[78-L] Poll answer!! --Review of Do Not Sell At Any Price

[Michael Biel]

During the past week I ran aninformal poll among collectors of 78 RPM
records which thoroughlymystified many of them.  A few did guess the
reason for the polland now I will let everybody in on it.  Hang on
though, becausethis will be a bumpy ride.
You are not eligible to beconsidered a “78 Collector” UNLESS you do
NOT own a copy of “Yes!We Have No Bananas”, and would consider it to
be a personal affrontthat someone would even offer to give you a copy
for yourcollection.  Thus sayeth a new book that has been
widelypublicized and excerpted “Do Not Sell At Any Price: the
Wild,Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records” by
AmandaPetrusich, published by Scribner.
I’ve been reading excerpts,articles, and interviews about this book
for many months, and I evenread some of them on my radio program on
YesterdayUsa.com  , andI was looking forward to this book.  But when it
arrived severaldays after publication and I thumbed thru it I realized
that theexcerpts had been the tone of the whole book.  Her world hadbeen
shrunken to just a minute portion of “78 Collectors”. My reaction
was: my goodness, look at all the wonderful people andsounds she has
missed.  I felt that I should send her a copy ofmy daughter Leah’s
video documentary “For the Record” whichthrough interviews with
about the same quantity of individuals, opensa whole world of different,
exciting, important, and fascinatingpeople and sounds that the small
clique she had fallen into ignoresand disdains. How could two girls from
Brooklyn look at this sodifferently?
Amanda Petrusich is not a noviceto music. She has been researching and
writing about music andculture for many years, but she IS new to 78s –
had never eventouched one. Early in the book she describes asking the
director ofthe WFMU Record Fair for an introduction to some 78
collectors. Hewarned her “These 78 guys are on a different LEVEL”. 
Well, the ones she met might be –and right away I could see the fault.
“Ironically, I would learnmost 78 collectors ARE minimalists. They're
far more persnicketyabout what records they allow into their homes and
on their shelvesthan I've ever been.” 
“Approach a 78 collector,” shecontinues “with some mundane or
particularly commonplace 78 –'Yes! We Have No Bananas,' say – and
request to store it amid hiscollection, and he will glower at you as if
you have announced youintend to slowly disfigure his face with a
fork.”
In this short section of the bookwhere she describes “78 collectors”
she uses the descriptor “78collector” a multitude of times. Over the
past few days I havegotten responses from my poll about this remark from
over 100 peoplewho consider themselves to be “78 collectors.” Over
half of themHAVE a copy – or several – of this song in their 78
collection. Except for a very few of these who said they have enough of
them, allwould gladly accept another. Of those who, like Ms.
Petrusich'sacquaintances, do not have a copy of this song in their
78collection, only five said they would refuse one. Most said theywould
LOVE to have one, and some wondered what kind of a person wouldhave such
a visceral reaction against having a copy of this song. 
The clique of 78 collectors shefell in with are collectors of pre-war
rural blues, records that wereso far out of the mainstream when they
were issued that they sold invery small quantities to the extent that
some performances have notsurvived in even one copy. They ARE an
important part of ourcountry's music history and our culture, and the
quest for theserecords is a worthy one. Record collectors of all genre
aregenuinely interested and intrigued when a formerly
“lost”recording gets discovered, but to be frank many of them shake
theirheads in wonder when they hear it. “Some records DESERVED to
berare!” is occasionally muttered. 
Pre-war rural blues can be anacquired taste, but that it has become
exclusionary to all othertypes of music is the biggest surprise that
this book might disclose. As you travel through this book traveling
through the world of whatshould really have been called the”The
Expensive Pre-War RuralBlues 78 Collector” – not the world of “The
78 Collector” –you find that Ms. Petrusich has found that the life
of the pre-warrural blues musician – usually poor and Black -- has
injecteditself into the veins of the collector – usually White
andoccasionally rich.
