FREDERICK - Joe Bussard yearns for the music made before he was born 71 years ago. So every day he clomps down to his basement and into a hidden world hopping with the music that carries him off to foggy mountain hollows and smoky juke joints. New Orleans-style jazz. String band crooning. Old-time jug band tunes. Cajun fiddling. Soulful blues.
He might be the product of the rock 'n' roll era, but Bussard long ago thumbed his nose at just about everything recorded after Franklin D. Roosevelt's second inauguration. Instead, he has devoted his life to reaching way back for the sounds of the 1920s and '30s that still launch him into dreamy reveries.
The other day, as the needle floated to the end of a jazz track from 1931, Bussard shouted with joy in his faint twang.
"Aww, man! After hearing that, who wants to hear anything today? It's just so incredible. ... The world doesn't know what they're missing."
Bussard knows full well what the world is missing: some of the finest early jazz, blues, gospel, Cajun and country around. And one of the world's biggest and best collections sits right here in his wood-paneled basement, a trove of 78-rpm records worth millions tucked inside an ordinary brick rancher in Frederick.
Over the decades, Bussard has scoured West Virginia coal towns, Baltimore junk shops and everything in between, nabbing his share of one-of-a-kinds and amassing a vast haul of 25,000 old 78s. Age may have etched a few grooves into his face and sent his eyebrows on an improvisational riff, but the music brings him a childish delight.
So does his quest to spread the gift of good music as an antidote to the many modern scourges he perceives, starting with the entire oeuvre of rock 'n' roll.
"He's assembled a massive collection, but his other passion is sharing and turning people on to the music he has loved for so long," said Lance Ledbetter, who runs Dust-to-Digital, a reissue label in Atlanta. He relied on Bussard for three-fourths of the 160 songs on Goodbye, Babylon, a critically acclaimed 2003 gospel box set.
Bussard tapes weekly shows for radio stations in West Virginia and three Southern states. For $1 a song, he'll dub any track onto a cassette, shrugging off the possible legal infringement. He has put tracks onto CDs, including five jazz discs that go for $15 apiece. And he invites music lovers to descend his cellar steps for an unforgettable listening experience.
