Bussey warns that I need to “tread very warily…before lawyers are once again chasing” me. A few months ago, it may be recalled, Arie Den Dulk, (webmaster of a so-called Jim Reeves fan site), recklessly published on his website Mr. Bussey's fatuous claim that I had illegally recorded him after I'd posted excerpts online from interviews with Bussey I had taped for my book, in which he had implored me to print salacious stories about Jim, then repeatedly took me to task — including in magazine articles published in the UK — chastising me for supposedly destroying Jim's image. But Mr. Bussey knew he was being taped so I could assure accurate quotation. He was simply embarrassed to be revealed as a hypocrite.
Now Mr. Bussey claims the only reason I wasn't sued by him is because “no one knew the defendant's current abode.”
Once again writing in the third person about himself, Mr. Bussey declares boldly that “Mr. Bussey will never be bullied into submission by a 'Johnny come lately' without any proof of Reeves pedigree, who set up shop 15 years ago to market his wares, and who has never since paid anyone the slightest compliment on the work done on the promotion of Jim Reeves music this side of the water over the past 50 years, but oh so quick to laud & magnify his own efforts.”
I'm wondering if there was some deadline by which someone could become a Reeves fan without being called a “Johnny come lately”? I've loved Jim's music for the past 52 or more years and my friendship with Mary extended for 21 years beyond when she stopped talking to Mr. Bussey. You can go to my blog and listen to a tape of one of my candid conversations with Mary Reeves, affirming a degree of intimacy and trust between us that I doubt she shared with David Bussey.
As for "magnifying" my own efforts: Just how many new songs have Messrs. Bussey or Den Dulk dug up on Jim, overdubbed and released for the fans to enjoy? Where is the book Bussey told people for years he was going to write on Reeves?
The fact is I did, indeed, give credit in my book to British fans (including pirate radio) — it's just that I didn't focus my attentions on David. And therein lies the rub.
Only after he started attacking me did I point out online that Mary Reeves withdrew her support for his fan club in 1977 (a fact which he himself wrote about at the time by complaining that she had failed to respond to his various entreaties to her, including those made on his behalf by other fans who spoke to her personally. But she wisely refused to respond to him. I should probably take a cue from her on this).
Jim's fans from all over the world write to me at the same address I've been at for over 18 years: P.O. Box 685, Panora, Iowa 50216 USA. I look forward to receiving the lawsuit from Mr. Bussey and I will dispose of it — if it ever comes — in the same manner I did when two other people on the Reeves fan scene were foolhardy enough to put my name gratuitously on lawsuits. I've been threatened by better men than him and I don't suffer fools gladly.
It's a sad spectacle when a man who made laudable efforts to promote Jim Reeves to British fans, as Mr. Bussey clearly has done decades ago, feels compelled to obsessively press these shrill and laughably absurd attacks. At 672 pages, my book had reached press capacity and in my final chapter I did not even have space to write about my own wife's website or my personal efforts to track down unreleased recordings by Jim and share them with the fans. There were others who have worked tirelessly to perpetuate Jim Reeves' musical legacy and I didn't have room to write about them either. So he shouldn't feel slighted.
There's one bit of good news: David Bussey promises to leave the Reeves fan scene again on the 50th anniversary next year and says he “only came back two years ago to fight his corner against the book which re-wrote the Jim Reeves legend." What a revealing comment. David is still hung up on perpetuating the Reeves LEGEND. I am only interested in promoting FACTS.
As I type this I am listening to Anne Murray's gorgeous and meaningful Christmas album and looking forward to our family's plans for the holidays. I wish Mr. Bussey “peace on earth, good will toward men”...
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