Goodbye, Babylon
In February 1999 a college radio disc jockey named Lance Ledbetter set out on a mission to compile rare and essential recordings of vintage religious music. Four and a half years later the result of this journey was released as a box set called Goodbye, Babylon.
The set consists of five CDs featuring 135 Songs (1902-1960) and one CD featuring 25 Sermons (1926-1941). Accompanying the CDs is a 200 page book with Bible verses, complete lyric transcriptions, and notes for each recording. All of the components is reverently packed with raw cotton and housed in a deluxe 8" x 11" x 2.5" cedar box.
Acknowledgments
"I recently got a gift from Bob Dylan, a good old friend of mine. He gave me a gospel collection of great old American music and early country roots from old 78s. It's the original wealth of our recorded music; it's the cream of the crop and has the history of each recording. It's a great old set called Goodbye, Babylon, and it's incredible. It's in a wooden box and everything, and it's just so beautiful." — Neil Young on Weekend Edition
"Amen!" — Entertainment Weekly's Must List
Rolling Stone's 10 Best Reissues & Anthologies of 2004
Mojo's Top 10 Releases to Start an Old Time Music Collection
Excerpts from Selected Reviews
Entertainment Weekly: "If O Brother was the 'coffee-table album' of its year, Babylon feels like the coffee table itself."
No Depression: "It can't be overstated just how perfectly realized this set is, from song selection to mastering, writing and design. There's not a wasted moment or page."
Rolling Stone: "This fantastic box of holy ruckus is the greatest anthology of antique Southern sacred song and oratory ever assembled."
Spin: "Why your iPod ain't the death of the album, Exhibit B: six discs of ancient, mostly obscure fire-and-brimstone gospel, blues, country, jug-band, and sacred-harp tunes, all packed into a cedar box stuffed with bolls of raw cotton...."
Uncut: "Academically rigorous, artistically and emotionally staggering."
Wire: "This utterly rapturous collection of 135 sacred songs and 25 sermons features many of the big names responsible, but too rarely credited, for creating the lingua franca of modern music..."
