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Index of Labels
Browse by Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL


Artist: VA
Title: Goodbye, Babylon
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 6CD BOX
Price: $98.00
Catalog #: DTD 001CD
2003 release, recently repressed and fully available again! Debut release on this label, an incredible package of early gospel music, in a deluxe handcrafted wooden box (designed by Susan Archie, who was previously responsible for the Grammy-winning Charley Patton boxset on Revenant). 5 CDs featuring 135 songs (1902-1960), 1 CD featuring 25 sermons (1926-1941). Notes and essays by musicologists and scholars. Contributors include Lynn Abbott, David Evans, Ray Funk, Anthony Heilbut, Kip Lornell, Luigi Monge, Paul Oliver, Opal Louis Nations, Bruce Nemerov, Guido van Rijn, Ken Romanowski, Tony Russell, Doug Seroff, Dick Spottswood, Warren Steel, David Tibet, Gayle Dean Wardlow, and Charles Wolfe. 200 page book with Bible verses, complete lyric transcriptions, and notes for each recording, plus over 200 illustrations. Reverently packed in raw cotton and housed in a deluxe 8" x 11" x 2.5" cedar box. "If you're not sure where you'll stand on judgement morning, we have five CDs of guitar evangelists, holiness string bands, jubilee gospel quartets, sacred harp choirs and sanctified jug music to rock your soul plus one CD of shouting sisters and powerful preachers to deliver the message about your starry crown." According to Greil Marcus: "The best country-religious music collection I have ever heard."


Artist: VA
Title: Where Will You Be Christmas Day?
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $15.50
Catalog #: DTD 002CD
24 Recordings from 1917 - 1959. "Following up last year's critically acclaimed Goodbye, Babylon box set, Dust-to-Digital is proud to announce our new Holiday Series, curated by musicologist Dick Spottswood. Based on his popular radio show in Washington, D.C., our series is initiated with a Christmas Gift, a compact disc full of rare yuletide gems. Just as Goodbye, Babylon showed the many sides of gospel music, this CD shows many sides of Christmas -- from Jesus born in the manger to Leroy Carr spending the holiday in jail. Some of the artists featured include Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, Butterbeans and Susie, Fiddlin' John Carson, Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers, Lightning Hopkins, Los Jibaros, Kansas City Kitty, Lead Belly, Lord Executor, Maddox Brothers and Rose, and Bessie Smith. Together they provide a stark contrast to the commercialized Christmas we know today..."


Artist: VA
Title: How Low Can You Go?: Anthology of the String Bass 1925-1941
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 3CD
Price: $53.00
Catalog #: DTD 004CD
The first anthology ever of the string bass; A 3CD box set in a cardboard box; 96-page book. Original recordings from 1925-1941, from the legendary archival label Dust-To-Digital (that previously brought the world the beyond-elaborate Goodbye, Babylon and Fonotone Records boxsets).
       
       "Not so long ago, the string bass stood tall and proud -- roughly the length and breadth of a poor man's pine coffin -- in every musical aggregation throughout the land from Bangor to Buenos Aires, from the highest high life to the lowest lowdown: From tuxedoed symphony ensembles to tipsy Calypso bands to honkytonkers in oil-field dives, from elegantly gelled tango orchestras to jazz combos in unspeakable speak-easys to methed-out rockabilly trios right off some flatbed: you can be damned sure Johnny Cash wouldn't have been able to walk the line without bassist Marshall Grant keeping him honest. But somewhere along the line, the upright acoustic bass was snatched from its hallowed place atop the sedans (special carriage) and show-stages and relegated to the trash-heap of history in favor of Leo Fender's sleek electric cousin, plugged in to compete with amplified guitar and drums. Now the stand-up bass makes its appearance mostly in limousine-liberal Lincoln Center jazz benefits and hardcore bluegrass bands -- or as a comical hayseed prop in retro hillbilly outfits. And yet in that span between the turn-of-the-century tuba blaring from an Edison cylinder and today's synthesized-bass loops heaving from every SUV on the pike, the hypnotic pull of the old-school string bass remains. A musical craft handed down by calloused, bandaged fingers, it wrought a mighty saga of bottom-heavy rhythms that rattled the walls of many a venue and anchored many an historic recording session. Without it, the revolutionary sound of American mongrel music of the last century would have been thin gruel indeed." --Eddie Dean, from the liner notes.


