"In 1956 or '57 my father accepted a job in Italy and he wanted me to close up and go with him. I decided I didn't want to do that so he gave me five hundred bucks. That was enough to really get us going, so I had covers printed for five titles. Then over the weekend they stopped making ten inch LPs. So I was out of business. "
Koester took full advantage of the demise of the 10 inch format by going around and buying them all from local distributors for a dollar a piece and selling them at regular price with the profits he was able to recoup his losses and continue recording.
"I learned the thing that will screw you as a label will finance you as a dealer. By doing this I was able to get 4 twelve inch LPs out in a period of a year and a half or two years and to pay off most of my debts. We had no forewarning that 10 inches was going out I went down to Columbia Records on a Friday night and bought 10 inch LPs for $2.10 and went back Monday and was able to get them for $1.00."
Because of his experience as a record buyer Koester understood the value of music that had been recorded but not issued, or recordings that were out of print. Through his many connections he has acquired some very important master recordings. "We had the opportunity to buy the George Lewis masters recordings made for a major corporation for a school transcription program. Buying masters was from then on, forever on my mind. We bought sometimes one master, sometimes three or four. The most commercial acquisition was the United because we got good source on virtually everything. I was afraid of the United deal because I had heard that there were silent partners. I can say the same thing for the Apollo; they were both cases where I made fairly good deals because of this rumor. | wasn't willing to pay a hell of a lot for it I was going to have to deal with that kind of a gamble."....
Be sure to check out the excellent new releases by Ernest Dawkins' New Horizons Ensemble - an ambitious live jazz recording spanning the African American experience; and Jeff Parker, the guitarist of avant jazz/sound units Tortoise, Chicago Underground Quartet, and Isotope 217, among others including New Horizons Ensemble.
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