May be of interest to collectors?
Charlie Watts auction





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-09-10 11:18 by johnh.

Quote
johnh

May be of interest to collectors?

Yes - [iorr.org] , [iorr.org] , [iorr.org] .

Certainly of interest to me. Too poor to bid for any of his lovely first editions but I have bought a catalogue.

This article is in today's Telegraph along with photos I can't upload - paywall so I have cut and pasted, which I hope is allowed.

Inside Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts’s ‘incomparable’ library
Before it goes to auction, our writer browses Watts's multi-million pound collection, from The Great Gatsby to Agatha Christie

The release last week of the new Rolling Stones single, Angry, heralded the band’s first album of new material in 18 years, Hackney Diamonds. So it is poignant that Charlie Watts – the drummer who for decades, until his death in 2021, kept his head down at the back of the stage – is having his own moment in the limelight.

Watts appears on two of the tracks on the new album, recorded before his death, and soon takes centre stage in an auction to be held at Christie’s in London of the extraordinary collection of rare books and jazz memorabilia that he accumulated throughout his lifetime.

In the fashion of an auction house dating back almost three centuries to the time of James Christie himself, the catalogue for the sale describes the collection as being the property of “Charlie Watts | Gentleman · Collector”, adding, for the avoidance of any doubt, “Rolling Stone”.

The son of a lorry driver from Wembley, Watts was unquestionably, to everyone who knew him, a gentleman, in his manner, temper, appearance and bearing. While a part of the Stones, he always seemed curiously apart from them – a man with his own passions and enthusiasms. Watts was always happiest curled up with a good book – and, as the items in Charlie Watts: Literature and Jazz suggest, not simply “good”, but rare and valuable, too.

The collection, described by Mark Wiltshire, the rare books specialist at Christie’s, as “the best of its kind in a generation – I know of nothing comparable”, is, quite simply, staggering, in both scale and quality.

Among the 500 lots are signed first editions by Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Graham Greene, George Orwell and Oscar Wilde. Watts’s particular fondness for detective and spy fiction and American noir is reflected in books by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Agatha Christie of which there are more than 80 titles in the collection. (One of the most intriguing is a copy of Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs inscribed to PG Wodehouse, “with reverence, admiration and many long years of deeply enjoyed reading – no one like you!”)

The jewel in the crown is a first edition of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby inscribed “For Harold Goldman, the original ‘Gatsby’ of this story, with thanks for letting me reveal secrets of his past. Alcatraz Cell Block 17” – an ironic reference to the office at MGM Studios in Hollywood where Fitzgerald and Goldman worked as screenwriters on the film A Yank at Oxford (1938). Jay Gatsby, of course, was a Yank at Oxford himself, boasting to Nick Carraway that “all my ancestors have been educated there”.

Watts’s passion for jazz is reflected in rare recordings, sheet music, gelatin prints and books. There is the sheet music for Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, along with the score for Acts 1 and 2 of Porgy and Bess, signed by George Gershwin. A copy of Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly, by John A Lomax and Alan Lomax, is signed by Huddie Ledbetter – Lead Belly – himself.

Watts’s greatest musical hero was Charlie Parker, and the auction includes reel-to-reel recordings by Parker and a touching letter from Parker to his common-law wife Chan. “To my Darling: To my Beloved, reward for braveing [sic] any and all miseries, I adore you”, signed ‘Bird’, with the original envelope addressed ‘To The Summation of Beauty’.

Jazz is where Watts’s enthusiasm for collecting first began as a teenager, searching out hard-to-find records by his musical heroes in specialist shops in Soho. Collecting became an obsession. Over the years he would collect American Civil War armaments, Horatio Nelson memorabilia, vintage Tailor & Cutter pattern books, suitcases, hats, Stuart silver, and cars, including several Rolls-Royces, a Bugatti Atlantic and a 1937 Lagonda – although he never learnt to drive.

Faced with the task of assessing all the objects Watts acquired over the years, his daughter Seraphina lamented that there were periods in his life when her father had gone “OCD collecting mad”. Sorting through one chest of drawers she came across objects including Edwardian glasses and carved pipes. “I wanted to say to him, what is this? It could be Roman and incredibly valuable or it could just be a piece of junk.”

'He was proud of this sense of being a completist': The Thirteen Problems (1932), one of many Agatha Christie first editions owned by Watts CREDIT: Christie's
Browsing through the catalogue for the forthcoming auction begs the question of whether Watts actually read all, or any, of the books he collected.

