Studying history often comes with an inevitable fact that we will never be able to communicate with the people we are interested in. As frustrating as this is, the closest thing we can find are personal papers and letters that belonged to the person. Recently, a letter was shared online that was sent by Justin Ring to a young record collector, dated to about 1960. While this letter is very interesting to read, it doesn’t reveal much new information on Ring or his friends. However, it does tell us that contrary to previous scholarship, Ring did in fact communicate with young collectors toward the end of his life.
There was a major revival in research of acoustic era recordings in the 1940s and ’50s, and this coincided with the west coast Jazz Revival. There was a small but influential group of record collectors who started communicating with folks who were still living at the time. One of the most famous of these scholars was Jim Walsh. Walsh interviewed as many people as he could contact in the beginning of his career. While he was a very important writer and scholar, he did miss some essential figures. There are some people he communicated with but never wrote any articles about. One of these people was Justin Ring.
There are a few indications throughout Walsh’s writings that he had communicated with Ring, such as a single line he wrote accompanying a now well known photo of
