Red Garland - Soul Junction (Prestige 7181)

Jazz record collectors, it seems, are more than just a niche of the record collecting, uhh, group of people. They are numerous and they are, it seems, completely freaking rich. Older jazz records seem to hold their value in places like eBay better than just about anything. The music on some of these labels (Prestige, Blue Note, etc.) is almost always amazing and it stands to reason that much of the original buyers were African Americans. I don't think I'm out of line to suppose that most record collecting nerds do not know many old black people and thus the records that we nerds have access to are fewer in quantity and almost sold by people who are strongly aware of what they have. To turn up a rare early jazz record for a few bucks is subsequently quite a feat nowadays. This particular Red Garland gem was a part of one of my best record finds during one of my many, many trips to J&J Flea Market in Athens, GA. I purchased it from a booth of miscellaneous stuff that appeared to be confiscated from storage unit owners who failed to pay their bill. Goldmine lists it as being valued at $100. All of the above things considered, I suspect it would be fetch a greater return on eBay or in a record store than some of the $200 records I'll feature here. It was released in 1960 which makes it not quite as rare as much of the Prestige Records output but it's in great shape and features one of the all-time great jazz musicians in John Coltrane. Coltrane is actually my favorite jazz musician and I actively search out his records in hopes of putting together most of his catalogue. This is indeed a tall task as he was quite prolific and many of his records are holy grails for jazz collectors.