“He certainly was a voracious reader,” says Paul Sexton, the author of a biography of Watts, Charlie’s Good Tonight. “It was one of the things he had in common with Keith – which people tend not to associate with Keith. I remember Charlie saying to me once that Keith never reads anything less than three inches thick.”

It is particularly striking how the collection comprises mostly books and jazz artefacts from the 1920s to the 1950s – spanning the period from immediately before Watts was born, through to his teenage years.

“If you consider Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington, I think Charlie would have drawn a comparison between the style of those books and the style of the jazz musicians he admired so much – the understated gracefulness in both those cases,” says Sexton.

It’s “no coincidence”, says Wiltshire, that the outstanding item in the collection, The Great Gatsby, is the novel that defines the Jazz Age.

“I think in his mind there was a clear cross-over between those two things, both thematically and chronologically. And when you find books published in the 1970s it’s because he was a completist collector of the authors who had their heyday in the pre-war period, Twenties and Thirties. He just had to have them.

“He was very proud of this sense of being a completist. I think he started with the authors, fell in love with the text and in the way so many of us do when we have a particular author that we love, he wanted to get as close as he could to their lives and the interaction they’d had with that copy of a book.

“HG Wells is a very good example. In the copy of The War of the Worlds, Wells has obviously spent some time drawing quite an elaborate caricature on one of the endpapers. Charlie would have loved the fact that these were copies that meant something to the authors themselves.”

Over the years, Watts built up a network of dealers who knew his tastes and would notify him first of anything they felt would be of interest. The copy of The Great Gatsby was previously sold at a Bonhams auction in 2015 for $191,000, to one of his dealer contacts, who then offered it to Watts. It now carries an estimate of £200,000-£300,000.

“He was a connoisseur,” says Watts’s friend, the influential music manager and creative Tony King. “He wasn’t just collecting because he had the money to. He could tell you in detail about everything if you asked him.”

King tells the story of Watts once staying at Shugborough Hall, the home of the photographer Patrick Lichfield – and being given a tour of the house’s treasures. Pausing at a display of plates and dishes of the Huguenot silversmith Paul de Lamerie – valued at some 3.5 million – Watts pointed out that the caption below the display was incorrect. It was subsequently changed.

King says that “Charlie was a very down-to earth, straightforward bloke. He wasn’t snobby in any sense of the word, but he definitely liked the good things in life. He was a total gentleman, and he liked other gentlemen.” He numbered among his friends Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Redé – the banker, aesthete, collector and socialite. It was de Redé who pointed Watts in the direction of George Cleverley, bespoke shoemaker to the Duke of Windsor – and subsequently to Charlie Watts. He went on to acquire several pairs of the Duke’s shoes, and two of his suits.

“He loved clothes,” says King. “He had so many beautiful things made. I think he knew he was only going to wear them once, but he liked the gentleman experience of going to Huntsman or Joseph, his tailor in Savile Row, and being measured and fitted and choosing the buttons.”

Watts kept a huge collection of suits in London, and in Devon. “I remember once when [Watts’s wife] Shirley was going up the stud farm, Charlie put on a beautiful Savile Row suit. She said, why are you dressed like that? He said, we’re the bosses; we might as well look the part. But all the staff there loved him. He commanded a lot of respect, in the band too.”
Watts, says King , “was a very quiet, under-the-radar collector; you never knew what he was up to.”

Quiet and under the radar. It seems the perfect description of Charlie Watts, the most modest and unassuming Stone of all.

The Charlie Watts auction: 10 most valuable lots
1. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Est: £200,000-£300,000
First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author: “For Harold Goldman / The original “Gatsby” of this story, with thanks for letting me reveal these secrets of his past. / Alcatraz / Cell Block 17 / (I’ll be out soon, kid. Remember me to the mob. Fitzgerald)”.

2. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Est: £100,000-£150,000
First printing with original dust jacket.

3. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
Est: £70,000-£100,000
First edition, inscribed by the author: “I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book, A Conan Doyle.”

4. The Thirteen Problems, Agatha Christie (1932)
Est: £40,000-£60,000
First edition with original dust-jacket and wrap-around band.

5. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiel Hammet (1930)
Est: £30,000-£50,000
First edition with original dust-jacket.

6. Manuscript arrangements from the founding years of Count Basie’s “New Testament” band (1940s-50s)
Est: £30,000-£50,000
Partial arrangements for 31 compositions, approximately 88 pages in total; discovered in a storage locker in Chicago.

