[JPL] A Frederick man has a treasure trove of American recordings of the '20s and '30s

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Where the music lives

A Frederick man has a treasure trove of American recordings of the '20s and
'30s

By Scott Calvert

Sun reporter

June 5, 2008

FREDERICK


 
Joe Bussard yearns for the music made before he was born 71 years ago. So
every day he clomps down to his basement and into a hidden world hopping
with the music that carries him off to foggy mountain hollows and smoky juke
joints. New Orleans-style jazz. String band crooning. Old-time jug band
tunes. Cajun fiddling. Soulful blues.

He might be the product of the rock 'n' roll era, but Bussard long ago
thumbed his nose at just about everything recorded after Franklin D.
Roosevelt's second inauguration. Instead, he has devoted his life to
reaching way back for the sounds of the 1920s and '30s that still launch him
into dreamy reveries.

The other day, as the needle floated to the end of a jazz track from 1931,
Bussard shouted with joy in his faint twang.

"Aww, man! After hearing that, who wants to hear anything today? It's just
so incredible. ... The world doesn't know what they're missing."

Bussard knows full well what the world is missing: some of the finest early
jazz, blues, gospel, Cajun and country around. And one of the world's
biggest and best collections sits right here in his wood-paneled basement, a
trove of 78-rpm records worth millions tucked inside an ordinary brick
rancher in Frederick.

Over the decades, Bussard has scoured West Virginia coal towns, Baltimore
junk shops and everything in between, nabbing his share of one-of-a-kinds
and amassing a vast haul of 25,000 old 78s. Age may have etched a few
grooves into his face and sent his eyebrows on an improvisational riff, but
the music brings him a childish delight.

So does his quest to spread the gift of good music as an antidote to the
many modern scourges he perceives, starting with the entire oeuvre of rock
'n' roll.

"He's assembled a massive collection, but his other passion is sharing and
turning people on to the music he has loved for so long," said Lance
Ledbetter, who runs Dust-to-Digital, a reissue label in Atlanta. He relied
on Bussard for three-fourths of the 160 songs on Goodbye, Babylon, a
critically acclaimed 2003 gospel box set.

Bussard tapes weekly shows for radio stations in West Virginia and three
Southern states. For $1 a song, he'll dub any track onto a cassette,
shrugging off the possible legal infringement. He has put tracks onto CDs,
including five jazz discs that go for $15 apiece. And he invites music
lovers to descend his cellar steps for an unforgettable listening
experience.

"I think if he's sustaining this great and wonderful rare collection, that's
a great role - playing it on the radio, making it accessible," said Gene
DeAnna, head of the Recorded Sound Section of the Library of Congress.
DeAnna applauds everything but the legally iffy retail sideline.

(Various state laws restrict unauthorized copying of recordings for
commercial use, though experts doubt that record companies would go after
someone like Bussard, given the minimal money at stake.)

Bussard has a fair bit of music that neither the Library of Congress nor
anyone else has, and more rarities than most collectors. There is no central
repository of American sound recordings, and over time even big labels lost
or tossed some of the masters used to reissue recordings on CDs. That makes
Bussard and fellow collectors unofficial guardians of part of the nation's
musical legacy.

He boasts that his collection includes the only known record featuring the
1929 country toe-tapper "Way Down in North Carolina," by the Grayson County
Railsplitters; one of three examples of "Outside Woman Blues," recorded by
Blind Joe Reynolds in 1929; and a never-issued test recording of Frank
Stokes' 1927 rendition of "Jumping on the Hill."

His most prized gem has to be the world's only known copy of "Stack O' Lee
Blues," released in 1927 by the Black Patti label. A high-profile blues
collector named John Tefteller openly covets it. "That's a significant blues
piece; of course I'd like to have it," he said.

But Bussard has told him he turned down $30,000 for it, and Tefteller's
frustration was evident over the phone from his home in Oregon. "You can
say, 'I'll pay more,' but it doesn't seem to make any difference to him,
because he doesn't want to sell."

And so that 10-inch shellacked black disc stays in Bussard's basement,
hidden in the shelves that extend 18 feet across and rise 6 feet toward the
ceiling. The catalog exists only in the collector's head, the better to
thwart would-be thieves. The only nod to climate control is a dehumidifier.

One recent morning in his basement, Bussard suddenly took on the look of a
madman. He flung his arms wide, splaying both hands like matching stop
signs. His eyes darted this way and that. He stuck out his tongue.

It was his signal that real fun lay just ahead.

This came two minutes 14 seconds into "After You've Gone," a 1931 jazz tune
spinning on his turntable. On cue, the song swung up-tempo, as did Bussard.
With a fiddle now whining and whistling from the big speaker in the corner,
his right hand sliced an invisible bow back and forth through the air. He
grinned, grimaced and wagged that tongue.

