A copy of Robert Johnson’s ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’ on Vocalion turned up in a pile of vinyl albums bought by a Pittsburgh record store owner Jerry Weber last week.
Weber gave the seller gave – a man he didn’t know – $50 for several boxes of old vinyl albums found while cleaning out an attic. They sat in a hallway at Jerry’s store for a couple days before anyone looked at them. Among a collection of mostly water-damaged, stuck-together discs, he found the 78rpm disc – waxed by Johnson in 1936.
“I saw one 30 years ago that was broke,” says Weber, “and I saw one that a friend of mine found and let me hold before he sold it. It’s the most expensive record I’ve ever found, and it’s in real nice shape.”
He grades it VG, as in very good, and says the book value is between $6,000 and $12,000.
According to John Tefteller, the doyen of blues record collectors and dealers there are around 15 to 30 copies of the disc in VG condition “floating around the country in various collections.” But what a find!!