Blind Musician Gets Another Crack at Stardom

Bob Desper is a patient man. In the 36 years since he forked over money out of his own pocket to make his first solo album, the 60-year-old blind singer-songwriter never lost faith that he would be discovered someday.

It looks like that day has come at last. With his 1974 folk album, New Sounds, now reissued on vinyl, a CD in the works, singles selling at online music sites and plans to record a second album, Desper is finally enjoying the acclaim he had hoped for nearly four decades ago.

“Some things are meant to be, you know,” says Desper, who lives in Albany, Ore. “But things happen in their time. I’ve been hanging in there with faith and hope.”

The phone call Desper had been expecting since the ’70s came two years ago. Paul Anson, co-owner of the Discourage Records label in Portland, Ore., which specializes in reissuing forgotten classics as vinyl albums, had found Desper’s phone number after months of detective work. He asked for Desper’s permission to reissue New Sounds, which over the years had become a cult classic.

“He didn’t really seem that shocked,” says Anson about his call to Desper. “He kind of felt like this had been waiting to happen.”

But Anson, who had been told that the singer had long since died, couldn’t believe that he had found Desper alive and well and just 70 miles away. The guitarist had never surfaced during the time that an international cadre of fans was uploading his songs to the Internet, extolling his musical talents and paying as much as $1,000 for pristine copies of the album.

Low-key existence

Desper was living in obscurity and poverty, eking out a living from disability payments and his meager earnings from selling costume jewelry door to door. Two failed marriages and the end of one long-term relationship had left him lonely, except for his two cats and the regulars at his daily hangout, Roger’s Restaurant. Although he continued to compose songs and sing them into his tape recorder, he had no inkling that he was thought to be dead or, more importantly, that he had fans.

Desper has been blind since age 11. He was one of five siblings growing up in Richmond, Va., when he slipped and fell against a short fence post, hitting his head at the temple and detaching his retinas. Several surgeries were unsuccessful. When he was 12, his grandmother bought him a guitar that he took with him when the family moved to Oregon so that his father, a migrant farm worker, could earn money picking fruit.