I have always been a picker. When I was a kid, this meant searching the desert near my home in Douglas, Arizona, for old bottles and interesting rocks. Later in life, after I moved to Phoenix, my collecting interest turned to record albums. My husband had gotten me interested in jazz, and I began haunting local thrift stores in search of old LPs featuring icons like John Coltrane, Mary Lou Williams, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and Dave Brubeck.

I was on …