[Dixielandjazz] Brian Rust, Father of Modern Discography, Dies at 88

[Norman Vickers]

To :  Musicians & Jazzfans list;  DJML
From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Society of Pensacola

Likely you've seen it elsewhere.  Finally, here is the NYT obit on Brian
Rust.  See that he died Jan 5.

fnv


Brian Rust, Father of Modern Discography, Dies at 88
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/arts/music/02rust.html

By MARGALIT FOX

Brian Rust, a discographic detective who compiled comprehensive
guides to recorded jazz and other popular music, in the process
setting the standard for the modern field, died on Jan. 5 in
Swanage, in southern England. He was 88.

The cause was complications of prostate cancer, said his son,
Victor, who was named for the RCA Victor record label. (The elder
Mr. Rust, according to family oral tradition, declined a friend's
suggestion that he name Victor's twin sister Decca.)

Often described as the father of contemporary discography, Mr. Rust
embarked in the 1940s on a rigorous, deeply personal project that
continued long afterward as he haunted archives and hunted down
artists to reconstitute long-vanished recording sessions on paper.

He was best known for "Jazz Records," first published in 1952 and
reissued many times since. It is currently available in a
two-volume, 1,971-page version titled "Jazz and Ragtime Records,
1897-1942" (Mainspring Press, 2002), edited by Malcolm Shaw.

For decades, "Jazz Records"--known to jazz mavens simply as "J.
R."--has been the de facto standard reference work in the field,
furnishing meticulous information on session dates, personnel and
much else for tens of thousands of recordings.

Aimed at scholars and aficionados, the book has also been the
starting point for countless reissues of early-20th-century jazz.

"Discography is a road map to the recorded past," said Tim Brooks,
who collaborated with Mr. Rust on "The Columbia Master Book
Discography," a four-volume work published in 1999. "Virtually any
historical jazz reissue goes back first to Rust to find out what to
look for--what recordings an artist made, how many versions of
each that artist made and where they might have been issued, so you
can get your hands on it. And he would trace all of that."

"All of that" is now standard information in discographies across
musical genres, and it is to Mr. Rust, colleagues say, that such
comprehensiveness is owed.

"Jazz research at its beginnings was the purview of dedicated
amateurs," Bill Kirchner, a jazz musician and historian, said in an
interview. "There was no precedent to dictate what the nature of it
was going to be, and what the details were going to be. And he was
really one of those people who decided, 'This is what it should
encompass.' "

Brian Arthur Lovell Rust was born in London on March 19, 1922. As a
boy, he became enraptured by the jazz he heard on the radio and was
soon spending all his pocket money on secondhand recordings.

At its height, his collection comprised 8,000 to 10,000 records--a
somewhat modest haul by the standards of truly obsessed collectors.
With benevolent indifference to the ravages of summer heat and
winter cold, Mr. Rust stored them in an extension behind his garage.

"He was not a particularly painstaking person in terms of caring for
stuff, though his mental work was extremely painstaking," Mr. Shaw
said.

As a young man, Mr. Rust took a job as a clerk in the Bank of
England, which pleased his mother though not him. A conscientious
objector, he was a firefighter in London during the Blitz.

After the war, he joined the staff of the BBC Gramophone Library,
where he worked until about 1950. It was there, wishing to improve
on the scanty discographies then available, that Mr. Rust began his
private research in earnest.

Reconstructing a long-ago recording session is like trying to grasp
a fistful of quicksilver. Mr. Rust first scoured record-company
archives to compile his data; because files were often lost or
incomplete, he eventually left the BBC, packed a suitcase full of
rare European jazz records and set out for the United States.

Arriving in 1951, he sold the recordings to American collectors and
used the money for bus fare, traveling the country in search of
aging jazzmen, whom he proceeded to debrief. The result was "Jazz
Records," originally issued by Mr. Rust as a mimeographed loose-leaf
volume.

In the decades that followed, Mr. Rust devoted his life to freelance
music writing and discography, an unremunerative, solitary but, to
him and his fellow travelers, deeply necessary enterprise. He worked
quietly, away from the limelight, from his home in Swanage, a
coastal town in Dorset.

"Brian lived sort of a hermit's life," Mr. Shaw said. "He was quite
content with his own company and the company of other collectors and
his family."

His other work includes "The American Dance Band Discography
1917-1942" (1975), "British Music Hall on Record" (1979),
"Discography of Historical Records on Cylinders and 78s" (1979) and
legions of liner notes.

In the late 1950s and early '60s, Mr. Rust played the drums in the
Original Barnstormers Spasm Band, a British skiffle group.

In addition to his son, Victor, Mr. Rust is survived by his wife,
the former Mary Denning; two daughters, Angela Kidd and Pamela
Jackson-Cooke, (who escaped being named Decca); three grandchildren;
and five great-grandchildren.

He is also survived by Brian, a discographic software program named
for him. "Which is ironic," Mr. Brooks said in an interview,
"because he himself hated computers and never used them."