7. A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)
Est: £25,000-£35,000
American first edition inscribed by the author: “With A Conan Doyle’s kindest recollections of pleasant partnership in travel June 13th/91.”
8. All the Sad Young Men, F Scott Fitzgerald (1926)
Est: £25,000-£35,000
First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author: “W.L. Shelton / with Best Wishes / F Scott Fitzgerald”.

9. The Dain Curse, Dashiell Hammet (1929)
Est: £25,000-£35,000
First edition, with rare dust jacket by Hungarian artist F.H. Horvath.

10. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (1945)
A pre-publication “proof” copy, inscribed by Waugh to his close friend and wartime commander Robert Laycock: “For Bob, Commander of the Faithful, from Evelyn.”

The two-part auction of more than 500 lots will take place at Christie’s in London SW1 on September 28, with an online sale open for bidding from Friday to September 29. Further details: christies.com

Do we know if anyone here bought anything? (And if there will need to be a bigger Archive? )


First edition Sherlock Holmes book owned by Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts sells for record £214,000

Late Rolling Stones drummer owned an impressive collection of rare and first edition books by crime fiction legends including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie

First edition copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles and Agatha Christie’s The Thirteen Problems, which once belonged to late Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, set two world auction records on Thursday (28 September).

The musician’s extensive collection of first edition books went under the hammer at British auction house Christie’s as part of a specialised sale, which saw F Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel The Great Gatsby, first published in 1925, receive the highest bid, at £226,800.

The edition was described as "the cornerstone" of the drummer’s collection, while bidders gathered in the auction room were told it was the "finest" copy to be offered by Christie’s "in a generation".

Elsewhere, a first edition of Sherlock Holmes tale The Hound Of The Baskervilles sold for £214,200, which set a new world auction record for a printed book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This surpasses the previous record $201,600 (£165,279) for The Sign of Four, which was sold in 2022.

The rare copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles sold on Thursday (28 September) was inscribed by a personal message on the title page from Conan Doyle himself, who wrote: "I perambulated Dartmoor before I wrote this book." Watts lived 10 miles from the location of the book’s Devonshire setting.

Twenty-five Agatha Christie novels were also placed under the hammer, with an "exceptionally rare" edition of the author’s 1932 mystery collection The Thirteen Problems selling for £60,480. This sale set a new world auction record for a Christie book, with the previous high being £47,880 for The ABC Murders in 2021.

The Thirteen Problems is notable for featuring the first appearance of Christie’s famous sleuth, Miss Marple, in the section titled "The Tuesday Night Club".

Meanwhile, Watts’s edition of Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) sold for £56,700, while his copy of The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), dedicated to the author’s daughter Rosalind, sold for £34,020.

Other sale highlights included first editions of Raymond Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake (£32,760), Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (£27,720) and Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, which eventually fetched £47,880 after a close bidding war. Watts’s copy Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited also sold for £60,480.

Watts, a member of The Rolling Stones since 1963, died in August 2021, aged 80. At the time of his death, his publicist Bernard Doherty told the PA news agency that the drummer “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family”.

The musician was the longest-standing member of the group alongside Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards.

During his career as a drummer, Watts also curated a superb collection of works inspired by his passion for jazz and literature. As evidenced by the 127 items on sale, his love of literature leaned towards 20th-century British and American authors, with a particular interest in the crime and mystery genre.

“Charlie was the heartbeat of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years, he was totally unique and devoted to jazz and literature from boyhood,” Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards said in a joint statement following his death. “He was the quintessential English gentleman and his absence is a great loss for us all. We miss him hugely.”

Benedict Winter, specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie’s, said: “Charlie Watts holds a unique position within music history and Christie's is proud to pay tribute to his extraordinary achievements and multifaceted legacy.

“Charlie built his collection of modern literature and jazz with passion, intelligence and dedication, and this two-part auction celebrates his distinguished collecting taste.”

Next month, The Rolling Stones will release their first album since Watts’s death. While launching their 24th record, titled Hackney Diamonds, at a London event last month, Keith Richards paid tribute to his bandmate, stating: “Ever since Charlie’s gone it’s different – he’s number four, he’s missing. Of course he’s missed, incredibly.”

Watts has been replaced by Steve Jordan, whom Richards says the late drummer recommended “if anything should happen to him”. He described it as a “natural progression”, adding: “It would’ve been a lot harder without Charlie’s blessing on that.”

However, in a poignant twist, the band revealed that Watts still managed to contribute to the album, as he can be heard performing on two tracks, “Mess It Up” and “Live By The Sword”, both recorded around 2019.

Hackney Diamonds will be released on 20 October.



See article for pics. [www.independent.co.uk]