In this age, iTunes, Spotify, and Pandora can give the illusion that we have all the music in the world at our fingertips. But Lance and April Ledbetter knew that wasn’t true. Some of the best stuff has been all but forgotten—and this bothered them.
So Lance decided to start a home business. Dust-to-Digital is dedicated to rediscovering and releasing forgotten “roots” music. It began with American music such as historic blues, gospel, and folk. Since 2003, the couple has been dusting off forgotten recordings. They then transfer them from analog (vinyl records or cassettes) to digital (CDs and mp3s) recordings. The work has paid off. The tiny Atlanta-based music label has been nominated for seven Grammy awards!
Chuck Reece, editor of The Bitter Southerner online magazine praised the Ledbetters’ work. He wrote that they “are perhaps the most important preservers of folk music in the modern world, and they do it all from the basement of their little brick house.”
Dust-to-Digital products look almost as good as they sound! The label has become known not just for its rare and precious recordings, but also for beautifully inspired packaging and design. The first release, Goodbye Babylon, is a giant six-CD set. It offers five CDs of songs and one of sermons—packaged in a cedar box along with a book and bolls of cotton from Lance’s uncle’s farm.
Since Goodbye Babylon, the label’s offerings have grown diverse and wide-ranging. With their Dust-to-Digital catalog, the Ledbetters have pieced an astonishing quilt of musical expression. It includes rural American blues and gospel, traditional Moroccan songs, Mongolian throat singing, storytelling, and a host of other genres. There’s even a collection of Sacred Harp shape-note hymns (four-part hymns for community singing, dating from Colonial times). The glorious tapestry of imagination and melody reminds hearers that humans bear the image of the ultimate Creator.
(AP Photo: Packed in a cedar box and raw cotton, the rustically beautiful Goodbye Babylon anthology includes 135 gospel songs and 25 sermons.)
