Bussard’s Rarest Side: The Story of the Black Patti Cache

If there’s one record that cemented the legend of Joe Bussard among 78 collectors, it’s The Down Home Boys’ 1927 recording of “Original Stack o’ Lee Blues” that he picked up 40 years ago in Tazewell, Va. Released by the fabled Black Patti label, Bussard calls the disc “the rarest of all country-blues records,” and his is the only known copy.

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” he says. But Bussard’s discoveries have always been about more than just luck. Over the years he’s developed a sixth sense for uncovering records, and his Black Patti score is the perfect example. It all started with a wrong turn. He’d gotten lost on his way to a flea market when he came across an old man walking down the road.

“I stopped and asked him where [the flea market] was,” Bussard says, “and ended up offering him a ride.”

Along the way the pair got to talking about the string-band music Joe was playing on his tape deck. The old man said it was “good stuff,” and mentioned he had a “couple hundred” records just like that. Before long, they were on their way out to the man’s house.

“If I’d-a seen the house I would have stopped,” he remembers. “It was a shotgun shack. No paint on it.”

But when they got inside, Bussard’s record radar started going haywire. The old man pulled a dusty box from under the bed—“it had 20 inches of bed dust on it, it was like snow blowing all over the place”—and in that box, Bussard found 15 ultra-rare Black Pattis, including the “Original Stack o’ Lee Blues.”

“It really was the find of the century,” he says, smiling down at a record that’s now worth more than $30,000.