[Dixielandjazz] Dick Buckley record collection

[Robert Ringwald]

Dick Buckley record collection
 
Do I Hear Duke? DJ's Jazz Archive Going on the Block
by Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune, February 15, 2011

For more than 50 years, legendary DJ Dick Buckley spun the records that kept Chicago
swinging.
Duke Ellington and Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday -- their music
(and more) stood at the center of Buckley's life and accompanied him up and down
the Chicago radio dial from 1956 to 2008.
But when Buckley died last July, at age 85, his family faced an unusual problem:
what to do with more than 8,000 LPs, 500 CDs and piles of books he left behind.
"I knew they were a big part of my dad's life, but we didn't have room for them,"
says Jeff Buckley, his youngest son, who with his siblings decided to put the whole
shebang up for auction.
So Buckley fans, jazz aficionados and anyone else who wants to touch a bit of Chicago
cultural history will be able to pore over Buckley's one-of-a-kind collection Tuesday
through Thursday at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, with the bidding to begin Thursday
evening.
Not that anyone thinks an outsized collection of jazz LPs and 78s is going to generate
a fortune in the era of digital downloads.
"We may not make anything on it," concedes Hindman, surrounded by boxes of oft-played
LPs. "We're doing it because it seemed like so much fun."
Certainly the brightly illustrated, slightly weathered covers of LPs by Stan Kenton
and Bing Crosby, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Waller evoke a fondly remembered, pre-digital
era in American music. Flip through the collection, which has been divided into 90-plus
lots (each packed with about 100 recordings), and you practically can hear Ella Fitzgerald's
high-flying scat singing, Horace Silver's funky piano chords, Buddy Rich's explosive
drums and Benny Carter's blues-drenched alto saxophone.
Buckley built a lifetime of programming on this massive inventory, its tracks embedded
into his memory. If you doubt it, then you didn't spend much time listening to him
on WAAF-AM, WAIT-AM, WBEZ-FM and other outposts.
Routinely, Buckley would rattle off the names of sidemen on this recording or that
one, then reach for the record and spin it, before soliloquizing on other sessions,
famous or obscure. He seemed to have heard it all and was determined to share "the
good old good ones," as he often said.
Unlike most auctions, the sale of "The Dick Buckley Jazz Collection" comes with no
print catalog ("we couldn't spend a lot of money," says Hindman), nor an item-by-item
inventory. Instead, the auction house has described each lot with a sentence or two
online, such as: "A box lot of LPs featuring renowned jazz trumpeter players," or,
"A box lot of LPs featuring many Chicago jazz artists" (the full list is at lesliehindman.com
under "catalogs").
Tucked amid the avalanche of LPs are Buckley's homemade reel-to-reel tapes, the boxes
adorned with terse markings, such as "Kenton interviews." No doubt scholars, researchers
and journalists will find some gems here - if they can win the bidding.
"The people who listen to jazz, they know what they're looking for," says Mary Williams,
a Hindman staffer who prepared the Buckley collection.
What did she learn about Buckley by studying the materials of his life's work?
"His collection spans Dixieland to modern jazz - he gave everybody a little time,"
says Williams. "And he definitely loved Duke Ellington the best."
Adds Hindman, herself a jazz fan whose father played in a big band, "I think he was
a good man who loved music."
That's putting it mildly.



--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

"The demonstrations are getting bigger in Cairo. The Egyptian government tried to
disperse the crowd with tear gas, and when that didn't work, 
a Black Eyed Peas halftime show." -Conan O'Brien