Rare Releases

Want the complete Lester Young Early Recordings? Need a DVD of early Louis Armstrong vocals? What about a vinyl record of Sonny Clark live in Paris? Looking for a re-mastered collection of mid-career Stan Getz? What about a reissue of, well, pretty much the entire Blue Note catalogue? If so, Japan is the place to go. More than any other country in the world, jazz fans in Japan are crazy for collecting rare, special, and unique recordings.

Japanese have a great love of all things from the past and a passion for what is singular and unique. Whether ancient temples hidden in a forest or vintage cars, old and rare means good. With a recorded legacy stretching back a century, jazz fits that passion for collecting, archiving and musing on the past perfectly. The covers of prized vinyl recordings are displayed like pieces of art in clubs and jazz coffee shops. Tucked away in large cities, are thousands of small CD and vinyl stores. Spread through the small side streets in hard-to-find spaces with cheap rents, the buying and selling of jazz recordings in Japan is a substantial part of the jazz scene.
It is not only old or used recordings, however, that take up people’s passion. New issues of old releases come out regularly and line the front racks of music stores. Every few weeks, rare recordings taken from the vaults are given new life. Japanese prefer the retro look of old packaging, so much so that if you look at some parts of some CD stores, you might think you were in the 1950s! Surely, Japan’s market for re-releases must be one of the largest in the world.

Japanese also have a passion for cataloguing and compiling. A special multi-disc collection of Charlie Christian or Sidney Bechet will sell out quickly. The zeal for listening to an artist’s complete recorded works, in chronological order, can be seen in the special sections accorded to these large CD collections in the stores. Even though retail space is limited, a large part of every store will hold these huge boxed collections of special works.

These collections are also prized for their liner notes, which in Japan are more extensive than anywhere else. Every set will have the original notes, usually in English, but also a translation into Japanese, and almost always special further commentary about the work only for Japanese consumers. Some jazz writers in Japan make their living writing these detailed and analytical liner notes. Any Japanese collector buying a rare re-release of old jazz would feel cheated if there were not a huge amount of reading accompanying their purchase.

Several companies in Japan specialize in re-releases. They go back to the archives of old recording catalogues to find rare gems that have been lost in legal entanglements or simply ignored. They brush these up, re-master the original tapes, add written commentary and background notes, and get them up on the front racks of CD stores, usually with an explanation of how important the recording is. That kind of archival work can be slow and tedious, but in Japan, it is undertaken as a special challenge and an important contribution to jazz.

And for vinyl enthusiasts, Japan’s record stores are havens of choice and quality. Taking extreme care with the handling of vinyl records, some Japanese stores even provide special protective pouches to carry home records safely so they will not get damaged on the crowded trains! However, one need not have a turntable at home, which in the relatively small homes of most big-city Japanese is hard to find room for. A large number are accessible in jazz bars and coffee shops. All one needs to do is sit down, order a drink and request whatever vinyl one’s jazz heart desires.

One thing is for sure, though. One day in the imaginary future, at some time when a great world jazz museum is created, Japan’s supply of re-releases and carefully preserved vinyl records will make up a large proportion of that collection! Until that day, though, lovers of vinyl and re-releases will just have to come to Japan.

(December 7, 2009)
(Uploaded February 26, 2013)