Joe Bussard. I'd never heard of him, even though he lived in Frederick, but he apparently had the greatest collection of 78 records in the world, all kept in his basement. He also ran his own record label for a while (which only released 78's, all cut by hand), while also running a pirate radio station, all from his basement in Frederick. It sounds like he was a fascinating guy.
Here are a few articles about him from the City Paper, but there are a lot more. Here's a story about one of his greatest finds.
Mostly, Bussard just followed his instincts and whatever luck came his way.
Once he was pumping gas in a small coal town in southwest Virginia, refueling for the long ride back up Interstate 81 to Maryland. He asked the attendant about old records, and the man told him there was a hardware store with racks of them: Store stock, thought Bussard to himself, as he roared across the mountain.
“So we go into this little coal town which the highway had bypassed. It was dead. And we walk into the store, and it was like going back into the 1920s - old metal tile ceilings with designs and big ol’ round bulb lights hanging down. I went in back and found the owner, this short little guy, and he said, ‘Yeah, they’re upstairs,’ and we got on this freight elevator that moved about a tenth of a tenth of tenth of a mile per hour. I thought we’d never get up to the second floor - a snail crawling up the wall could have beaten us up there.
Well, we got finally got up there, and there was a balcony that ran the whole length of the store. You could walk out along there, and halfway out was a shelf of records - 5,000 records in the shelf - store stock, never been played. I just about shit. The sleeves were all black and dirty from coal soot, sticking out. So I reached up in the far left-hand top row, six rows high. The first one I pulled out was ‘Sobbin’ Blues’ by King Oliver on Okeh - absolutely new - at least a $400 record. The next one I pulled out was ‘Jack Ass Blues’ on Vocalion by the Dixie Syncopators. New. ‘Dead Man Blues’ by Oliver. Mint.
It was heavy on jazz, some blues; most of the country had been sold. I went through there - I was so nervous I had to pinch myself. O my God. There were Paramounts, Ma Rainey Bluebirds, Brunswick 7000s, Kansas City Stompers, and Jabbo Smith, you name it! I picked ’em out, four big stacks, each about 4-and-a-half feet tall, and carried ’em downstairs - it took me about a half-hour - and put ’em on a table, which is leaning from all the weight. ‘What do you want for ’em?’ I said. ‘How bout $100 for the whole works?’ The old guy takes his hands out of his pockets, and the coal dust goes flying. He says, ‘Take ’em out of here!’ I was so high when I went out of that store I could have floated.”
Joe Bussard, Obsessive Collector of Rare Records, Dies at 86 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Desperate Man Blues - Washington City Paper
Remembering Joe Bussard - Washington City Paper
