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Lance Ledbetter, Dust to Digital Interview · 1374 words posted 06/09/2004 11:55 AM

Goodbye, Babylon, a boxed set of over 150 gospel songs and sermons from the first half of the 20th century, was compiled by Lance Ledbetter and published by Dust to Digital. Lance lives in Atlanta, GA and answered the interview questions via email.

since1968: I’ll be honest. I grew up on on Black Flag and R.E.M. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to go to law school in a city where the local NPR affiliate played bluegrass, I’d probably think American roots music meant George Clooney lip-synching “Man of Constant Sorrow.” How did you get exposed to old time gospel?

Lance Ledbetter: As a kid I was taken to a couple of different Methodist churches near my home in northwest Georgia. It wasn’t until I was older that the songs would begin to resonate with me. I was at a radio station called Album 88, which is broadcast from the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta. I took over a show called 20th Century Archives armed only with the American Anthology of Folk Music. So I started to try to track down as much music that was recorded in the 1920s and 30s as I could. It was then when I started to really get into old gospel music. Some of the songs I remembered from going to church with my folks. A lot of them were completely new to me. But it was the performances which really grabbed me. Songs about sin and death were delivered so straight forward. I knew I would have to find more.

since1968: Most white performers and black performers today sing right past each other, about different subjects, to different audiences. One of the striking things about Goodbye, Babylon is the overlap between white and black artists; society may have been more segregated when this music was recorded, but the music itself certainly seemed less fractured.

LL: I had a few people tell me that it would never work having both black and white music in one collection. The common excuse was that from a marketing standpoint, it would negate both audiences – the black people wouldn’t want to pay a lot of money for only half of which was performances by blacks and vice versa. I thought that was a bad way to think about it. I leaned toward the standpoint derived from the Christian belief – that we are all the same color in God’s eyes.

since1968: My favorite disc is the collection of sermons, many of which have as much rhythm and force as any of the songs. Where on earth did you find the sermons?

LL: Most of the recordings used for Goodbye, Babylon come from the collection of Joe Bussard. He’s collected records since the 1940s and has amassed 25,000 of the best from the early 1900s. It took me a year and a half just to go through just his gospel material, and when I got into the sermons I was just as amazed as you. I was hearing the roots of soul, hip hop, and even modern stand-up comedy. I knew I’d include a lot of them, but I had a hard time trimming the list down to just twenty-five.

Editor’s note: You can listen to two selections from Goodbye, Babylon on since1968.com: the Black Diamond Express to Hell, a train where “Sin is the engineer and Pleasure is the headlight”; and The Prodigal’s Return (The Things I Usta Do I Don’t Do No More), a sermon about renouncing worldly pleasures . Both links are in mp3 format; you can listen to the songs in iTunes, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, and most other music players. The recordings are provided with the permission of Dust to Digital.

since1968: As I understand it, Alan Lomax recorded music that hadn’t previously been put on tape. Your job was a bit different here: you preserved and digitized music that was already commercial in its time. Did the songs in this collection serve a similar cultural function to those recorded by Alan Lomax?

LL: One thing I set out to do was to create an entrance into the world of old gospel music. Everyone knows old gospel music is out there and if you look hard enough you can find it. But where does one start? That’s why I thought it was so important to include lengthy annotations and introductory essays by some of the most knowledgeable researchers and writers from each subgenre.

since1968: Goodbye, Babylon is packaged as beautifully as any CD box I’ve ever seen: the cedar box includes raw cotton and the CD sleeves form a cotton plant in the shape of a cross. Where did you get your ideas for the packaging?

LL: I developed quite a love for the artists that appear on Goodbye, Babylon. Sure, there are some artists on it that everyone has heard of. But there are others that remained in obscurity from the time they were alive until today. So I wanted each artist/song to have its own page in the book. I wanted Sister OM Terrell to appear beside Mahalia Jackson. And I wanted it to be presented in a way that would make them proud.

As for the cotton, I worked with a very talented graphics designer named Susan Archie. In working on the layout for the book, she had told me that it would be nice to have a motif. I had drawn up the design for the wood box and had the prototype built. When I was trying to figure out what to do with the empty spaces on each side of the CDs, I suggested stuffing them with cotton. She was excited because she had a motif she could incorporate.

As for the CD sleeves making the cross, I wanted to show that all of these songs together form a sum greater than their parts, in a similar way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost form the Trinity in Christianity.

since1968: Curt Cloninger has written about the problems of digital preservation: not only does the archivist have to worry about “bit integrity” (i.e., fidelity to the actual source), but also the “equally troublesome task of preserving the technology used to read the media.” This may sound silly, but a compact disc doesn’t strike me as the most obvious media for preserving music. Isn’t there a better chance that the LPs pressed fifty years ago will play fifty years from now than a CD burned today will play twenty years from now? How did you choose CD as your format?

LL: I believe you are correct when you talk about the limitations of the compact disc. Initially, I spoke to Joe Bussard about putting the collection out on LP. He told me that by far the best sounding medium for reissues of 78s is CD. He said the sound comes closest to the actual 78.

Another thing to remember is that the CD player is the most common audio playing device throughout the world. I feel like if a newer medium comes along we can always issue Goodbye, Babylon in that format. Also, if CDs begin going bad in 50 years we can back up the old discs to new ones. I just feel that today the CD is the best way to go.

since1968: Why not distribute the music of Goodbye, Babylon over the internet instead of on CD?

LL: Because CDs are the most common format. I do not think the internet could be an “instead” situation. I do think that it could be used as an accompaniment to the CDs.

since1968: I searched kazaa for the music from Goodbye, Babylon but didn’t turn up anything. What are your thoughts on peer to peer and the music industry? Can a technology like kazaa actually help spread the word about collections outside the commercial mainstream?

LL: The pro with peer to peer is that more people can hear the music because money is not a restriction. The con is that the music becomes more disposable and does not get the attention it would get if people paid for it. Also, the 200 page book could be downloadable, but I’ve yet to see a downloadable cedar box.

since1968: Thank you for your time.

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