Diggin' In The Crates "How Do You Spell 'Blue Note' In Nihongo?" Department

One of the newest additions to the CJ Marsicano sound library: A sweet looking - and more importantly, sweet sounding (hell, it's in pristine condition!) - 1978 Japanese pressing (yep, it's from the same country as my future second wife and only 11 years older than her) by King Records of the seminal modern jazz classic album Somethin' Else by Cannonball Adderley & Miles Davis (Davis leads the session, but Adderley, one of Miles' sidemen, had to be the credited artist because Miles was with Columbia but wanted to do an album with Blue Note - the Dischord Records of jazz - for old times' sake.) This pressing - a full replication of the original Blue Note release right down to the mandatory note on the bottom front cover that Miles had to get Columbia's permission to play on the record, the iconic Blue Note label, and the standard back cover layout, plus a Japanese-language insert - goes toe to toe with the Rudy Van Gelder-supervised remastered CD that Capitol has in print right now.

And as a bonus with this particular edition, you can learn how to spell "Miles Davis" and "Art Blakey" in katakana!

For the record, at $52 including air mail postage (because the person who put it up on eBay lives in Japan), it's about the most I've paid for a single title on eBay besides Flipper's Public Flipper Limited double-live album... and this is coming from someone who chickened out on buying a 45 of The Ramones' "Baby I Love You" signed by all four Ramones on the label in November of 2000 because it was $50, even though he loved the Ramones, and then several months later came home, logged on, and found out Joey Ramone passed away.

Now if only they'd put Morning Musume, Whiteberry, and Koda Kumi on 180 gram audiophile vinyl...