Jazz Buffs Groove for $2 Million Offerings in New York

NEW YORK CITY - Guernsey Auctions, known for pop culture pageantry, recently staged its first single auction entirely devoted to jazz, playing before a packed house in the 1,200-seat F.P. Rose Hall at Lincoln Center.

Guernsey's has the distinction of orchestrating the largest auction ever: the sale of the contents of the SS United States. It also auctioned material from the estates of John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, Elvis Presley, Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mantle, as well as the first auction ever of Soviet Union artwork conducted during the Cold War.

More than 430 lots, including jazz manuscripts, instruments, photographs, clothing and other personal effects, were auctioned, having been glowingly described and photographed in a 200-page hardbound catalog, perhaps a collector's item in itself. The grand total was believed to be in excess of $2 million, a bravura performance.

Assembled artifacts provided a time line to jazz royalty - Duke, Bird, Buddy, Bennie, Diz, Trane, Satchmo, Ella, Lady Day, Monk - punctuated by major riffs and segues embracing blues, honky-tonk, swing, hard bop, free jazz and avant garde. They all contributed in making this an international tour de force as cool as it gets. The orchestra seats spilled over with bidders, though much of the buying action came from the bank of phones and eBay Live.

Arlan Ettinger, owner of the firm, related that ten years ago, he hatched the idea of a jazz auction. Over the past year, he stepped up his efforts to contact families of an A-list of giants of jazz, living and dead. A number proved amenable and, in most cases, the sales' proceeds were designated specifically to foundations, commissioning programs, fellowships and scholarships for music students and jazz players of the future.

By mid-January, the word had spread and significant consignments, such as the Buddy Rich drum set and an Ella Fitzgerald performance gown, were still coming in, even as late as the evening of the sale. Guernsey's printed a 14-page addendum.

T.S. Monk, son of the legendary piano player and composing genius Thelonius Sphere Monk and a superb musician in his own right, made a stirring tribute at the auction's onset. He hailed the recognition of jazz treasurers of unique greatness as long over due. "At last, historical acknowledgement is bestowed on the impact of jazz as part of America's musical tradition," he said.

The auction's high note was sustained by Charley Parker's personalized King Super 20 saxophone, in original case, sold to an unidentified phone bidder at $265,500. Cataloged as Bird's primary instrument in the 1950s, the King had an enlarged bell and modified instrument key action conducive to enhancing and projecting his consummate dexterity and rich, robust tone.

The event was front-loaded with items relating to jazz's goodwill ambassador, Louis Armstrong. A signature B-flat Consul model trumpet presented to Armstrong in 1965 did not sell. A four-page hand scrawled letter from "Satchmo" to his booking agent Joe Glaser inquiring about prospects of a gig in Broadway theater brought $4,130. A telegram to Mr Glaser about dental problems, stating, "If there is any money coming to me, now is no better time, for I need it badly," sold at $1,858. "Satche's" favorite photograph by Dave Iwerks, which hung in his manager Oscar Cohen's office for decades, brought $8,850.

A rambling, ribald 32-page Armstrong letter to Mr Cohen went to the phones for $29,500 and speculation ran high in the hall as to the identity of this phantom buyer, known only as "Bidder No. 944." According to Guernsey staffers, the mysterious caller wished to remain anonymous.

He or she also cornered three choice Thelonius Monk entries, shelling out $11,800 for a hand-printed score of "Merrier Christmas," a tune he had dedicated to his family in the early 1960s.

A sum of $27,140 took home a 1951 handwritten composition "Can't Call It That" (the intended name for Monk's signature piece, "Straight No Chaser," had been temporarily shelved in deference to his deeply religious mother's disapproval of an alcohol-related title).

Bidder No. 944 splurged a mind-boggling $70,800 on a fifth-grade essay book stating why Boy's Life was Monk's favorite magazine, penned in neat Spencerian script by the 16-year-old while attending Stuyvesant High School, New York City, in 1933. It was later confirmed that the bidder confessed to being a Monk fan, as well as Stuyvesant alum. That immediately ruled out three high profile, deep-pocketed aficionados: Clint Eastwood, Bill Cosby and Jazz at Lincoln Center director Wynton Marsalis. Monk's favorite gold brocade smoking jacket, which he is pictured wearing in a 1964 Saturday Evening Post article, brought $5,605.

