Rounder taps roots on which it was built

Rounder Records was founded on folk music, but the label has spent much time in recent years signing up pop acts such as Tracy Bonham and Lisa Loeb and distributing DVDs by hard-rockers Rush and Godsmack.

But Rounder isn't ignoring its roots. Last week, the Cambridge company launched a new website called Rounderarchive.com, which offers out-of-print albums from its early days through digital downloads and limited-edition CDs.

It's an attempt to bring vintage folk music into the cyber-age -- and it's a trend that's starting to catch on with other boutique specialty labels. Rounder has hooked up with iTunes (there's a link on Rounderarchive.com), while Memphis's famed Sun Records recently partnered with eMusic to offer more than 400 tracks from pioneers such as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Howlin' Wolf.

The initial Rounder downloads include 15 albums, among them, ones by fiddler Vassar Clements, the Nashville Jug Band, Georgia street singer Rev. Pearly Brown, Happy & Artie Traum, Guy Van Duser, Richard Greene, and others. Most came out in the '70s.

''This is a reaffirmation of the sometimes quirky roots-music styles that built this company," says Rounder vice president Scott Billington, who helped oversee the project. ''I feel strongly that this is the wave of the future for much specialized music as people become more comfortable buying downloadable music."

Rounder has released nearly 4,000 titles since the label started in 1970. About 1,000 are now out of print, but the company eventually hopes to get many of those titles into the digital realm. Rounder has been making digital copies of its analog tapes for the past three years in preparation for the launch.

Among the first 15 releases (the label plans to issue another 10-15 quarterly), three are new albums, ones that would surely have to fight for space in record stores. Two are by Cape Breton fiddlers John A. MacDonald and Theresa Morrison. ''It's hard to get records like these into retail stores anymore because there's no room," Billington says. ''You have more DVDs coming into stores and there just isn't much space for Cape Breton fiddlers."

For consumers wanting to download the music, they can also get liner notes and album art as PDF files. One of the reasons the project has been painstaking to launch, Billington says, is because some of the older albums had liner notes that were 20-25 pages long. Scanning them didn't always work, and they had to be typed in.

Extra time has been taken to get the music remastered. That's been done locally at M Works in Cambridge and Northeastern Digital in Southborough.

Jeffrey Remz, who publishes Country Standard Time magazine, is excited at the prospect of Rounder also putting out limited edition CDs of these older folk albums.

''It's not like Rounder is going to get platinum albums from this series, so I really commend them for putting these out," Remz says. ''It helps reeducate older listeners who might be replacing their vinyl copies, and helps young people who are discovering this music for the first time."

It also helps Rounder counteract any image of becoming too rock-oriented.

''Rounder has changed with the times," Billington says. ''If we didn't, we wouldn't have been able to continue with our commitment to the earlier music. The success of the rock records has made room for this archive series."