Artist: VA
Title: Desperate Man Blues: Discovering the Roots of American Music
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: DTD 005CD
A compilation of songs as featured in Dust-to-Digital's Desperate Man Blues DVD, chronicling the amazing life in music of Joe Bussard (founder of Fonotone Records). Blues. Gospel. Jazz. Hillbilly. The late 1920s was the Big Bang of the music industry. King of record collectors Joe Bussard tells the story of "America's real music" with passionate enthusiasm in his own inimitable style. The film has an outstanding soundtrack featuring artists Charley Patton, Son House, The Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Willie McTell and a roster of other roots musicians. Jewel case packaging; released by multi Grammy-nominated Dust-to-Digital.


Artist: BUSSARD, JOE
Title: Desperate Man Blues: Discovering the Roots of American Music
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: DVD
Price: $22.00
Catalog #: DTD 005DVD
This DVD documentary chronicles the amazing life in music of legendary record collector, Joe Bussard (founder of Fonotone Records). Blues. Gospel. Jazz. Hillbilly. The late 1920s was the big bang of the music industry. King of record collectors Joe Bussard tells the story of "America's real music" with passionate enthusiasm in his own inimitable style. The film has an outstanding soundtrack featuring artists Charley Patton, Son House, The Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Willie McTell and a roster of other roots musicians. Deluxe DVD with 51-minute documentary feature film and 30-minute featurette; clear amaray case; NTSC format, all region DVD.


Artist: VA
Title: I Belong To This Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: DTD 006CD
This current collection of Sacred Harp singing is the first to offer a full range of recordings by traditional Sacred Harp singers from 1922 to the present, and is a companion to the Sacred Harp documentary by Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp, the first feature documentary about Sacred Harp singing. This CD is unique in a number of respects. It contains several prewar and mid-century recordings never before released on CD, some of which have never been released at all. Sacred Harp singing is typically a community musical and social event, held at all-day singings and conventions in the rural South. It is characterized by mass participation, full-voiced singing, lack of instrumental accompaniment, and rotation of song leaders. Growing out of the singing-school movement of the 18th century, and preserving the music of the first American composers, it came to be associated in the deep South with church and community homecomings and decoration days, and with sumptuous "dinner on the ground" spread in the churchyard at noon. It differs from shape-note gospel singing in that the repertory is largely pre-Civil War, and is relatively fixed in one of the 20th-century revisions of the original 1844 oblong tunebook by B. F. White and E. J. King. Although The Sacred Harp was called "the book oftenest found in the homes of rural Southerners other than the Holy Bible," the tradition was ignored by the cultural elites of the nation and region. For 85 years, commercial record producers and documentary folklorists have tried to capture this "harmonic complex of singular charm," as Jackson described it. Surprisingly, though, the earliest recordings differ sharply from the powerful sounds heard at today's singings. Many reflect the more informal uses of Sacred Harp music in the family circle, while others show the influence of professional gospel quartet singing. Displaying a wide range of ensembles and vocal styles, this release includes recordings of quartets and other groups who recorded for major record labels before World War II, private studio recordings of the 1950s and 1960s, and digital field recordings of large contemporary singing. This collection also weaves three important strands of this music: early commercial recordings, cut on 78s in the 1920s through the 1940s, home recordings made by small groups of singers in the 1950s, and contemporary "all day sacred harp singings." The very fact that these separate strands appear together here on one CD is part of what makes this collection so unique, yet the historical breadth of the material is also noteworthy. Cardboard arigato pak with 16-page saddle-stitched booklet.


