Absolutely!

When I was a kid I discovered Poe's great detective Auguste Dupin, and how he would use a continuing thread of logic to come up with a conclusion. It was fanciful and certainly entertaining, but became a life long hobby for me. I enjoy it the same way others might enjoy crossword puzzles, chess problems or math calculations. Keeps the brain from atrophying!

As far as 'personal' mysteries, the first one that comes to mind was the listing of an instrument being played on a Leadbelly record. On his version of the song Ella Speed, there is an amazing sound (other than his 12 string guitar) from what they listed as a "zither". I loved it so much that I hunted down a concert zither....but simply couldn't get anything approximating "that sound". I figured I'd need to find someone really skilled on the instrument...play them the record, and see what they said. Took years, but I met a lady who played it well. She listened to the record and said "that's NO zither"!

So the mystery continued. Little did I know that my friend Andy Cohen was also trying to track down the "sound" and the player as well. Well he cracked it! The instrument was the verrry rare Dolceola...played by Los Angeles studio guy Paul Mason Howard. I wrote some e-mails from info I'd gotten from the net and managed to communicate with some musicians who'd known Howard. I can't tell you how much fun that's been!

There are tons of music mysteries, as McGrath said, and the great thing is that you don't have to be a folklorist or musicologist to solve them. You have to know how to ask questions, read between the lines, help the folks WITH information get comfortable, have an open mind, accept that the experts are occasionally wrong, and love the process!

Rick