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

[Buster Doggboye]

Yes!  We Don't "No" How To Use Space Bar!

> On Jul 26, 2014, at 12:37 AM, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com.invalid> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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!!
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