When not bopping in his basement, Bussard often can be found at the Barbara
Fritchie Restaurant. He's there every day for breakfast. He always sits near
the kitchen door in case a gunman comes in ("you never know"), eats bacon
and eggs, and chats up the waitresses. One manager rolled her eyes
good-naturedly and said, "Joe, you ain't right."

Over breakfast he related how his life of collecting began in 1947 when, at
age 11, he walked into a record store looking for Jimmie Rodgers music. Told
that the country singer's records had been discontinued, young Joe began
knocking on doors in Frederick begging for old Rodgers records.

He scored a couple, along with plenty of records featuring other artists. He
never stopped collecting. By selling his family's farm supply business, he
was able to devote his attention to collecting without the distraction of
having to earn a living. (It helped that his wife, Esther, who died in 1999,
continued to work as a hairstylist.)

Music consumed him in other ways: He formed Jolly Joe's Jug Band - he played
the guitar, banjo and jug - and cut old-style music on his own label,
Fonotone Records.

Mostly he collected, racing against time as old 78s ­ forerunners to vinyl
LPs - were junked, turned into wall decorations or hurled through the air by
kids. Often the harsh needles from windup Victrolas had badly scratched the
records, but he found many in pristine shape, such as on a 1960s trip to the
coal camps of Bluefield, Va.

He had reached the last house in one row when he peered down a ravine. There
sat one more house. An elderly woman answered his knock and invited him
inside. In the phonograph case he spotted what he had long sought: "Hen
Party Blues" by the Dixieland Jug Blowers. He also found Sweet Papa
Stovepipe's "All Birds Look Like Chicken to Me." For the set he gave her
$100, far more than she asked.

In this way he accumulated his 25,000 records, three-plus minutes per side.
To hear it all would require a month of nonstop playing. He also has a few
thousand LPs and 45-rpm records. Other collectors have superior stashes in
one genre - early country, say - but Bussard's runs the gamut. "There's one
or two people I can think of in the entire world who have done that,"
Ledbetter said. "It's one of the top record collections in the world."

Bussard kept only the best, pitching lots of "junk." To him, American music
peaked in the 1920s and '30s. "The world was just bustin' with music," he
said. It has been downhill since. In fact, he asserts that jazz "ended" in
1933, due both to the Depression and to the advent of the big band sound he
likens to"watching cars rust." So he doesn't think much of Glenn Miller or
Artie Shaw or John Coltrane. And Duke Ellington? Only the early stuff,
Bussard says, "when the Duke was still the Duke."

Country, he says, fared better, but only until the mid-1950s. Then rock
arrived and, in his view, tarnished country and every other music form -
except his beloved bluegrass. (He's got thousands of bluegrass records,
too.) As the rock craze swept America in the 1950s, Bussard burrowed ever
deeper into old record stacks.

"I never liked Elvis," he said. "I couldn't see anything into it. It just
didn't move me whatsoever." And the Beatles? "Rotten." Johnny Cash? "You
mean Johnny Crack?" To Bussard it's all illogical, intolerable noise. The
off switch, he says, is "the best button on the radio."

Spend enough time with Bussard and his two-track demeanor emerges. Side A is
the sunny music nut, the one who plays a mean air sax, air clarinet and air
piano; who marvels at how different musical styles sounded on opposite sides
of the same mountain back in the day; and who'll spin the "last" record for
a visitor only to hop up and shout, "Wait! I gotta play one more."

Side B is the crotchety grump who not only has an aversion to modern music
but to lots else besides, including cheese (he can't explain why), Democrats
(don't get him started) and drums, to name a few.

While he might wish he could time-travel back 80 years, it would be a
mistake to accuse him of consistency. He has a MySpace page and a Web site (
www.vintage78.com) that his daughter's ex-husband helps run.

He's also more than willing to digitize his music library - provided he's
fairly compensated.

The Library of Congress has ambitious digitization plans with an eventual
aim of putting the music online. A recent study found that only 14 percent
of the 400,000 American records made from 1895 to 1965 can be bought on CD,
via iTunes or the like. Most recordings remain in the hands of collectors
like Bussard and institutional archives, while some languish in record
company vaults or no longer exist.

The library will have to work with collectors, said DeAnna, to expand its
catalog of 3 million recordings.

To which Bussard says, bluntly: "I hope they have plenty of money. I'm not
doing anything for free." He says he has sunk too much time and money to
lend out his records gratis, even if that would spread the music more widely
than he could on his own.

Ledbetter values Bussard's collection at $5 million to $10 million, based on
eBay prices. Bussard has no desire to sell, though, not now. He doesn't
really need the cash with his reverse mortgage, Social Security payments and
modest music sales. More to the point, "I'm not that close to the grave yet.
Music is the only thing I really enjoy."

Besides, he can't imagine Heaven sounding any sweeter than his basement.

scott.calvert at baltsun.com

ONLINE

Video of Bussard and his records at baltimoresun.com/bussard

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