Artist: VA
Title: Art of Field Recording Sampler
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: DTD 007CD
Subtitle: 50 Years of Traditional Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum. This is a CD preview release of an upcoming Dust-to-Digital 4CD collaboration with renowned music archivists, Art and Margo Rosenbaum. The diverse talents of the Rosebaums have allowed them to record music traditions in a way few others could have done. Dust-to-Digital is proud to announce this project in an attempt to keep alive the music they love so dearly. Get ready for antebellum spirituals, lined-out hymns of country churches, old time frolic tunes, bottleneck blues, hammer-and-pick work songs, dance music of fiddle bands, unaccompanied mountain ballads, and backwoods banjo tunes. Art Rosenbaum has been recording American traditional music for half a century -- and in the process produced over 15 LPs and CDs, two hard-cover books, and archival material deposited in the Library of Congress, Indiana University, and University of Georgia archives. In 2007, Dust-to-Digital will release a 4CD set of Art Rosenbaum's recordings. The presentation will be in book form, with notes and commentary on all the tracks, many of Art's own drawings and paintings as well as Margo's photographs, and of course, four CDs. The content of the several CDs will be roughly inspired by Harry Smith's organization of his classic Anthology of American Folk with some important differences.


Artist: VA
Title: Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics (1918-1955)
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $14.00
Catalog #: DTD 010CD
Recordings made between 1918-1955 compiled by Ian Nagoski. A compilation of 24 recordings from the first half of the 20th century of music from Syria, Bali, Scotland, Thailand, Ukraine, China, Cameroon, India, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Japan, Poland, Greece, Java, Portugal, Laos, Sweden and Burma, all newly transferred and mastered from 78 rpm discs, at least 18 of which have never been issued before on CD (all but one never having been previously reissued in the U.S.). Influenced by Pete Whelan's Origin Jazz Library, Pat Conte's Secret Museum of Mankind, Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Henry Cowell's Music of the World's People, Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet's Sublime Frequencies label, Lance Ledbetter's Goodbye, Babylon, Michael Snow's The Last LP and much more. Sounds like zamr, naa phaat piphat, gong kebyar, Northumbrian piping, periya melam, rhumba, Carpathian weddings, Rulin opera, Uilleann piping, Bollywood, dan bau, Handel, rembetika, gusle, tembang sunds, flamenco, fado, prayer, djanger, kabuki and yien pwe.


Artist: VA
Title: Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 2CD/BOOK
Price: $39.50
Catalog #: DTD 011CD
Third press now available! Recordings made between the 1920s-1950s compiled by Rob Millis and Jeffery Taylor of the Seattle-based experimental band Climax Golden Twins from their collections of rare 78rpm records and design ephemera. Deluxe 144-page clothbound, full-color book with two CDs featuring Burmese guitars, Chinese opera, Persian folk songs, fado, hillbilly, jazz, blues and much, much more. Climax Golden Twins have designed gallery and museum installations, composed soundtracks (most notably the film Session Nine), worked on documentary films (Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts Of Isan released on Sublime Frequencies) and contributed soundscapes to NPR radio programs in addition to releasing numerous recordings on CD and LP, including a recent LP on the Sun City Girls' Abduction Records imprint entitled 5 Cents A Piece. Influenced by the Secret Museum of Mankind, Yazoo releases, Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music, as well as record labels like Sublime Frequencies, Ethnic Folkways and Ocora. Also inspired by art and design books such as those published by Chronicle. Sounds like vintage music from around the globe. Looks like a clothbound book printed on extremely fine museum quality wood-free paper and is meant as a visual manifestation of the sounds contained on the CDs. Hundreds of beautiful images of sleeves, photos, labels, needle tins and more.


