NEW YORK, Feb 20 (AFP) - After spending the better part of 50 years under a bed, a saxophone belonging to legendary jazz virtuoso Charlie Parker sold for more than quarter-of-a-million dollars at an historic auction on Sunday.
The alto sax, which Parker often pawned and then redeemed when he needed fast cash, went for 261,750 dollars at the sale in New York by auction house Guernsey's.
Following Parker's death in 1955, his wife Chan Parker hid the instrument under her bed, finally bequeathing it to her daughter just before her death in 1999.
The Parker lot was just one of the highlights of an auction that included instruments, clothing and musical scores that were played, worn and written by such icons as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, John Coltrane and Stan Getz.
Along with the actual saxophones, trumpets and drum sets, there was a lot of bidder interest in the hand-written items, including a profanity-laced letter from Armstrong to his agent which sold for 29,500 dollars.
Another highlight was the original musical arrangement for Coltrane's classic song, "A Love Supreme," written by the musician himself in pencil and blue ink.
The three sheets of manuscript that made up the lot were the target of some aggressive bidding and finally sold for 129,500 dollars.
"Today is kind of sacred," said T.S. Monk, who attended the auction as the son of jazz great Thelonious Monk and an award-winning musician in his own right.
"They are all so alive," Monk said of the musicians represented at the sale. "They're alive in our hearts, they're alive in our collective souls.
"Sometimes their message was muted by racism, other times by politics and even artistic snobbery.
"But their music has flourished. It's grown and profoundly influenced all those that it has touched," he said.
Unusual for such a high-profile collection, Guernsey's had provided no estimates, and the vast majority of lots had no reserve price attached.
However, a tenor saxophone that belonged to John Coltrane was withdrawn after it failed to make an opening bid of 500,000 dollars.
The idea for the auction was born around 10 years ago, but it only began to take shape over the past year as the families of the musicians involved came on board.
"A lot of this has never been seen before and it comes from the greatest provenance you can have ... it never left the family," said Guernsey's president Arlan Ettinger.
The juvenilia on offer included Thelonious Monk's high school essay note book, in which the then 16-year-old penned his thoughts on such subjects as "Everyone Should Read Good Newspapers."
The note book sold for 70,800 dollars.
Along with private collectors, a number of museums and universities registered for the auction, such as the Kansas City Museum of Jazz which purchased several lots, including a mongrammed gold pocket watch that belonged to Charlie Parker for nearly 13,000 dollars.
The auction was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center -- a 128-million-dollar state of the art performance space designed especially for jazz music that was opened in Manhattan in October.
Among the other notable instruments were a Benny Goodman clarinet that sold for just under 25,000 dollars and a Dizzy Gillespie trumpet -- with trademark upturned bell -- that went for nealry 31,000 dollars.
According to Ettinger, many of the jazz families involved in the sale had decided to donate the proceeds to various foundations, including those promoting jazz music among people.
"To give up treaures in the hope that something from the past will help something in the future is a very wonderful thing," Ettinger said.
Each lot came with a note from the Smithsonian Museum, offering to help with any preservation work and holding out the hope that the item in question might be donated to the museum sometime down the line.
02/20/2005 22:17 GMT - AFP