusion has been the discrepancy between the Side A label and the jacket concerning one track. According to the jacket, the first track on Side A is "New Rhumba"; according to the label it is "It Could Happen to You." The album actually plays "New Rhumba." Apparently at some point Al Benson planned to use "It Could Happen to You" (P 53187 from the January 1954 session, recorded after all with the same personnel) but changed his mind and left it off the LP. On the Chess tape list, "It Could Happen to You" is identified as coming from tape box 3367, even though its session mates from January 1954 are said to reside in box 2266. We are reasonably sure that box 3367 was used for the LP (the May 23, 1955 tracks aren't included on the 1959 list because Chess had bought them earlier).

In fact, the Chess brothers bought the LP tracks in the last quarter of 1956, after the final breakup of Parrot/Blue Lake. The same 9 tracks that made up Ahmad Jamal Plays would be reissued as Chamber Music of the New Jazz, on LPs with two or three different labels! The Chess brothers opened a label called Marterry in December 1956, putting out four singles and LP-601 under this logo. But they quickly yanked the new name when society bandleader Ralph Marterie, who recorded in Chicago for Mercury, complained about it. There may be a Marterry LP-602--but we've never seen one. Neal Umphred's Goldmine Guide to Collectible Jazz LPs, 1949-1969, 2nd ed., 1994) says, however, that the album was definitely released as Creative LP-602; Creative was apparently a stopgap name briefly adopted after Marterry was withdrawn. Finally, the LP came out with the familiar label, Argo LP-602 (Chess used the Argo name for several years). This whole process unfolded from the end of 1956 through early 1957. Up to now, discographies have mentioned only the Argo issue, which is by far the most common.

Dr. Robert Stallworth provided further information about the LP, including the matrix numbers for each side. (The 1959 tape list is of no help here because the LP had been sold to the Chess brothers in a separate transaction much ealier.) Parrot followed a pretty common practice in the early days of LPs by giving each track on the Jamal LP a matrix number and then attaching separate ones to the Side A master and the Side B master. We've listed the tracks in order of their appearance on the LP: Side A began with "New Rhumba" and Side B with "I Get a Kick out of You." We list the tracks as they appeared on the LP; the matrix numbers could have gone in a different order, but we are confident that they belong to the correct block in the 55200 series.

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