The woes of clutter, the wolves of Ebay and the great Dane. (Part 2)

So continuing on with the story...

As mentioned, it was quite upsetting to see all these things I grew up all of the sudden up for sale at the world's larget online auction entity, Ebay. Attached are some of the details I was receiving from DJ, Joe Bourne in regards to the items being sold on Ebay:


Summary

This is a 12 by 11 1/2 inch photo album from the estate of Jimmy Raney, the renowned jazz guitarist. It contains 82 photographs, some color but most black and white, that were taken from birth to Raney's senior years. It includes large pictures of some of the bands and groups he played with, including Woody Herman and Artie Shaw. Raney lived here in Louisville and I will admit that I don't know some of the people in the photographs. There are photos of his parents, his toddler years, as a teenager, adulthood, and his senior years. He is pictured with his guitar in a lot of these. If you are a Jimmy Raney fan, what a great collectible to go along with his music albums! Weighs 5 pounds before packing so buyer pays actual shipping from zip code 40222 plus insurance. M.O., cashier's and personal check accepted with clearance time for the latter. Sorry, no Paypal. Thanks.On Jan-03-06 at 14:07:20 ..

JIMMY RANEY, UNFINISHED SELF PORTRAIT, OIL ON CANVAS Item number: 7569495680

Summary
UNBELIEVABLE FIND IN LOUISVILLE AUCTION!! JIMMY RANEY PHOTOS, ALBUMS, AND HOMEMADE TAPE, PAPER MEMORABILIA AND A TEST PRINTING ALBUM ALL BELONGED TO JIMMY RANEY!! ; UNUSUAL, UNFINISHED! OIL ON CANVAS DONE BY JIMMY RANEY "SELF PORTRAIT" DATED 1992 ; Measures approximately 35 X 24.; Unmatted, unframed.; Canvas only!; This is unfinished, but dated 1992.; On the back it says it has Ray Parker emblems.; Great piece of memorabilia for the fans of this giant jazz legend.; Please put me in your favorites.; I have alot of Jimmy Raney and his son, Doug Raney, personal photographs, and more coming up for auction this week!! Check out my other items!Be sure to add me to your favorites list! TO ALL BIDDERS: I combine shipping on items that end within 24 hours and will invoice accordingly, saving YOU money. Feedback is a very important business tool and I appreciate all positive feedbacks....



I even recall that someone was selling a postcard that was supposedly sent from actor/director Danny DeVito to Dad saying hi and giving kind comment about a Bradley's performance. I had no idea Dad knew him.

The first twist in the right direction:

Joe Bourne the DJ bid on and won an item. He's a real nice guy and he offered to send me what he bought.

Here is the correspondence:

"Jon—

...Yesterday I sent a money order to (name withheld) to cover the 4 items I bought from her: a Childhood photo, Thurber Carnival Cast photo, Silver Sessions book (in Japanese), and Jimmy and Attilla Zoller 1986 LP, Live at Quasimodo. Let me have your address and I will forward them to you. (I will make a CD copy of the LP for me).
I hated to see the price jump so high on the photo album the other guy sold—couldn’t compete with that.."

Because he was so up front and generous about these things, I deferred on his offer. I may ask him for some copies of pics and post them at some point.
The self portrait painting was bid on and won by a collector in Denmark. Ebay security/protection rules forbade me from contacting the bidder.

The second twist:

Because of my increasing presence on the Internet with my interconnected website, forum and especially my blog which includes a great deal of Jimmy Raney doin's, I began attracting many visitors and fans of Jimmy and Doug Raney. Then I got this correspondence:

Hi Jon!

As a huge fan of Jimmy Raney I purchased a photo collection on Ebay last year - unfortunately not the old photo book which was also on sale but a collection including photos from Jimmy's tour of Japan and some from a Holland tour with Doug.
Many of the photos is family photos of no interest to me.
I would like to contribute almost the whole collection to you
so that you may use it for your site if you want.
I am keeping some photos myself but will include scans of them.
I just need an adress and the photos will be on the way.

I also bought a painting by Jimmy - an unfinished self portrait. I've always wanted a painting of his ever since a saw the one on "the date" album...

The painting and photos found me!