Artist: VA
Title: Art Of Field Recording Volume II
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 4CD BOX
Price: $60.00
Catalog #: DTD 012CD
Subtitled: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum. This is volume 2 of Dust-to-Digital's robust and highly-acclaimed Art of Field Recording series, assembled by esteemed archivist Art Rosenbaum. This impressive 4CD set includes ballads, blues, spirituals, work songs and slave songs, religious singing and other traditional folk music from Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Florida and elsewhere. Housed in a 10"x10"x10" color cardboard box containing a 96-page perfect-bound book with over 100 illustrations and photographs, and four CDs with a total of 107 tracks. Founded by Lance Ledbetter in 1999, Dust-to-Digital's mission is to produce high quality cultural artifacts which combine rare, essential recordings with historic images and detailed texts describing the artists and their works. Art is a painter, a muralist, and an illustrator, as well as a collector and performer of traditional American folk music. He has been collecting and studying traditional American music for over 50 years. His focus covers Appalachian banjo tunes and ballads, Southern and Midwestern fiddle tunes, blues and spirituals. Rosenbaum began seeking out traditional performers while in his teens, rediscovering and recording the great blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and fiddler John W. Summers, both in his then-home state of Indiana. His fieldwork has produced archival material in the Indiana University Folklore Archives, the University of Georgia Libraries and the Archives of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. His Art of Field Recording Vol. I was nominated for an Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. "Rosenbaum is a folk revivalist of the old school. He believes that traditional ballads, blues, spirituals, and fiddle tunes are among the glories of American culture, and he wanted to help preserve and disseminate them. Ledbetter, forty years younger, was less interested in preservation than in inspiration -- the best he could do for folk music, Ledbetter seemed to feel, was to research, remaster, and repackage it as beautifully as possible to make the old songs seem new again." --The New Yorker, "The Last Verse: Is there any folk music still out there?"


Artist: VA
Title: Take Me To The Water: Immersion Baptism In Vintage Music...
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: BOOK/CD
Price: $31.00
Catalog #: DTD 013CD
..And Photography 1890-1950 The latest release from Grammy Award-winning reissue label Dust-to-Digital gives music fans another reason to rejoice. A stunning 96-page hardcover book of historic baptism photographs, taken between 1890 and 1950 and compiled from the collection of noted folk art collector Jim Linderman, is accompanied by a CD of rare gospel and folk recordings from original 78 RPM records (1924-1940), featuring artists Washington Phillips, Carter Family, Tennessee Mountaineers, and more. Produced by the 2009 Grammy winner for "Best Historical Album," Steven Lance Ledbetter. The CD could easily be seen as the seventh disc of Goodbye, Babylon (DTD 001CD), Dust-to-Digital's critically-acclaimed and Grammy-nominated box set from 2003. Original 78 RPM records came from the collections of Joe Bussard, Steven Lance Ledbetter, Frank Mare and Roger Misiewicz. "Whether you have ever actually experienced a baptism or not, whether you are a believer or not, these pictures and the music that accompanies them transmit all the emotional information: the excitement and the serenity, the fellowship and the warmth, the wind and the water ... You would have to have a heart of tin not to recognize this as one of the happiest collections of archival photographs ever assembled." --From the introduction by Luc Sante. 96-page hardcover book (8.75 x 6 inches) with 75 sepia photograph reproductions from 1890-1950; CD includes 25 songs and sermons from 1924-1940.


