Treasures Untold : A Modern 78 RPM Reader
Book Review and Interview with editor Josh Rosenthal
No matter how long the line was you were standing in for Record Store Day, it’s unlikely there was anyone in that queue who cared about 78s. Because even if your local had put out a moldy crate or two of shellac just for kicks, the serious collectors had already been through them weeks ago. In general, RSD 2025 is no place for the hardcore.
That said you might have had a few few exceptions waiting on line considering that RSD was also the release date of Josh Rosenthal’s book,“Treasures Untold: A Modern 78 RPM’ Reader” - a limited edition hardback title that picks apart the passion of chasing obscure and long forgotten sides from a number of seasoned viewpoints.
For instance, there’s Jay Burnett, a young teen who by all rights shouldn’t really know what a 78 is. But this high schooler is actually savvy enough to run a weekly radio show featuring his finely curated collection of pre-war jazz, blues, and hillbilly music. His description of cradling his first black label Paramount “like it was made of solid gold and might explode if I glanced at it wrong” kind of says it all. Then there’s noted documentarian Joe Lauro who somehow convinced his wife to help him root through weaponized piles of chicken scat at a primate sanctuary for a pile of “Columbia Viva-Tonal country records from the legendary 15,000-D Hillbilly series…”.
What the truly committed will do to fill out their collections can often edge towards the extreme, which makes sense now that we’re decades on from “Ghost World” and similar films that brought old timey 78 collecting to the mainstream. Plus Amanda Petrusich’s excellent book “Do Not Sell At Any Price” (2015) helped to confirm that what’s left out there in the wild is thin at best. But it’s the need to hunt despite that scarcity that is a large part of what fuels these pages.
Musician John Heneghan calls it a “horrible disease” before going on to recount the thrill of sitting around a table spinning platters with the likes of Yazoo Records producer Don Kent, Shanachie label owner Richard Nevins and legendary illustrator Robert Crumb. That’s pretty rarified air when it comes to those circles. But his tale of getting duped by a fellow collector who managed to cheat him out of a ride to a record fair (just to wave a prize find in his face…) is evidence that there are also fiends of the highest order out there in the 78 game.
No one scanning the pages of this site probably needs to be sold on the idea of record collecting as a compulsion. So why do tales of the pursuit captivate those who are equally obsessed? Is it validation? Tribalism? Yes…and yes? In this case the beautiful, numbered packaging and the deeply personal nature of these stories helps, as well as the companion CD that features present artists covering the music of the 78 era. That said we suggest you and take a pass on those zoetrope picture discs that you’re never going to listen to and bump this title towards the top of that secondary RSD market list you’ve been putting together.
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Interview with Treasures Untold Editor Josh Rosenthal
Tracking Angle: For starters, how did you get the idea for the project?
Josh Rosenthal: “I guess it started around July of 2023 and I was working on a little side hustle with a friend of mine who was starting a record store in Napa. And I was like ‘Hey I'll help you try to find some records for the store.’ So I would just go out and try to find records, bought record collections, and in that process sometimes I would look on Craigslist. One day this Craigslist listing came up and it was advertising all these great artists and stuff on 78s. I've never collected 78s although I have put out a lot of 78 derived material on my record label Tomkins Square over the years. And if you want to go back even further, in 1990 I worked at Columbia Records and I worked on the Robert Johnson Complete Recordings box set promotional campaign. (But it was) only two years ago that I actually started collecting 78s, and I just went out to this pick and it was this guy who was moving to France and he had all these incredible 78s and I bought a whole bunch. Then I I got a couple other picks in quick succession after that and that sort of gave me the bones of the collection where I had a really great wide variety of stuff. (So) the idea for the book just came out of the passion of finding something new.’
TA: Would you say that 78 collectors are more peculiar or passionate than other collectors?
JR: “I think they're more peculiar… they're quirky, interesting people. They have their own ways of doing things and their own interests. I would say (they’re) equally passionate but they're just of a different stripe in terms of how they collect (and) what they care about. Some of them are kind of mean. Like when you get on Facebook and the group chats and (and) if somebody posts a haul that they got at a thrift store or something and they're really excited, then somebody else will say ‘Oh that's just junk.’ Or ‘You got you got ripped off for paying 10 bucks for that.’”
TA: Do you think that there's still a lot out there to discover in terms of sides that haven't been heard at this point?
JR: I did hear about like somebody pulling a big Bill Broonzy record that had never been heard before. I think that happened this year in the past 12 months. That's a pretty, pretty rare occurrence. I guess at this point it's hard enough to find the records, but finding something that's never been located before is like infinitesimal.