Guernsey's refrained from posting presale estimates, and Satchmo's B-flat Consul model trumpet was one of several celebrity instruments that were constrained by minimum bidding levels. These reserves, which some observers felt belonged in another galaxy, were announced by auctioneer Joanne Grant only in the course of the bidding. When a John Coltrane Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone, one of three principal tenors he played, passed after failing to meet a $500,000 minimum reserve, the crowd gasped in seeming disbelief. Trane's Selmer soprano sax, however, brought a restrained $79,800, and his Yamaha alto sax added $33,040.

An original, four-page Coltrane handwritten poem that inspired his classic recording "Love Supreme" contained detailed notes indicating Trane had planned five other percussionists, besides his core quartet, evidently striving for even more of a Latin-jazz rhythmic flavor. The two-page manuscript, which brought a transcendent $129,800, was described by Ben Ratliff in The New York Times as "never having been seen by scholars, [they] aren't just a curio: they will affect scholarship."

John Edward Hasse, Smithsonian's curator of American music, voiced concern that many of the artifacts would wind up in private collections. He stated that his institution receives not one penny from the federal budget for acquisitions, so they rely heavily on donations. Mr Ettinger indicated that if he had to guess, sooner or later, the majority of these treasures would wind up in institutions. But it could take a decade.

Juanita Moore, executive director of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo., prevailed on Trane's US Navy dog tags at $10,620, among other winnings. Alan Green of American Jazz, a New York toy dealer, was delighted over his $2,360 purchase of two Coltrane signed handwritten notes regarding contract details with Miles Davis from May 1964. "It's tough to find any kind of Coltrane autograph for under $8,000," Mr Green added. A 1965 Coltrane passport with Japanese visa stamp went to a bidder in the hall at $16,570.

Norman Saks of San Diego, Calif., a Charlie Parker devotee, snared several choice lots, including several unreleased Chan Parker (Parker's wife) recordings of "Bird," including a first-generation vintage 1951 tape live from the Symphony Ballroom in Boston. Mr Saks had been pursuing these same tapes since the 1970s and had been a disappointed underbidder for them at Christie's in London some ten years ago, but the third time was a charm at $4,130.

Jazz-related paintings and lithographs sent mixed signals. The vaunted five-panel, boldly stroked "Jazz Murals" by noted abstract expressionist Franz Kline, painted on three wainscoted walls in a Lehighton, Penn., roller skating rink in 1933, marked Kline's first commission. The murals levitated to $76,582 at Guernsey's .

A trio of Romare Bearden artist prints from "Jazz Series," 1979, hovered in the $2,950 to $4,130 range. Only one of the celebrated oil on canvas Bruni Sablan Jazz Masters Series images sold, as "Bird the Bepop King" made $7,080. Although Miles Davis was acclaimed as an artist on canvas as well as on the bandstand and a large retrospective of his paintings toured Japan just after his death in 1991, his images at Guernsey's did not sell, including a formidable, nearly seven-foot-tall mixed media painting "R U Legal." Davis' trademark dark smoke sunglasses with mirrored finish, however, fetched $4,177.

It was obvious from the first lot on, beginning at 10 am on Sunday, that many prospective bidders were maddeningly slow to react. After a number of final bids were missed or went down to the wire, Guernsey auctioneer Joanne Grant repeatedly reminded the crowd to raise their paddles high to avoid confusion; she made a valiant attempt to jump-start bids to move things along. By the end of the first hour and a half, the bidding was stilled mired at lot 30-something. It was late until the eleventh hour on Sunday night when lot #400, a 1979 Newport Jazz poster by Leroy Neiman of Billie Holiday, brought a fitting coda to an exhilarating, emotionally draining trip down Melody Lane.

Prices quoted include an 18 percent buyer's premium.