Artist: MAUPIN AND DANIEL ROTHWELL, THOMAS
Title: Let Your Feet Do The Talkin'
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: DVD
Price: $18.50
Catalog #: DTD 014DVD
Let Your Feet Do The Talkin' tells the story of buckdancing legend Thomas Maupin, who, at the age of 70, remains one of the greatest old-time dancers in America. The film presents a portrait of a man in the twilight of his life reflecting back on his legacy as a father, teacher, and artist. Numerous awards, trophies, and plaques lay stacked in a dresser in rural Tennessee where Thomas spends his weeks tending his garden, feeding the animals, and fixing the occasional lawn mower. However, on the weekends, Thomas travels all over the South performing anywhere there's a band and some flat ground; be it giant stages, historic theatres, or crowded street corners, almost always accompanied by his grandson, Daniel. At the age of 16 years old, Daniel has become a prominent old-time banjo player who, with his quick wit, hot licks and uncanny showmanship, rarely finishes a song without a standing ovation. "Music is a way for us to communicate," says Thomas, "he speaks with his banjo and I let my feet do the talkin'." Even though Thomas and Daniel excel without each other, it's apparent there is something more when they perform together; a magic and beauty that cannot be described with words, but comes across vividly on film. Framed between Thomas' recovery from cancer and his acceptance of a nationally recognized award, this piece presents a deeply personal look at a folk icon. Even though the film's narrative is rooted in an American tradition, Thomas' experience transcends nationalities, ethnicities, and cultures and appeals to emotions that are universal; leaving the audience with not only the story of a man, but a greater understanding of the human condition. In spite of the heartaches and hardships he has encountered, Thomas has never stopped dancing, gaining him adoration, distinction, and most importantly, happiness. Let Your Feet Do The Talkin' asks the question, "What drives us to perform?" and examines music's ability to form and strengthen relationships and lift us above our circumstances. Directed by Stewart Copeland. 30-minute documentary with special features including deleted scenes, live performances, a dance workshop, Hear Your Banjo Play, (the 1947 documentary narrated by Pete Seeger with performances by Woody Guthrie and Sonny Terry), and Jennifer, a 2008 short film by Stewart Copeland. Housed in a digipak case, including a booklet with an introduction to buckdancing essay by Phil Jamison of Warren Wilson College and a list of all of Thomas Maupin's first place awards in dancing. Program run time: 30min/Total run time 1 hour 49min. Stereo Audio; Color; Aspect Ratio: 16x9 letter-boxed; NTSC format, Region-Free.


Artist: ELY, BROTHER CLAUDE
Title: Ain't No Grave: The Life And Legacy Of Brother Claude Ely
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: BOOK/CD
Price: $43.50
Catalog #: DTD 015CD
Recorded interviews of over 1,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains lay the foundation for this 360-page biography detailing the life of Brother Claude Ely, the religious singer-songwriter and Pentecostal-Holiness preacher from southwestern Virginia. Coined as the King Recording label's "Gospel Ranger," Brother Claude Ely was the first Pentecostal Holiness recording artist to be signed to a major recording label for strictly sacred music. Receiving notoriety for his song, "There Ain't No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down)," Ely's musical style and spiritual influence still exist today among both secular and sacred music enthusiasts. Many Hollywood entertainers and musical artists have acknowledged their admiration and fascination for Brother Claude Ely's music and ministry. Artists influenced by Brother Claude Ely's music include Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and others. Robert Duvall's self-produced movie entitled The Apostle also integrated Brother Claude Ely's music on its soundtrack. Ely pastored various churches in Kentucky, Virginia and the Cincinnati, Ohio area and hosted a radio program entitled "The Gospel Ranger Show" which aired across the southeastern portion of the United States. Many of Ely's religious followers and numerous admirers still exist today in the Appalachian Mountains, proving that the country preacher's legacy remains. While visiting a London record shop in 2001, Macel Ely II heard a familiar voice playing over the speakers. He learned that it was indeed the powerful chanting of his great-uncle and was amazed at the magnitude of the impact his music still maintained on people worldwide. He then embarked on what would become a 9-year journey to discover the true story of Brother Claude Ely as well as to investigate his legacy. Brother Claude Ely passed along a musical and spiritual influence which can still be heard today like a mountain echo in those long, winding hollows and impoverished coal fields. Authored by Brother Claude Ely's nephew, Macel Ely II, the biography is supplemented by 290 sepia photographs along with a CD featuring rare and electrifying audio recordings of Pentecostal worship services in the mountains of Kentucky and Virginia accompanied by a fiery sermon preached by Brother Claude Ely himself. 360-page hardcover book with dust jacket in shrinkwrap -- CD stored in back of book. Book measurements: 9.5 x 7 inches and 1.25 inches thick.


