When college student and roots music fan Lance Ledbetter grew frustrated at the near impossibility of buying 78 rpm gospel records from the 1920s and ’30s, he began to ponder a question: What would it take to reissue those old tunes and put them in stores?
Answering that question has become a career for Ledbetter and his wife, April, at their record label, Dust-to-Digital.
Since its first release in 2003, the tiny company run from their modest brick house in a quiet Atlanta neighborhood has become a powerhouse in the niche market of music that’s been gathering dust, waiting to find or regain an audience: antique 78 recordings of blues, gospel, jazz and other styles, along with musicologists’ field recordings of rural musicians and indigenous people all over the world.
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