Desperate Man Blues

Channel surfing yielded a bona fide find last night in the form of the final two-thirds of Desperate Man Blues, a ’02 film spotlighting the life, times and nonpareil vinyl trove of one Joe Bussard. It’s got the usual music documentary tropes: the foreign film crew (in this case Aussies led by Sydney-based Edward Gillan) seeking out an unsung custodian of aural culture long operating under the public radar in an effort to place him and his efforts on the proper pedestal of importance; the round table of talking heads explaining & corroborating the subject’s relevance and stature; prosaic shots of the subject’s daily life, visiting his favorite diner, holed up in his basement listening room, two of the four walls stocked ceiling-to-floor with meticulously catalogued 78s (25K of them by one count), music-related nick-knacks and collectibles festooning other available shelf-space; puffing on stogies, poring over his finds and congenially entertaining the ignorance of the general populace. Most engrossing are the repeated scenes of the vinyl addict in his element, venturing out on record recon safaris. One excursion to a rural elderly black man’s house is a bit sobering as subtle racial and class disparities rear up in Bussard’s interactions with his potential vendor. Surveying the stacks of moldering records in the seller’s basement, he’s polite, but dismissive of the cache and invites the man and a friend out to his truck to hear some “real sounds.”

But what’s continually charming is how Bussard both fits the prevailing stereotype & exists puckishly outside it. His income appears largely derived from taping sides (50 cents apiece) and sending them to fellow collectors, though recurring gigs in radio have padded his pockets occasionally since his teens. That tenure facilitated the formation of an idiosyncratic, if curiously familiar, & endearing world view. There are Bussard’s fuddy-duddy assertions that rock is the cancer of all music; his apparent contentment at catholicizing his daily listening to the library in his basement and taped compilations on his various drives about town; the encyclopedic awareness of record-related trivia and ephemera. One scene documents a game of brinksmanship between Bussard and a visiting friend. The two engage in a face-off over Blind Willie McTell’s biographic minutiae that will ring amusingly familiar with most record geeks. Another Bussard acolyte divides people down along colorful dichotomy: the minority who view Pre-War recordings as the pinnacle of American musical achievement and the eclipsing majority who only hear “scratchy old records.” Bussard holds position as Chief Poobah of the former camp with a congenial nonchalance.

But rather sealing his recherché sides in hermetic sleeves and relegating them to dust magnet status on the shelves, he regularly pulls them out, handles them and plops them on his turntable, a tactic at odds with the usual Cerberus-style curatorial mindset. There’s one scene where he produces what he claims is the “rarest blues record of all” --“Original Stack O Lee Blues” by the Down Home Boys on the Black Patti label-- slides it out of its mummified paper sheath, deposits it on the player and unceremoniously drops the stylus. In another he stomps his feet and gregariously plays air banjo right along with a rollicking Uncle Dave Macon record. Later, holding an audience with two young reporters from a local newspaper, he fetches first a mint copy of Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues” and then another antique picture platter by Jimmy Rodgers, mirthfully spins each for the ladies, regaling them with reasons as to why Rodgers has no vocal equal. The smiling, if slightly perplexed expressions on women’s faces will once again ring true to record fiends who’ve tried in vain to explain their obsessions to friends and acquaintances not afflicted with the addiction.

Despite his comfortably no-shit lifestyle and easygoing exterior, Bussard is definitely and incurably infected with the fever. He muses repeatedly on the diminishing returns nature of his passion, but ultimately appears nonplussed by the finite supply that fuels his pursuits. Vindication comes at the end with the discovery of a rare Gitfiddle Jim 78 at a garden-variety estate sale amongst a crate of records he procured for a mere five bucks. Bussard’s ear-to-ear grin as he proudly holds the priceless relic up to the camera is, well… priceless. All-in-all a great way to kill an hour as, it appears, is a recently released compilation of some of Bussard’s choice selections from his collection.