Dust-to-Digital founder Lance Ledbetter stops by to chat with Art about Dust-to-Digital’s most recent offering, …i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces. This set is a hardcover book with 2 CDs that brings together a collection of early photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images.

The late Morgan Sexton of eastern Kentucky is the subject of this week’s Backroads & Banjos. Sexton made a sound all his own by using unusual mountain tunings and a vocal style that was pure and unaffected. After living a life as a coal miner in Kentucky and playing square dancers as a hobby, Sexton was sought out when he was in his late-70s by a group of field recorders who had heard Morgan’s legend, but never his music.

Art takes a look at the Mexican corrido. Much like folk music from Europe and the United States, the corrido is a narrative style of ballad from Mexico that centers on themes of oppression, daily life and social commentary. The show opens with one of Art’s first field recordings as a teenager when he found a group of migrant farmers in Allegan Farms, Michigan who taught him about the corrido and its themes.

Art looks at the life and music of Amede Ardoin, a man often considered the King of Creole music. Born in the late 19th century, Ardoin was an expert at the Creole accordion and had a voice noted for its expressive and emotive sound. Along with his musical companion, fiddler Dennis McGee, Ardoin made some of the earliest and most important Creole recordings in the Acadian style. Ardoin’s life, however, was not perfect and he struggled through hard times as a black musician in the deep south. In 1939, at the height of his popularity, Amede was beat up and run over multiple times by a gang of white men who were offended when he used a white woman’s handkerchief to wipe his brow at a barn dance.

As the dog days of summer arrive, Art decides it’s time to hit the high seas and takes a look at one of his favorite nautical LPs. Released in the early 70s, Roberts and Barrand’s LP Across the Western Ocean is chock full of faithful renditions of classic sea shanties, forebitters and recitations.

Art shares some of his recordings from Midwest Banjo Camp from earlier in June. The show opens with a conversation and a couple of tunes from legendary fiddle player Byron Berline. Berline was major player in the country rock movement in the late 1960s playing with folks like Bob Dylan, The Flying Burrito Brothers and the Rolling Stones. After a few solo tunes, Berline joins some other players on Cherokee Shuffle which is introduced by camp director and banjo master Ken Perlman.