Photo: Joe Bussard, Jr. | Joe Bussard, Jr. (86), 78 rpm Record Collector (July 11, 1936 – September 26, 2022) was an American collector of 78-rpm records. He was born on July 11, 1936 in Frederick, Maryland. He always had the collecting bug: in his teens, he and his cousin collected everything from rare coins to beehives to birds’ nests. His dislike for modern music, especially hip hop and rock and roll, was well documented.
Bussard amassed a collection of between 15,000 and 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, jazz and blues from the 1920s and 1930s.
He was the subject of a documentary film, Desperate Man Blues, and his collection was mined for a compilation CD, Down in the Basement. He gleefully shared his collection, which included many only-known-copies of records, best-known-copies, and numerous reissue labels, as well as work with individuals for whom he taped recordings from his collection for a nominal sum for decades.
From 1956 until 1970, he ran the last 78 rpm record label, Fonotone, which was dedicated to the release of new recordings of old-time music. Among these were recordings by hundreds of performers, including the first recordings by the guitarist John Fahey. A five-CD anthology of Fonotone releases was issued in 2005 by Dust-to-Digital.
Bussard produced a weekly music program, Country Classics, for Georgia Tech’s radio station, WREK Atlanta. He had radio programs on other stations: including WPAQ-AM 740 in Mount Airy, North Carolina, and WDVX in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Bussard disliked the city of Nashville, Tennessee, sometimes called “Music City”, calling it “Trashville.”
He was interviewed in 2022, and cited the recording, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson as one of the greatest recordings of all time.
Bussard died on September 26, 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bussard
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Sue Mingus (92), Widow of Charles Mingus, Record Producer
Sue Graham Mingus (April 2, 1930 – September 24, 2022) was an American record producer and band manager. She was the widow of jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus.
After Charles Mingus’ death from Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1979, Sue Mingus established bands to perform his music, beginning with the Mingus Dynasty, a septet that tours internationally and performs regularly at Jazz Standard in New York City. The Dynasty alternates with the Mingus Big Band and Mingus Orchestra. Mingus produced several albums with these bands. In 2011, Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.
She produced two legacy albums: Charles Mingus: Music Written for Monterey, 1965 (Mingus Music, 2006) and Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy, Cornell 1964 (Blue Note, 2007).
In 1989, Sue Mingus produced Mingus’s Epitaph for thirty-one musicians in its premiere at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center and again in 2007 when it toured four cities and was broadcast by National Public Radio.
Through Mingus’s publishing company Jazz Workshop, Mingus has published educational books, Charles Mingus: More than a Fake Book, Charles Mingus: More than a Play Along, dozens of Mingus Big Band charts, guitar and piano charts and a series for students called Simply Mingus, all distributed by Hal Leonard Publishers.
In 2002, she published a memoir, Tonight at Noon: a Love Story, that was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book.
In 2009, through Let My Children Hear Music, the nonprofit created to promote Mingus’ music, she presented the First Annual Charles Mingus High School Competition at Manhattan School of Music with Justin DiCioccio. Today, the program is run in partnership with the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School.
She passed on September 24, 2022, at the of 92.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Mingus
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Pharoah Sanders (81), Jazz Saxophonist
Pharoah Sanders (born Farrell Sanders; October 13, 1940 – September 24, 2022) was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of “sheets of sound”, Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane’s groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released over thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with Leon Thomas and Alice Coltrane, among others. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman described him as “probably the best tenor player in the world”.
Sanders’ take on spiritual jazz was rooted in his inspiration in religious concepts such as Karma and Tawhid, and his rich, meditative aesthetic. This style was seen as a continuation of Coltrane’s work on albums such as A Love Supreme. As a result, Sanders was considered to have been a disciple of Coltrane or, as Albert Ayler said, “Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharoah_Sanders
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OTHER NOTABLE MUSICIANS’ DEATHS
Our music community continues to lose our talented artists. We are going to miss them so much. If you want to know more about any of the musicians we lost, please check them out at http://www.wikipedia.com
September 2022
27: Boris Moiseev, 68, Russian pop singer, choreographer and dancer.
26: Joe Bussard, 86, American record collector, pancreatic cancer; S. V. Ramanan, Indian film director, producer and composer (Uruvangal Maralam).
25: Sandra Zaiter, 78, Dominican-Puerto Rican actress, children’s television show host (Teatrimundo) and singer.
24: Sue Mingus, 92, American record producer and music manager; Pharoah Sanders, 81, American jazz saxophonist.
23: Bob Lokman, 58, Malaysian lyricist and actor (Iskandar); Zeynettin Maras, 95, Turkish composer.
22: Stu Allan, 60, British dance music DJ (Clock) and record producer, stomach cancer.
21: Bernhardt Edskes*, 81, Dutch-Swiss organ builder; Anton Fier, 66, American drummer (The Feelies, The Golden Palominos, Bob Mould), composer and producer.
Read my biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhardt_Edskes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2022
Joe Bussard, Sue Mingus, and Pharoah Sanders Die // Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths
