[78-L] To the founder of the feast (was: My Visit with Brian Rust)

[Robert Shirer]

Hi Doug,  (and everyone),

I was thinking about you the other day, wondering if you still hung out on 
78-L, wondering how your taste for Orthophonic Victors had developed.  I 
think fondly of the summer I spent in Ithaca (at an NEH seminar), and of our 
record listening and our record finding wanderings around the Finger Lakes 
region.  (The wine was nice, too)

Of the many list acqaintences I have had the privilege to make over the 
years, you are one of the few I've been able to spend time with.  And we all 
you thanks for starting this wonderful resource on its merry and 
cantankerous way.

Cheers,
Bob Shirer
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas M. Elliot" <dme3 at cornell.edu>
To: <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 8:40 PM
Subject: [78-L] My Visit with Brian Rust


> Hi All,
>
> I've been a lurker for years, but with the news of Brian Rust's passing, I 
> felt compelled to share the story of my visit to Brian back in 1982.
>
> Like so many of us, I had become familiar with his discographies as I 
> began getting interested in 78's.  Back in high school in the 70's, I was 
> constantly taking the American Dance Band Discography out of the library 
> and wondered who this Rust fellow was. As the years went by, I learned 
> that he was a Victor enthusiast, as I was.  Fast forward to the recession 
> year of '82 when I was graduating from college with no idea of what I was 
> going to do for a living and (like Benjamin Braddock) concerned about my 
> future.  It so happened that at the time my dad was on sabbatical in 
> England about an hour west of London.  As a graduation present my parents 
> invited me over to England for a month.  I figured, why not...I don't have 
> anything to do.  And then an idea came to me...why not write to Brian Rust 
> and see if I could visit him while I'm over there?
>
> So once I arrived, I sent off a letter and shortly afterwards, my parents 
> and I went off on a trip to Scotland (where we had been for six months way 
> back in 1968 during my dad's first sabbatical).  When we returned, the 
> afternoon mail arrived and my heart jumped...there was a little brown 
> envelope from Hatch End, Pinner!  I opened it and saw the familiar 
> typescript and signature that we know from the discographies.  Brian 
> invited me to come over for an afternoon any day in the second week of 
> July.  I nervously "rang him up", as they say, and we set the date.
>
> Now I had something to be excited about in the midst of a summer of gloom. 
> July 6 came and we motored to London and found Hatch End...a pleasant 
> suburb with a park nearby.  I wish I could recall more about his house, 
> but it was a duplex and I remember going up a flight of stairs to his 
> record room and meeting him there.  I had only seen an outdated picture of 
> him on a dust jacket, but I found that he was tall, bald on top, graying, 
> and had rather tired-looking eyes (which seemed completely appropriate for 
> someone who had spent decades poring through record ledgers!).  A 
> thoroughly nice guy, and very patient with a young collector who was quite 
> shy and "green."  It was three hours of bliss listening to records and 
> discussing dance bands, recording technology, and collecting.  I was just 
> beginning to appreciate jazz as well as dance bands, and he turned me on 
> to some of his Victor favorites, such as the Dixieland Jug Blowers.  I 
> would have stayed longer, but my parents wanted
> to get home and Brian needed to kick me out because he had another 
> engagement.  He kindly gave me a Boswell Sisters LP that had just been 
> released by Living Era.  (I'm sure he received promo copies of reissue 
> LP's quite frequently...)
>
> After sending him a thank-you letter (to which he courteously responded), 
> I had intended to correspond with him occasionally, but never got around 
> to it and the years (and decades) went by.  When I got the news of his 
> death today, I was especially saddened as I thought back to that July day 
> in 1982, which cheered me up at a depressing time in my life and certainly 
> broadened my interests in record collecting.
>
> Doug Elliot
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