Interviews on 78 Record Collecting
Mark Berresford
Berresford has had the enviable life of collecting 78s; buying 78s; selling 78s; writing, editing, and publishing about 78s; and lecturing on 78s. He has totally emerged himself in a life of shellac.
https://yestercenturypop.com/2014/02/13/mark-berresford-and-all that-syncopated-music/
Ken Brooks
Brooks, like many 78 record collectors, had an early epiphany in his life about the joys of old time music. Today, beneath the surface of your routine “race car technician” in Indianapolis, is a man who has found peace with the world through 78 record collecting. And his collection is amazing–four Charlie Pattons!
Joe Bussard
Bussard was one of the first 78 collectors to recognize he had a moral and cultural duty to preserve the old time musical treasures on shellac. In the process he amassed in his basement perhaps the greatest 78 collections of blues, jazz, and country discs from the twenties and early-thirties–after that, Bussard will tell you, the music is rarely worth collecting. Many of his 78s have found there way onto vinyl and CD compilations. The 2006 documentary, Desperate Man’s Blues: Discovering the Roots of American Music, tells Joe’s story.
Note: Joe passed away in 2022.
R. Crumb
The “underground cartoonist”, Robert Crumb, is famous among 78 collectors for his legendary shelves of vintage shellac, his books and drawings devoted to old time music, and his participation in two bands which have done much to keep vintage music traditions alive: The Cheap Suit Serenaders and the East River String Band. Crumb is incredibly insightful and articulate when discussing his obsession with collecting 78 records.
Brad Kay
Kay, who bills himself as a “consulting musician”, has been playing old time music on the piano and cornet for over fifty years–primarily in the Los Angels area. He has fronted and played with numerous bands. In more recent years he has played piano with “Janet Klein and Her Parlor Boys”, and lectured as a musicologist. Much of his musical knowledge has been gleaned from collecting and selling 78 records over the years.
Chris King
Christopher C. King is a longtime 78 record collector, who for years has taken the lead in producing some of the most important old time music re-issue CD box sets available. If you doubt it, just go to King’s website, Long Gone Sound Productions (www.longgonesound.com) for a listing of his work. King has received six Grammy nominations and one award for his outstanding efforts. In 2018, King published his book, Lament for Epirus: An Odyssey Into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music. Ostensibly, it is about his latest obsession in finding incredibly rare Greek shellac from the twenties and thirties. But it is really about his reflections on seeking the secrets of old time music. King speaks with religious fervor on the collecting of 78 records, such that you will never hear this music as you once did–if you are fortunate!
https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/507-the-collector
Joe Lauro
Lauro, who began collecting 78s at age twelve, may have started earlier than most collectors. Those early shellac discs led him to a career as a filmmaker of music documentaries and as a archivist of vintage music films for his own company. And, he continues to collect, buy, sell, and trade 78s, big-time.
Amanda Petrusich
Petrusich is a music writer who went down the “rabbit hole” of 78 record collecting to obtain research and material for her 2014 book, Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records, and managed to keep her sanity, while at the same time discovering what drives 78 collectors in their pursuit.
John Tefteller
Jonathan Ward
Ward is a musicologist and researcher who founded Excavated Shellac (www.excavatedshellac.com), a wonderful internet resource for early music on 78 records found throughout the world. The articles are well-researched, and the music is accessible. Ward has helped curate CD collections for Dust-to-Digital, and his latest project for the company is a purely digital 100-song collection with essays on world music from 1907-1967. The name of the digital collection is–of course–Excavated Shellac: An Alternative History of the World’s Music.
Note: in 2022 Dust-to-Digital released a physical edition of this set that is only available directly from the company.
