[Dixielandjazz] Brian Rust

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

The Guardian has caught up and published an obit by Tony Russell of the epic 
discographer 

and via 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/31/brian-rust-obituary 

you can find a photo of Brian Rust at home in Hatch End, north-west London,  in 
the early 1960s, listening to a prewar phonograph.  Photograph: Val  Wilmer
and the following text, including Val's reminiscence added: 


The American jazz musician Eddie Condon, visiting Britain in 1957 and being 
questioned  about the personnel on one of his records, confessed: "I have 
trouble  remembering who was in the studio last week, let alone on a job in  
1932." "Wasn't it 1931?" said the enquiring fan. "If you know what year  it 
was," Condon replied, "you tell me who was on it."
The  anecdote has not preserved the inquisitor's name, but perhaps it was  the 
discographer Brian Rust, the leading figure in this discipline of  his 
generation, who has died aged 88.
To the outsider, the  meticulous gathering of musical minutiae might look like a 

form of  trainspotting, but accurate discography is a cornerstone of musical  
history and criticism. Charles Delaunay had preceded Rust in 1936 with  his Hot 
Discography, but Rust's Jazz Records 1897-1931 (later extended  to 1942), first 
published in 1961, went far beyond the Frenchman's work  and largely codified 
the discography of popular music.
Its  acknowledged legacy includes other catalogues of American vernacular  
music, such as Godrich and Dixon's Blues and Gospel Records, 1902-1942  (1964), 
which Rust himself published, and my own Country Music Records: A  Discography, 
1921-1942 (2004). But anyone who has compiled a  discography in any popular 
idiom probably owes something to the "sage of  Hatch End".
Born in Golders Green, north London, Rust acquired  his first gramophone record 
at the age of five, but his most significant  purchase was on 31 March 1936 – it 

was typical that he should remember  the date – when he found in a junk shop a 
copy of Ostrich Walk by the  Original Dixieland Jazz Band. A white quintet from 
New Orleans, the ODJB  came to represent much of what he valued in jazz: 
vitality,  accessibility, danceability.
Later he corresponded with, and met,  their leader, Nick La Rocca, whose agenda, 

in the early days of jazz  historiography, was to minimise the African-American 
role in the  creation of jazz. Rust never went quite so far in his writings, but 

his  instinctive preference was generally for white jazz, and even that only  up 

to a point. By the early 1930s, he felt, the music was losing its  way. He had 
little time for swing, which, he wrote, "must not be  confused with jazz," and 
none whatsoever for bebop or any new direction  from the 40s onwards. The term 
"mouldy fig", used by modernists about  jazz fans who prefer older forms, was a 
badge Rust wore with pride.
Many  obstacles lie in the discographer's path, but Rust persuaded companies  to 

unlock their archives and tirelessly reproduced information on  a typewriter – 
often several times over, as he was generous in sharing  material with other 
researchers. He had a special affection for Victor  records, which he 
part-documented in The Victor Master Book (1969), and  chose the name for his 
son.
He also reviewed jazz records for the  Gramophone for more than 20 years, wrote 
sleeve notes for hundreds  of LPs and co-authored, with Rex Harris, Recorded 
Jazz: A Critical Guide  (1958), whose cheerful wrongheadedness (as many would 
now regard it)  anticipated the similar, but much better argued, antimodernism 
of  another jazz lover born in 1922, Philip Larkin.
During the 70s,  with jazz, or what he regarded as jazz, sorted out, Rust 
documented  other music from the cylinder and 78rpm disc era, publishing 
British  
Dance Bands On Record, The Complete Entertainment Discography (both  1973), The 
American Dance Band Discography (1975), London Musical Shows  On Record (1977), 
The American Record Label Book (1978), and British  Music Hall On Record (1979).
He also became a popular broadcaster.  After the second world war – which, as a 
conscientious objector, he had  spent as an auxiliary fire officer – he had 
reluctantly returned to  being a bank clerk (his job since leaving school), but 
then joined the  BBC gramophone library, where he helped to compile record 
programmes.
From  1973 to 1984 he presented Mardi Gras on the London radio station  Capital, 

spinning nothing but 78s. He sounded, as his friend Chris Ellis  recalled, like 
"a cross between an Oxford don and an overgrown  schoolboy, always bubbling with 

enthusiasm".
In 1970 he left  London for Swanage, in Dorset, where, despite poor health, he 
supervised  revisions of his books, worked on further label discographies, and  
reminisced in My Kind of Jazz (1990). He is survived by his wife, Mary,  their 
daughters, Angela and Pamela, Victor, and numerous grandchildren  and 
great-grandchildren.
Val Wilmer writes: Brian Rust was one of my earliest mentors. I had heard jazz, 
aged 12,  and was fascinated to know more. When I learned about discography, I  
wrote to Brian, the acknowledged master. That he should have helped  
a 13-year-old girl amazes me to this day, but he did, answering every  query and 

guiding me towards making a card-index system for my records. I  still have 
those 78rpm shellac discs, protected in thick cardboard  sleeves and stickered 
with orange cloakroom tickets for numbering.
Brian  invited me to lunch at Broadcasting House, followed by a tour of the  
gramophone library. Then for my 16th birthday, he presented me with  a shiny 
Duke Ellington 78 on its original American label. I repaid his  faith by 
uncovering some minor "finds" in junk shops on my way home from  school – 
selling these on to him, of course, to demonstrate what I had  learned about the 

business of record-collecting.
He gave me  addresses, too. I wrote to the great New Orleans drummer Baby Dodds 
and  started a lengthy correspondence with Polo Barnes, clarinettist with  both 
King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. Many years later, I stayed with  Barnes in 
New Orleans – something that could never have happened without  that initial 
introduction.
Brian was delighted with my  achievements, especially when I became a published 
writer. Our  friendship faltered when my tastes and politics changed – he had 
some  odd ideas about the white contribution to early jazz – but all that was  
forgotten when I contacted him again a few years ago. Popular belief was  that 
he no longer answered letters. Well, he answered several of mine –  and taped me 

some rare recordings – as helpful and friendly as ever.
• Brian Arthur Lovell Rust, discographer, born 19 March 1922; died 5 January 
2011