Artist: VA
Title: Baby, How Can It Be?
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 3CD
Price: $30.00
Catalog #: DTD 016CD
Subtitled: Songs Of Love, Lust And Contempt From The 1920s And 1930s. Three CDs of music about love, lust and contempt from the 1920s and 1930s. Three CDs from the 78 rpm record collection of John Heneghan with liner notes by Nick Tosches and centerfold illustration by R. Crumb.
"This is a trove of delights, many of which will be new to even the furthest gone among us ... Like the man says, love is a many-splendored thing. Those who have it, had it, or hold vague memories of something like it. Those who have yearned and pined for it. Those who have thrown it away, or cried over it, or are incapable of it. Those who have killed themselves or others or both over it. Everybody knows that what the man says is true. No wonder there have been so many songs about it, going way back, all the way back to the Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon, or whatever the hell you want to call it, and before that even ... As is commonly recognized, or so at least it should be stated for matters at hand, the 1920s and 1930s represented the golden age of the love song. Baby, How Can It Be? Songs Of Love, Lust And Contempt -- don't forget that odi-et-amo angle -- From The 1920s And 1930s reflects that age of gold resplendently. Chosen from the collection of John Heneghan, the 66 recordings here are alive with more cooing, kissing, cupidity, cussing, and killing than lifetimes of longing, heavenly and demonic, could ever aspire to. Talk about a handful of young roe and its discontents. As them Hebe smut-hounds of old used to say, you ain't heard nothin' yet." --Nick Tosches, from the liner notes.
3 CDs + booklet in an 8-panel cardboard case.


Artist: JONES, REV. JOHNNY L. 'HURRICANE'
Title: The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 2CD
Price: $23.00
Catalog #: DTD 017CD
Dust-to-Digital presents a 2CD collection of archival recordings from Rev. Johnny L. "Hurricane" Jones, culled from more than 1,000 tapes going back to 1957. Every track on this set is available to the public for the very first time. Johnny Lee Jones was born on June 25, 1936 in Marion, Alabama. Growing up, Johnny said he and his brothers were "country boys" -- farming, planting cotton, picking cotton, pulling corn, plowing mules, raising cows, chickens, and hogs, but they also had the spiritual life. Johnny's mother was a very active member of the church, and his father was a deacon. Every Sunday, the family would sing and praise at Macedonia Baptist Church in Howell Crossroad, Alabama. Johnny soon taught himself how to play piano and before long he was appointed the church's choir director. In 1957, Johnny moved to Atlanta, going from church to church and from place to place, preaching and playing the piano. He hit his stride in LaGrange, a town a little more than an hour's drive southwest of Atlanta. Johnny claims he had "a lightning spark" while pastoring several churches in the rural town. It was at the Second Mount Olive Baptist Church in Atlanta where Johnny would receive the nickname "The Hurricane." The nickname stuck, as did the church, and a string of album releases followed Jones' fiery reputation. Jewel Records released Jones' last album in 1978. In the years since, those records have gone out-of-print, eventually circulating into used bins and thrift stores where they've been picked up by younger listeners unfamiliar with Jones or his church. The records have been rediscovered by a new generation, and now we can hear the recordings Johnny made for his own private use and for his radio ministry. Today, Rev. Johnny L. "Hurricane" Jones is still preaching, singing and playing music every Sunday at Second Mount Olive Baptist. He still does a radio show on WYZE every first and third Saturday of the month. In fact, many of the recordings on these CDs were made to assist Johnny with his radio ministry. The songs serve as church to those who are physically unable to leave their house, and are a calling for those who cannot wait until Sunday to hear "Hurricane" Jones. The reels of tape, which date back to Johnny's first days in Atlanta, provide documentation of a church across seven decades. The quality is raw and often distorted, yet the sounds are nothing short of heavenly. Housed in a cardboard case with an essay by label founder Lance Ledbetter.


