Newsletter : November 2009

Special Deals for the Holiday Season
It is getting to be that time of year when we all gather around the phonograph player and spend the holidays with family and friends. With the financial uncertainty that surrounds us, Dust-to-Digital would like to add some holiday cheer to all of our supporters.

We have put together what we believe are a couple of fantastic deals for this festive season. First, we are bringing back the Where Will You Be Christmas Day? special from two years ago. All orders of $100 or more will receive a gratis copy of Dust-to-Digital's one-of-a-kind seasonal CD (more information about this and other releases can be found below).

In addition to the Christmas CD, if you purchase $150 or more from our online store, we will include a copy of the critically acclaimed three-CD box set How Low Can You Go? (a $50 value). If you already own a copy of this set, you can imagine how much a friend or family member will enjoy receiving this from you as a gift. If you have not picked up a copy yet for yourself, now is the time!

Here's how to order: click here to order via Paypal. If you would rather shop with your Visa / Mastercard click here. Finally, to order by telephone, click here. Now, on to the music...

How Low Can You Go? : Anthology of the String Bass
Catalog Number: DTD-05
Contents: Three CDs, 96 page book
List Price: $59.98
Holiday Special: Complimentary copy with orders of $150
Recording Information: 1925-1941
Nominated for a Jazz Journalists Award
Listen to audio samples from this release.

"Tuning into the bass with this particular sequence of records can clear up one of the most elusive qualities of early jazz: its deep relationship to all this other new-world music. In four tracks between 1929 and 1932, for example, we hear the bassist Al Morgan with the Trinidadian bandleaders Wilmoth Houdini and Lionel Belasco; we also hear him in New Orleans and Harlem jazz groups. His rhythmic vocabulary and relationship to the beat is much the same. This was how cross-pollination worked. If this particular light bulb hasn't gone on for you before, it will now." — Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

Where Will You Be Christmas Day?
Catalog Number: DTD-02
Contents: One CD, 16 page booklet, Christmas postcard
List Price: $16.98
Holiday Special: Complimentary copy with orders of $100
Recording Information: 1917-1959
Listen to audio samples from this release.

"Probably the best and strangest Christmas album you'll hear all year. This ambitious, handsomely designed collection rounds up 24 unusual holiday recordings from 1917 to 1959. Leroy Carr sings ''Christmas in Jail -- Ain't That a Pain'' (1929), an elegant, funny-sad blues plea: 'Santa, Santa, Santa, come here to me in jail / Bring me a Christmas present: someone to post my bail.' A boisterous calypso from 1939 by Lord Beginner, on the other hand, evokes perhaps the most beloved sort of holiday contentment: it's called, 'Christmas Morning the Rum Had Me Yawning.''' — Kelefa Sanneh, The New York Times

New Releases of 2009
Art of Field Recording Volume II: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum
Catalog Number: DTD-12
Contents: Four CDs, 96 page book
Price: $65.00
Recording Information: 1956-2008
Listen to audio samples from this release.
This is the follow-up to last year's Art of Field Recording Volume I, which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Liner Notes and was the winner of the Grammy for Best Historical Album.

"Earlier that fall, Ledbetter’s label had released Art of Field Recording Volume I, a four-CD retrospective of Rosenbaum’s work. It contained everything from ring shouts and murder ballads to a song about twenty frogs going to school. It was full of throaty voices and clanging banjos and the incidental music of daily life—babies crying, bar glasses clinking, cicadas on a summer night. A critic at the Times had called it 'a gold mine, an ark . . . spooky and blindingly beautiful.' But now Rosenbaum and Ledbetter were gathering songs for the second volume, and wondering what they’d find. Fifty years after Rosenbaum’s first recordings, what was left of folk music?" — Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker

Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950
Catalog Number: DTD-13
Contents: One CD, 100 page hardback book
Price: $32.50
Recording Information: 1924-1940
Listen to audio samples from this release.
"They’re all part of the photographs and recordings that make up Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950, the latest small miracle from Grammy-winning Atlanta-based imprint Dust-to-Digital. The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: 'Collect the heck' out of whatever you find interesting.

Bound in hardback with an accompanying CD of rustic gospel and recorded preachifying, Linderman’s sepia-toned images are transformative—even the unholiest among us would be hard-pressed to witness these anonymously snapped pictures without feeling a tug toward the Glory Land. The ritual submersions kindle the human quests for rebirth, purification and a moment of blessed suspension. They’re at once old-timey and timeless—and a little dangerous, too. That backward dive is the ultimate trust fall. When you see the coatless preacher holding an unseen congregate underwater with both hands, you can only hope the sinner is being saved and not drowned.'' — Drew Jubera, Paste Magazine

Au Clair de la Lune
Catalog Number: PT-1001
Contents: Single-sided, 45rpm record with etched back, and reproduction of Scott's phonautogram for the sleeve
Price: $7.00
Recording Information: April 9, 1860
"The fine roots archivists at Dust-to-Digital have really outdone themselves with the launch of their new vinyl imprint, Parlortone. They could have released a cool series of rare folk or country sides on 78s or done an Anthology of American Folk Music-style album, but instead, they have introduced Parlortone with a decidedly unique 7-inch single: 'Au Clair de la Lune,' as recorded by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.

Not familiar with the tune? Well, in 1860 - nearly two decades before Edison would invent the phonograph - 'Au Clair de la Lune' was recorded for posterity on Scott's 'phonautograph' machine, a device meant to record and reproduce visuals and sound. The piece was the fifth recording he made, but it is the oldest in a collection found in the Institute of France's Academy of Sciences, making it the oldest known sound recording of the human voice in the world. The Parlortone 7-inch it's now available on is packaged beautifully, and the record itself is a one-sided disc, with etchings on the non-playable side. Definitely not the sort of record you'll find yourself ripping to your iPod for repeated listening, but an essential purchase for vinyl historians and aficionados." — Jason Ferguson, Seattle Weekly

One Final Note
Goodbye, Babylon Book
Contents: 200 page softcover book
Price: $35.00
After numerous requests over the years from customers who want replacement books, we have decided to offer the publication that accompanies the Goodbye, Babylon box set to the public. For the first time, and while supplies last, it is for sale separate from the box set.

This 200-page book contains essays and annotations by noted music researchers Lynn Abbott, David Evans, Ray Funk, Anthony Heilbut, Kip Lornell, Steven Lance Ledbetter, Opal Louis Nations, Bruce Nemerov, Ken Romanowski, Tony Russell, Doug Seroff, Dick Spottswood, David Warren Steel, Guido van Rijn and Charles Wolfe. Each track has its own page listing the artist personnel, recording dates/locations, lyrical transcriptions, commentaries about the song and relevant biblical quotes. In addition to the scholarly text there are more than 150 illustrations.