Here is his second correspondence. The photos he attached are the great Jimmy Raney photos that are now gracing the Jimmy Raney stories at the Jon Raney blog. He also made good on sending back all the photos at his own expense. These photos I received are now proudly displayed on my "Jimmy Raney wall" that was arranged and reframed by my wife, Yajaira (photos coming!)

Hi Jon,

Here is some of the photo scans. I haven't scanned the family pictures with portraits of Jimmy (without guitar) and
other people I don't know, since I really don't need them. I will be sending you all the photos I don't need. Including
all the ones in the photo album.

I don't know how many MB's your mailbox can receive so I'm only sending a few files at a time.

Best regards,
Christian



This was the first of many things Christian has sent me and there is even a better twist coming next time.

Stay tuned!

The woes of clutter, the wolves of Ebay and the great Dane. (Part 1)

After my father passed away in 1995 all of his relevant personal effects were to be put into a memorial room at Bellarmine College with the help of guitarist/teacher Jeff Sherman and Dad's last companion Ola Miracle. We put in a letter of intent and kept a Raney Estate accounting with Ola at the helm as administrator. This went on for years. The room was reserved and she made her best efforts to hold the remaining Raney possessions: original paintings, old photos, albums, tapes, scores, correspondence, and assorted nick-nacks. She had a large condo in Louisville with most of the rooms filled with just about everything she had ever owned from her childhood, her children's childhood, her adult life and on top of that, tons of Jimmy Raney things, all of it comingling. Ola had to relocate to a smaller condo. The heap of stuff followed her but distribution now spilled beyond the closets and rooms into storage areas within the basement of the building as well as commercial storage. An attempt was made to account and remove the Raney things at one time but it didn't happen. I didn't know about these things at the time being in NY. I find out later. I assumed the things made it to Bellarmine based on what I heard from Ola. Maybe I should have paid more attention in retrospect.

In September of 2005 I found out that Ola had contracted terminal breast cancer a long time before. She had been in her daughter Linda's care in California for about 4-5 months and was in the last stages of her life. When she died, I went down to be pallbearer and if time permitted, review the whereabouts of Dad's stuff. I began to find out about what had happened during the 3 days I spent down there-that the stuff never got to Bellarmine and we had lost the room at Bellarmine subsequently. I couldn't find anything of value in Ola's house and a trip to the basement revealed nothing. I took a few things with me and returned to NY with the hope of hearing from Linda about the whereabouts of Dad's personal things. I also had to take over administratorship from Ola.

Linda was able to find some boxes of things, including some records, audio cassettes and a video or two and she fowarded them by mail to NYC, but In January I began hearing from saxophonist/educator Jamey Aebersold that other possessions of Dad's were showing up on Ebay. A DJ from Indiana, Joe Bourne had contacted me about it and sent me the links. It was true. I saw my grandmother's old keepsake album of Dad's glossy Woody Herman band photos prominently displayed. It was bizarre. I used to look at all those photos all the time. At that point I thought they were stolen from the house and pawned by a family member (who shall remain nameless). I started a criminal investigation and contacted one of the sellers at Ebay, threatening legal action. As it turned out, none of this was true. The Ebay sellers obtained these things legally through an Estate auction. Dad's things, as it turned out were in commercial storage for a long time. When Ola contracted cancer, she was already behind in the payments. When her daughter Linda was asked to handle the remaining storage space, Ola had owed 11 months of storage and there was a big heap there to be sorted out. Linda had no idea that Dad's valuable effects were mixed among her baby boots and old forgotten photos. She let the storage house liquidate them. One of the sellers I was in contact with, feigned sympathy about the situation but was inferring that the way to "show my love" was to bid on the stuff myself. I made a public statement about the situation in the Ebay community just to vent and tell the story. Some commented with understanding comments, and others-one in particular--saw fit to say things that were downright derisive. There was the potential for getting into some "flaming wars" with the ebay seller but I decided to let it go and the other members seemed to bury his lack of sensitivity for me.

The last straw for me was when I logged into Ebay and found my father's self portait/abtract painting up for sale. That was what I specifically had gone to Louisville to try to retrieve without success. Dad had offered to give it to me on a few occasions and now it was already sold to the highest bidder at Ebay. I wept for about an hour straight. I decided to stop bothering logging in to Ebay and let it go.

More next time. (There is a fortunate twist to this story stay tuned)