Joe Bussard: Musical Preservationist

It doesn’t take long to figure out that Joe Bussard loves his old-time music. Just drop the needle on any of the 25,000-plus vintage jazz, blues and country records in his basement collection, and he’ll be jitterbuggin’ across the floor in no time—playing air clarinet along with Johnny Dodds and flailing his arms overhead in excitement.

“Listen to that,” he says from behind his ear-to-ear grin, “Oh my God, could they play. What a sound.”

Fire up the Ridge’s Fountain Citians and watch the collector close his eyes and sing along with the 80-year-old tune “Bald Headed End of a Broom,” memorized word-for-word:

“With a wife and seven half starved
kids, boys I’ll tell you it is no fun
When the butcher comes around to
collect his debts
With a dog and a double
barreled gun”

Bussard’s been this way for a long time, ever since he first discovered the sounds of early country and bluegrass. It started with Gene Autry and Jimmie Rodgers, but his tastes grew to include traditional Cajun, jazz, mountain music, blues, gospel and more; pretty much anything was fair game, provided it was recorded before World War II.

“The world doesn’t know anything about music today,” he says, scowling. “It’s so bad today, it’s pitiful, absolutely pitiful.” Bussard won’t even acknowledge the name “Bob Dylan” and traces the end of jazz to 1933, just before the start of the swing era. “I don’t know what the devil they did, but it was great whatever it was. Then they just lost that beautiful ‘boom.’”

The Dixieland Jug Band emerges from Bussard’s giant RCA speaker and the smile returns; he breaks off mid-thought to sing along: “Now scoot, scat, skootle-e-doo …”

But even in their day, Bussard’s favorites weren’t exactly burning up the pop-music charts. These were obscure artists, recorded at the height of the Great Depression on fragile 78-rpm discs. It’s a miracle any copies survived at all, particularly after many discs were melted down in the ’40s to fund the war effort.

As a result, he went straight to the source on his record hunting trips: rural Appalachia. He unearthed a treasure trove in a coal camp outside of Bluefield, Va.—“You oughta see those houses”—and tells of hidden caches at markets, warehouses and mountain hamlets.

These days, the basement of his suburban Maryland home is a veritable shrine to the music of the ’20s and ’30s. Photos of his favorites—many of whom have long since been forgotten by history—line the walls, while his prized collection of vintage 78s sits neatly on pine shelves, 80-plus years of American history in plain paper wrappers.

“Everybody had their own sound,” Bussard says of the music. “These people were just unbelievable. Thank God there was just a little bit of their performances left behind. This is our music, our heritage.”

Even though he owns what may be North America’s most complete collection of rarities from the 1920s and ’30s, Bussard would be just another record collector if it weren’t for his willingness to share the music with others. Aside from his weekly radio show—now well into its 50th year—he’s always ready to spend a few hours spinning records for whatever researcher, music buff or reporter who might turn up on his doorstep. His website, vintage78.com, handles orders for his CD compilations and custom mix tapes.

“It’s obvious that [Joe] enjoys what he’s doing,” says Ralph Epperson, owner of WPAQ, a North Carolina radio station that broadcasts Bussard’s “Country Classics” show. “He has that personality over the air, and his enthusiasm is contagious.”

It was this musical evangelical spirit that caught the attention of British filmmaker Edward Gillan. He recorded Bussard’s story in 2003 and crafted the award-winning documentary, Desperate Man Blues. The film has caused a stir in Australia and will be released in the U.S. later this year.

“A lot of people have got a lot of records,” says Gillan. “Joe has got a lot of good records … but I think that it’s Joe himself, his knowledge and the way he can tell the story of the music that is the real treasure.”

But, in the end, the old-time music’s the thing.

“Did you hear that sound?” Bussard shouts over the din, arms pumping to the rhythm of Bill Brown and His Brownies, “Unbelievable!”

To read "The Black Patti Cache,"Paste's story about Joe Bussard's rarest record click here.