Artist: KING, GEORGE
Title: Ten Thousand Points Of Light: The 20th Anniversary Edition
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: DVD
Price: $21.50
Catalog #: DTD 018DVD
Kitsch alert! Worshipper at the shrine of Elvis, fans of unabashed bad taste, followers of pop culture, take note. Ten Thousand Points Of Light, originally released in 1991 and now available on DVD for the very first time, is a wry, understated and terrifically funny look at The Townsends, a suburban Atlanta family who, every holiday season for eight years, transformed their Stone Mountain area brick ranch house into a meteoric blaze of Christmas lights. Known as both "the Christmas House" and the "the Elvis House," the Townsend's home was visited yearly by vast numbers of people, many of whom viewed a trip to the land of a thousand tchotchkes as an annual pilgrimage. George King, who sees the Townsends as TV-addled, mainstream eccentrics who are possessed of extraordinary community spirit, captures some priceless moments, beginning with an early interview in which Margaret Townsend opines: "Christmas and Elvis go together. Nothing will take the place of Christ. But Elvis was a good man; he was good to everybody." Graceland has clearly had an impact on the Townsend's aesthetic, as has the Cable Shopping Network and Family Circle-style craft projects. What did the Christmas/Elvis House mean to visitors, and why did they mourn its final season? King elicits some revealing comments from the patient folks who lined up until 10 p.m. on weeknights, weekends till midnight. Ten Thousand Points Of Light could have come across as a bad-tempered, Letterman-style trashing of working-class values and rituals. Instead, it's a sly portrait, shadowed with hints of the surreal, that strikes a perfect balance between affection and awe-struck disbelief. Housed in a digipak with gold foil stamping on the cover including a booklet containing an interview with the filmmaker from 2010. Length: Program Run Time - 31 min/Total Run Time - 1hour 45min; Stereo Audio; Color; Aspect ratio: 16:9. The DVD is NTSC format, region free.


Artist: VA
Title: Never A Pal Like Mother
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: BOOK/2CD
Price: $34.50
Catalog #: DTD 019CD
Subtitled: Vintage Songs & Photographs of the One Who's Always True. The newest release from the Dust-to-Digital holiday series, Never A Pal Like Mother celebrates the maternal theme with a hardback book containing 65 antique photographs and 40 recordings from 1927-1956 on two CDs. Compiled from such esteemed collectors as Joe Bussard, the recordings include songs by Louvin Brothers, William McCoy, Washington Phillips, Carter Family and more. The songs on the first disc describe mother's activities on earth: kindness, discipline, teaching and love. The second disc's songs involve coping with a mother's death and the emptiness it creates. The book features 65 antique photographs from such noted collectors as Sarah Bryan and Jim Linderman. Included is a foreward by Grammy-Award winning singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash and an essay by Sarah Bryan. "We can feel our American past here: how we lived, how hard we worked, how we were a nation of travelers and wanderers, how we held fast to our faith, how great our losses were, how quickly death came, and how often our mothers were the rock and the lighthouse, the home inside our hearts. These songs could never be written in the age of jet travel, therapy, delayed adolescence, the internet, nor could they survive current popular ideas of human psychology. They are pristine and deeply wrought sonic images, unfiltered through modern expectations, and are all the more refreshing and thrilling for being so. Those of us who treasure American roots music are listening to the very center of its essence in this anthology: a nearly century-old collection of songs about the most important person in the entire lexicon." --Rosanne Cash, from the introduction. Never A Pal Like Mother is elegantly presented in a 96-page hardback book (5.75"x8.5") with 2 CDs in front and back sleeves on the inside covers.


Artist: RODEN, STEVE
Title: I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: BOOK/2CD
Price: $43.50
Catalog #: DTD 020CD
Subtitled: Music In Vernacular Photographs, 1880-1955. I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces brings together a collection of early photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images. It is a somewhat intuitive gathering, culled from artist Steve Roden's collection of thousands of vernacular photographs related to music, sound, and listening. The subjects range from the PT Barnum-esque Professor McRea -- "Ontario's Musical Wonder" (pictured with his complex sculptural one-man band contraption) -- to anonymous African-American guitar players and images of early phonographs. The images range from professional portraits to ethereal, accidental, double exposures -- and include a range of photographic print processes, such as tintypes, ambrotypes, CDVS, cabinet cards, real photo postcards, albumen prints, and turn-of-the-century snapshots. The two CDs bring together a variety of recordings, including one-off amateur recordings, regular commercial releases, and early sound effects records. There is no narrative structure to the book, but the collision of literary quotes (Hamsun, Lagarkvist, Wordsworth, Nabokov, etc.). Recordings and images conspire towards a consistent mood that is anchored by the book's title, which binds such disparate things as an early recording of an American cowboy ballad, a poem by a Swedish Nobel Laureate, a recording of crickets created artificially, and an image of an itinerant anonymous woman sitting in a field, playing a guitar. The book also contains an essay by Roden. Hardback book, 8.5 x 6.5 inches, 184 pages, 150 photographs reproduced in full color and two audio CDs from the author's collection.


