The good news for music lovers in the digital age is that just about any song, artist or type of music is just a click away. For the true aficionado, though, listening to somebody like Mississippi Fred McDowell sing "Big Fat Mama," for example, on YouTube misses the mark.
But when McDowell comes bundled in a box set called "Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris," along with songs by Scott Dunbar and Sonny Boy Watson, along with a 120-page book full of details such as the history of the songs, who played on them, when and where they were recorded and any other nuggets of interest, the experience takes on a different tone altogether.
Lance and April Ledbetter"It's an immersive experience," says Lance Ledbetter, founder of Dust-to-Digital, an Atlanta-based record label he founded two decades ago. His goal then, as now, was to seek old 78s and wax cylinders of early recordings and to transfer them to digital recordings for preservation.
"People who buy these feel almost transported," he says of his CDs and box sets, adding that people who listen on an online service "maybe don't get the full experience, but you are able to hear the songs."
Originally from LaFayette, Georgia, Ledbetter, who works with his wife, April, is also on a mission to make available early roots music to everyone, as well as the histories surrounding them. In addition to the recordings, he looks for photos, movies, biographies and data about the actual recordings. Ledbetter has been compiling everything he can find about the music recorded from around the world in the first half of the last century.
Whether it's jazz, blues, gospel, Western swing, rockabilly, rhythm and blues or early rock 'n' roll, Ledbetter is interested. He's also in a race against time, in a sense, as many of these old records were recycled or trashed years ago, or now get thrown out by people who don't have record players, much less ones that play 78s.
For much of the last 20 years, he has been gathering what he can find and has been making it available either online or as albums or box sets sold through Dust-to-Digital.
Online
› Dust-to-Digital can be found at www.dust-to-digital.com› Video links can be found at www.dust-digital.com/watch/› Music Memory can be found at www.musicmemory.org
Among their best-sellers are "Listen All Around: The Golden Age of Central and East African Music," "Music of Morocco Recorded by Paul Bowles" and "Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM."
In 2011, he expanded his operation by creating Music Memory (musicmemory.org), a foundation dedicated to preserving audio recordings found in the stacks of record collectors around the world. With Dust-to-Digital, he acquires what he can, but over the years he realized there were materials out there being held by individual collectors who wanted to hang on them and were often very protective of them.
"The Library of Congress is also digitizing them, but they want them sent to them," Ledbetter says, "and the people we know will probably be buried with some of these records."
To date, Dust-to-Digital has recorded 50,000 78 recordings and collected as much data as possible. These records didn't come with extensive liner notes such as who played on them, and in some cases the artists' names were noms de plume, so tracking down the info is challenging.
The Ledbetters have been raising money and training people how to properly work with the collectors so they can get quality recordings of the elusive music. The training involves teaching them how to properly clean, preserve and record the records.
Since starting the Music Memory foundation, the Ledbetters have recorded 50,000 tracks from 78 records found in private collections around the world. (Photo from musicmemory.org)Ledbetter also has been specializing in the packaging of the recordings and materials he makes available. It's a process he has been perfecting since releasing "Goodbye, Babylon" in 2003. The six-CD box set came in a wooden box hand-packed with raw cotton and a 200-page booklet detailing the histories of the gospel music songs from 1902 to 1960 found on the discs.
It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album and the Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package. The 2007 release of "Art of Field Recording: Volume 1" won the Grammy for Best Historical Album the following year, and the label has earned 10 other nominations. Ledbetter himself has also won numerous other awards from a number of organizations.
Ledbetter says the last year was a tough one financially for Dust-to-Digital, and he worries that not only will this music but things like liner notes could be lost forever.
"It's a little sad to see young people and wonder if they will miss out on liner notes and the immersive experience," he says. "We are still very much committed to the cause."
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.
Praise for Dust-to-Digital
“The combination of William Ferris and Dust-to-Digital is so important in preserving the cornerstone of our musical American history…” — Lucinda Williams“’Voices of Mississippi’ taps into the rich world of Southern musicians, storytellers and writers. Their beautiful voices touched my heart. Bill Ferris is a profound historian. I am his biggest fan!!” — Quincy Jones“Gold-standard reissue label … Although the folklorists lugging around tape recorders (and the performers carrying on ancient traditions) are worthy of much heralding, it’s equally astounding how essential Lance Ledbetter’s work at Dust-to-Digital has been to the preservation of traditional American folksong. It’s easy to buy and appreciate these sets without realizing that the bulk of the material might have been lost — or, at the very least, tethered to archives, readily accessible only to curious faculty, paper-writing students and bespectacled researchers — without Ledbetter’s interference.” — Pitchfork