(FORTUNE Small Business) – You can't blame Lance Ledbetter, the 28-year-old founder of Atlanta's tiny Dust-to-Digital label, for underestimating how many people would purchase his company's first release, Goodbye, Babylon. After all, a $100, six-CD collection of Southern gospel music from the 1920s through the 1950s would hardly seem like a big seller. Today the compilation is on its third pressing, having sold more than 3,000 copies (many through the dust-digital.com website), and has won raves in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Spin. "I had no idea it would get this much attention," he says.

Despite the acclaim, the esoterica-packed Goodbye, Babylon might overwhelm the casual listener. Included among the 160 tracks (!) is an entire CD of sermons, with titles such as "That White Mule of Sin" and "The Black Camel of Death." Sacred harp singing, a traditional form of folk hymn, is fascinating but not the kind of thing you'll want to blast from your car speakers. And what to make of "Memphis Flu," a bouncy 1930 recording that praises the divine justice of a deadly flu epidemic? This stuff makes the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack sound like Shakira.

But noncollector geeks will still find plenty to love. The Yosemite Sam-like howl of Brother Claude Ely announcing "There ain't no grave gonna hold my body down," Mother McCollum's delicate "Jesus Is My Air-o-plane," and performances by such legends as Rev. Gary Davis, Mahalia Jackson, and Blind Willie Johnson could convert the most skeptical listener. One hundred dollars for eight hours of old-time religion? That's a steal. --JASON TANZ