Pitchfork

In a public proclamation to the city of Frederick, Maryland, A Wayfaring Stranger-- presumably the alias of Dust-to-Digital brainchild Lance Ledbetter-- describes Joe Bussard's Frederick-based Fonotone Records as "the last of the 78 rpm record labels, which documented the final lingering barbaric yawps of old time music that was born and nurtured in the southern United States." Today, creaking open Dust-to-Digital's new Fonotone Records cigar box, determined diggers will find five CDs (containing, collectively, 131 distinct tracks), a 160-page perfect-bound book, 17 full color postcards culled from Kodak slides, three record label reproductions, and a tiny, nickel plated pop-bottle opener. Ledbetter, responsible for 2003's staggering, cotton-stuffed Goodbye, Babylon box, understands how to set a perfect scene using only objects, photographs, and songs: Scatter the contents of the box on your coffee table, load a CD into your stereo, and watch your living room slowly transform into a dusty, jug-set southern porch.

Eager buyers may be tempted to conflate Bussard's personal, world-renowned collection of nearly 25,000 78s (mostly hard country from the 1920s and 30s, including Jimmie Rodgers' entire discography and a few records unavailable anywhere else) with Fonotone, but most of the cuts included here are newer, dating from the early to mid-1960s (Bussard started the label in 1956, and ceased operations in 1970), and focused on old-time revivals and Bussard's own pet projects. Each of the five discs has a corresponding title-- Jug in the Shade, Flight of Fonotone, Some Summer Day, Wild Mountain Ramble, and Basement Blues-- and all were digitized from reel-to-reel master tapes, preserving the one-microphone, no-overdubs rawness of Bussard's vision (according to Dust-to-Digital's website, the tapes were stored in a cigar smoke-filled basement for 50 years), without sacrificing clarity of sound or message.

Fonotone began in Bussard's parents' home (Bussard was only 20 when the label opened), after he recruited and recorded some pickers from his local National Guard; before long, Fonotone grew to include now-legendary contributions from fellow collector and guitar visionary John Fahey (credited here as Blind Thomas, a smirking moniker familiar to those already acquainted with Fahey's long run as pseudo-bluesman Blind Joe Death). Fahey and Bussard were notorious for their crankiness and shared distaste for contemporary trends; in a 2001 interview with Washington City Paper, Fahey blamed the homogenization of the post-1955 south on "goddamned government workers moved in from strange, horrible Northern places like Ohio and Minnesota," and in the Fonotone box's liner notes, Bussard glibly declares, "I don't like commercial music today at all. It all sounds the same, like that pop stuff. In early years, every jazz and dance band was different. There wasn't one that sounded like another. Today, if you've heard one, you've heard them all."

Fahey's Fonotone 78s include some of the only vocals he ever laid down-- a version of Booker White's "'Po Boy", first recorded by White in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in 1939, features Fahey's thin, scratchy growls over painfully spectacular blues guitar. Even though Fahey was a white, 20-year-old American University philosophy student when the song was recorded in 1959, his generic laments ("Ain't got no where to lay my weary head") are still weirdly affecting-- and while Fahey's howls may stir up some dicey arguments about race, "authenticity," and appropriation (in his mail order catalogue, Bussard credited Blind Thomas' songs as "authentic negro folk music"), Fahey's mind-blowing technique (he played the blues with all five fingers) and heart-piercing guitar are still completely undeniable. As Bussard tells it: "I said 'Why don't you sing like an old black guy and sing rough as hell and we'll call you Blind Thomas?' We did that as a joke, really."

Plenty of Fonotone contributors were encouraged to operate under regional names (chances are Bussard made most up on-the-spot), and the post-adolescent, backwoods humor of titles like the Tennessee Mess Arounders, Gabriel's Holy Testifiers, the Mash Mountain Boys, and the Bald Knob Chicken Snatchers is hardly lost here. Most of Fonotone's steady players were friends of Bussard or people who had stopped by to check out his records; Bussard himself appears frequently, most often as the jug player in Jolly Joe's Jug Band, and the casual, dudes-jamming-in-a-basement vibe is palpable throughout. Most tracks clock in at three minutes or under (Bussard admits: "we watch the clock while we play, and when three minutes are up we nudge each other and finish up") and feature freewheeling banjos, slide guitars, fiddles, harmonicas, mandolins, autoharps, washboards, and the occasional bass. Whether you're seeking sharp bluegrass throwdowns, jug jubilees, or more traditional vocal hillbilly (see anything by the Adcock Family or the Whitacre Family, especially), Bussard always seems to have the appropriate 78 on deck.

In May 2005, Columbia/Legacy released "You Ain't Talkin' to Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music," another cigar box featuring contributions from Bussard, designed to illuminate the deep, rural origins of modern country music. While much of the Fonotone Box is actually a generation removed from country music's beginnings (if you're more interested in hearing Bussard's influences rather than his imitations, the Poole box or the Bear Family's astounding 12xCD Carter Family retrospective would be better places to start), Bussard's uncompromising reverence for the traditions and sounds introduced in the 1920s and 30s is still both impressive and edifying. And, most importantly: unbelievably fun.