Artist: FAHEY, JOHN
Title: Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 5CD BOX/BOOK
Price: $81.00
Catalog #: DTD 021CD
Subtitled: The Fonotone Years 1958-1965. 2012 repress now available! More than 10 years in the making, this box set features the earliest recordings and the first book ever written about one of the most influential guitarists from the 1960s and '70s, John Fahey. The five CDs feature 115 tracks, most of which are available on CD for the first time. The audio was remastered from Joe Bussard's reel-to-reel tapes to achieve pristine sound quality. As for the accompanying book, the list of scholars who contributed essays includes Eddie Dean, Claudio Guerrierri, Glenn Jones, Malcolm Kirton, Mike Stewart and John's childhood friend R. Anthony Lee. Byron Coley contributed a poem about John, and Douglas Blazek's 1967 interview with Fahey is published for the first time. Released 10 years after John Fahey's death, this set puts one of the final puzzle pieces of Fahey's career in place. Everyone can now hear where this guitar legend got his start -- a smoky basement in Frederick, Maryland. Co-produced by Dean Blackwood of Revenant, Glenn Jones, and Lance Ledbetter of Dust-to-Digital, this set is released with the support of Joe Bussard and the John Fahey Estate. The set is dedicated to John's mother, Jane C. Hayes and the late musician Jack Rose. Includes a 88-page hardcover book with 5 CDs in a separate gatefold portfolio -- all housed in a deluxe slipcase. Book measurements: 12 x 12 x 1.25 inches.


Artist: VA
Title: Opika Pende: Africa At 78 RPM
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: 4CD/BOOK
Price: $55.00
Catalog #: DTD 022CD
Opika Pende: Africa At 78 RPM is a 4CD collection featuring 100 tracks taken from rare 78rpm recordings of African music (1909 to mid-1960s), none of which have ever been issued on CD until now. Pan-African in scope and wildly diverse, Opika Pende is a testament to the deep riches found in early recorded music across the continent. 112-page softcover book with 4 CDs in a separate portfolio -- all housed in a deluxe cloth slipcase. Jonathan Ward is a Los Angeles-based collector, researcher, and writer. In 2007, he began the well-known web site Excavated Shellac, which features a wide range of scarce, international 78rpm records from across the globe with extensive commentary. In 2010, Jonathan released his first LP in a series for Dust-to-Digital's vinyl imprint Parlortone. Titled Excavated Shellac: Strings (PT 2001LP), it contains 14 exemplary performances on string instruments from across the globe, all from his collection of 78s.


Artist: VA
Title: I Have My Liberty!: Gospel Sounds From Accra, Ghana
Label: DUST-TO-DIGITAL
Format: CD
Price: $14.50
Catalog #: DTD 023CD
I Have My Liberty! Gospel Sounds From Accra, Ghana is an album of sounds and performances recorded live in 2008 from the churches of Ghana's capital city. This album is the missing link between American gospel records by artists like Rev. Johnny L. Jones and traditional African artists like those featured on Opika Pende: Africa At 78 RPM (DTD 022CD). Amid Accra's bustling sprawl of swirling dust and exhaust, are countless havens for homegrown musical expression: charismatic and spiritual Christian churches. There, distorted PA systems, anchored by female singers, and ramshackle guitars played by a rotating cast of local men weave in and out of popular melodies, bringing congregations to their feet. Singers emote in repeated phrases, lifted by tambourines, claps, and percussion, to unite their voices in praise and worship. I Have My Liberty! Gospel Sounds From Accra, Ghana takes listeners into these churches, where congregations join together to process the anxieties of their West African metropolis. Recorded and edited by Calpin Hoffman-Williamson, a Philadelphia-based producer and audio engineer.

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