There is something about the musicthat infects some people. She contends
that there is something aboutthe music WHEN IT IS HEARD DIRECTLY FROM
THE ORIGINAL 78 that hasinfected at least her. She is an extremely
personal writer. Herexperience upon listening to an original 78 of a
recording that shealready has heard on an expertly transferred CD that
she already ownsis illuminating to the visceral change in her life that
hearing thatrecord made.
“That afternoon, sitting uprighton Heneghan's couch, I was playing it
real cool. But fifty secondsinto 'Big Leg Blues' – right around the
time John Hurt coos 'Iasked you, baby, to come and hold my head' in his
soft honeyed voice– I felt like every single one of my internal organs
had liquefiedand was bubbling up into my esophagus. Even now, I am not
surethere's a way to accurately recount the experience without
soundingdumb and hammy. I wanted to curl up inside that record; I wanted
toinhabit it. Then I wanted it to inhabit me. I wanted to crack itinto
bits and use them as bones. I wanted it to keep playingforever, from
somewhere deep inside my skull. That is how it oftenbegins for
collectors: with a feeling that music is suddenly openingup to you. That
you're getting closer to it -- the blues feeling –than you've ever
gotten before.”
The Blues Feeling. She had fallenin love with The Blues Feeling. In
ORGASMIC LUST with the 78 playingThe Blues Feeling. 
“I'd heard 'Big Leg Blues'before; in 1990, Yazoo Records had issued a
CD of the thirteen tracksHurt recorded for the Okeh Electric Record
Company in 1928, and I'dpicked up a used copy at a local record store a
few years earlier. Not only was I familiar with the song, I'd
experienced an expertdigital rendering of an actual 78. My reaction to
hearing the 78itself played four feet in front of me felt wild and
disproportionateeven as it was happening. I like to think I was reacting
to thesong, that the record was just a conduit, a vehicle of
presentation. But I suspect I was also seduced by the ritual – by the
sense ofbeing made privy to something exclusive, something rare.”
Welcome to the world of RareExclusive 78s. Rare Exclusive Pre-War Rural
Blues 78s. No othersneed apply. In one sentence she dismisses EVERYTHING
ELSE: “Rightnow there are 78 collectors working to gather and preserve
all otherforms of pre-war music – jazz, opera, classical, gospel,
country,dance, pop – but there's something seductive about the way
bluesmusic played on an acoustic guitar between 1925 and 1939 –
theso-called country blues – sounds on shellac.”
That's it, there ain't no more. Norock, be-bop, show music, comedy,
spoken word, etc. With a shortexcursion over to indigenous music of 3rd
world countries,no other music is appreciated here. I think the appeal
for this typeof ethnic music is that it also is “primitive”. Even
when shetravels to Germany to meet Richard Weize of Bear Family Records,
itis only rural blues, not the rock he issues, the huge box sets
ofpolitical protest songs, the Jewish recordings made in Germany
duringthe Hitler years, and other far more important stuff. She gets
atour with the curator Johnathan Haim of the Rodgers and
HammersteinArchive of Recorded Sound of the New York Public Library at
LincolnCenter (which she calls the “Performing Arts Library” to
avoidhaving to mention the Broadway composers) and the only
thingmentioned is the quest for Harry Smith's archive. She tells of
hervisit to the Jazz Record Bash in New Jersey, but she has come
onSaturday after the excitement has gone. She finds an ethnic
Croatiantamburitza record on Elliott Jackson's table so he is the only
personshe seems to have spoken to. He once had bought some records
from(he thinks) John Fahey, so we have a two-page digression to Fahey.
Then after she gets Elliott to admit that some collectors are
“fairlystrange” (Elliott, how COULD you!), she “spent another
hourmilling around, until the existential stress of spending a
brightsummer morning inside a New Jersey Hilton started to trouble
mystomach and I retreated to the elevator. I carted my 78 home andspent
some time staring at it. I admired the way it looked on myshelf. I
played it relentlessly. I thought, a lot, about gettinganother one.”
Elliott sells all his records at$4 or 3 for $10. I can't believe that
while relieving her of her 78virginity that he couldn't get her to buy
two more like he doeseveryone else!!