larry cohn

When Larry Cohn, 89, started collecting blues records in the 1940s and 1950s, little was written about the records, few had been reissued, and sometimes finding out what some even sounded like necessitated visiting with the owners of individual 78s—often the “only known copy.” In Cohn’s case these meetings were often with the “blues mafia,” a group of New York City area collectors who would eventually provide dubs of their rare discs for reissues on small specialist labels, many of which they ran themselves. A long-time resident of L.A., Cohn still has the massive collection of records he’s acquired over his long life, and among the thousands of 78s are about 350 test pressings of alternative takes from pre-World War II sessions, many of which have never been issued. Like his friends in th...