What a great read. Loved this: The birthplace of jazz wasn’t far away, so Mack hitchhiked to New Orleans, where he met an inscrutable record collector named Or

What a great read. Loved this: The birthplace of jazz wasn’t far away, so Mack hitchhiked to New Orleans, where he met an inscrutable record collector named Orin Blackstone, who was working on a set of books called Index to Jazz. Blackstone asked the teen to be the Texas editor of the final two books and find jazz and blues 78-rpm records made in the state. The meeting changed Mack’s life. He had never liked being an introvert, and now, working as a field researcher, he was pushed to connect with people, hitching out into the rural areas around Houston and knocking on doors, looking for old records. Sometimes, those little serendipity encounters lead to opportunities that can truly change the course of your life. But the guy was also quite devious. Inserting “hoaxes” into research notes as an insurance policy against people who might cross him?