At first glance,you might assume that the “Fonotone Records” (Dust to Digital) anthology, a five-CD set collecting a wealth of old-timey bluegrass, jug band, country, and blues, is another compendium of hoary, crackly recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. But you’d be wrong.

These tunes were originally released on 78 rpm records by Joe Bussard, an obsessive collector and musician based in Frederick, Md., between 1956 and 1970. Under assumed names like Possum Holler Boys, Georgia Jokers, and Blind Robert Ward, Bussard and a variety of fellow enthusiasts recorded the selections to create a good-natured hoax that the 78s were documents of lost recordings from a bygone era.

A purist, Bussard excelled in being as authentic as possible: He recorded everyone with one $15 microphone, usually in his own house or theirs, in one live take (“just like they did it in the ’20s,” Bussard boasts in the liner notes). No electric instruments were permitted, and the relatively recent genre of bluegrass was “the only postwar musical style allowed on the Fonotone label” according to annotator Eddie Dean. At the time, the records sold for $1 each.

This collection, which represents the majority, and presumably the best, of Fonotone’s releases, does a superb job of gathering these antiquities and recounting a great story of American marginalia and music fandom. The lion’s share of the box set’s 131 tracks were performed by Bussard and Bob Coltman, who often made up songs on the spot that they called “messarounds.” A host of other characters joined them.

Birmingham Bill, who appears three times on the anthology, is actually Mike Seeger of the venerable folkies New Lost City Ramblers.The acoustic virtuoso Stefan Grossman records here three times under the name Kid Future, and the influential guitarist John Fahey appears five times as Blind Thomas, having released his earliest recordings on Fonotone under this name.

Among the more curious of the Fahey selections is an early version of Bukka White’s “Poor Boy Blues,” which Fahey also recorded on his first album, “Blind Joe Death” (1959). What’s unusual about this take is that it features Fahey doing his best impression of a hoarse Delta bluesman – an anomaly in the context of his own albums, which are entirely instrumental.

Also unusual is Fahey’s playing on “Paint Brush Blues,” which finds this confirmed finger-stylist whacking at the strings with a paintbrush for a plectrum. Fahey’s originality and outlandish spirit are already in evidence here, although his technique would improve over the years; likewise Grossman’s playing is still embryonic on these recordings. He is best represented by a spirited adaptation of Big Bill Broonzy’s “Willie Mae,” here titled “Rory Mae.”

Bussard also recorded some talented Maryland bluegrass groups like the Blue Ridge Partners and the Adcock Family. And there are obscure figures here whose output is worthy of reissue: Clarence Fross, Mike Stewart (recording as B. Sam Firk), and Joe Birchfield & Family (proudly described by Dean as “a homespun sound more like 1866 than 1966”).

While few of the artists share Fahey’s inventiveness, there’s plenty of fair musicianship throughout, including some lickety-split banjo picking. But it’s the homegrown, unfettered expression in these recordings that reflects the influence of old musical styles and makes the Fonotone collection enjoyable – though hardly any of the performers possess the idiosyncratic genius of the primitive blues and country artists who inspired them.

Compared to the scratchy 78s that comprise famous collections such as Harry Smith’s legendary “Anthology of American Folk Music” (first released in 1952) or the more recent “American Primitive” collection, access to the master tapes means the sound quality here is pristine. This is somewhat surprising considering their four-decade vintage and low-fi production.To fully grasp the effectiveness of Bussard’s extended prank, you are forced to imagine the original records hurtling along at 78 rpm with pops and crackles thrown in.

Despite a few regionally best-selling titles, Bussard and his cohorts preferred to remain under the radar, keeping the label as a kind of by-fans-forfans private joke. The ruse worked, usually at the expense of stuffy musicologists: Fahey’s Fonotone recordings as Blind Thomas won a critics’ poll as Greatest Pre-War Blues Artist in the scholarly blues magazine Special Rider Rag. Fahey even adapted the conceit for “Blind Joe Death,” which purported to be a split LP between himself and the lost bluesman Death, and for other early LPs.

Fonotone was part of an underground nation of old-time music nuts. Bussard and his friends were neither as commercially minded as the vintage record collectors in the 1960s bluesrock band Canned Heat, which made a dent in the pop scene and even appeared at Woodstock. Nor were they as wigged out as the Fugs or the Holy Modal Rounders, two groups from the 1960s that mixed the old-timey element with beatnik poetry and good old-fashioned Lower East Side degeneracy.

Even though each disc in the collection has a different title (“Some Summer Day,” “Wild Mountain Ramble,” etc.), there’s no apparent thematic or chronological organization, and the programming is apparently random, a disappointment to the DJ and/or curator inside all (well, some) of us.

The box includes a thick booklet with quotations from Bussard and his accomplices about each of the selections and fake archival articles tracing the evolution of the label (a nice touch in keeping with the Fonotone spirit). The design by Susan Archie features eyecatching black-and-white photos, and the whole package is attractive though suitably modest compared to Revenant’s massive Charlie Patton box set (for which Archie won a Grammy).

Still, if you’re wading through the booklet or the two dozen full-color postcards depicting the performers while the songs sparkle on a 21st-century sound system, you can’t help but feel a twinge of remorse akin to holding a giltedged bound volume of golden-era comics as opposed to the vintage, holy relic originals – the cheap, almost throwaway product with a lasting artistic value and a meek-shall-inherit-the-earth vibe.