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Two recent articles detailed the wild and crazy world of LP collectors of jazz and blues recordings. The first one, from The Wall Street Journal talks about how, since 1975...

...on the third Friday and Saturday of June, collectors have gathered at a Holiday Inn in central New Jersey for the Collector's Bash, not only to buy and sell rare and not-so-rare jazz discs, but to meet and mingle. About 15 years ago, during the final hours of that year's conclave, collector Charlie Braun recalls, there was a pile of "commonplace stuff" on one of the tables, priced at a dollar a disc. Mr. Braun found about five records mildly interesting, one of which, he casually noticed, was "oooOO-OH BOOM." He bought them, and only after taking his new purchases up to his room did he notice that the flip-side of "oooOO-OH BOOM" was, surprisingly, "Pop-Corn Man." It had to be a later reissue, he thought. But he showed the record to Goodman expert Warren Hicks, who was also at the Bash. Mr. Hicks informed him that there never was a reissue in the 78 era, so this disc had to be the original. Not only had Mr. Braun unearthed one of the most desirable rarities in jazz history -- the Maltese Falcon of swing -- but it had lain in plain sight of Goodman collectors for two days. And it was only a buck.

It's a really great article, only to be topped by this one from July 12th in the NY Times, detailing the collector's craze for hunting down rare 78's:

John Heneghan tugged a large shellac disc from its brown paper sleeve, placed it on a turntable and gently nudged a needle into place. Behind him, in the corner of his East Village apartment, sat 16 wooden crates, each filled with meticulously cataloged 78-r.p.m. records. The coarse, crackling voice of the blues singer Charley Patton, performing "High Water Everywhere Part 1," his startling account of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, rose from the speakers, raw and unruly. The record is worth about $8,000.

How many of these "crazies" are out there?

Mr. Heneghan, 41, is part of a small but fervent community of record collectors who for decades have hunted, compulsively and competitively, for 78s: the extraordinarily fragile 10-inch discs, introduced near the turn of the 20th century and made predominantly of shellac, that contain one two- to three-minute performance per side. At a time when music fans expect songs to be delivered instantaneously (and often at zero cost) online, scouring the globe for a rare record -- and paying thousands of dollars for it -- might seem ludicrous. (A rarer Patton record could command $15,000 to $20,000.)

It sure seems to be worth the effort, though:

But according to some, the rare-record business is booming, despite the recession and the devaluation of music as a physical product. "Prices have been rising at a phenomenal rate, as people take money out of the stock market and out of different real estate investments and look for a place to put it," said John Tefteller, a collector who makes his living dealing in rare records. He noted a particular spike last fall, when the economy first faltered.

Although most collectors subspecialize by genre, whether jazz or classical or country, it's early American rural blues -- loose acoustic laments, recorded before 1935 and performed by artists who were born in or near the Mississippi Delta -- that inspires the highest prices and the most fevered pursuits. "The early blues material from the '20s and '30s is the hottest material of all," Mr. Tefteller said in a phone interview. He said that on average a rare jazz 78 might sell for $1,500 to $5,000, whereas sales for a comparable blues record would start at $5,000.

It's nice to see this music getting the respect it so richly deserves, although it's too bad these blues masters weren't compensated during their lifetimes...

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