The real ‘Big Bang’ of country music: How Vernon Dalhart’s 1924 breakthrough recordings launched a genre

The musicians were working-class Southerners, and depictions of the sessions often portray a savvy record company producer discovering talented but unknown performers.

However, a recording session three years earlier, on Aug. 13, 1924, has a stronger claim to launching country music as a genre. That session instead featured a classically trained singer living in New York City who had previously recorded opera, pop and jazz.

A legendary recording session

In the early 1920s, after years of catering to urban middle- and upper-class listeners – and with emerging competition from radio – recording companies were seeking new markets. They found potential new audiences in Black people craving performances by Black entertainers, as well as among rural white people yearning to hear music that reflected their own tastes and experiences.

After attempting to satisfy these new markets with records made in established Northern studios, recording companies soon determined that it would be easier to discover new talent by recording “in the field” – that is, closer to where the audiences for the new records lived. Many of these commercial “location sessions” – to differentiate such sessions from noncommercial documentary recording by John and Alan Lomax and other folklorists – occurred in the South.

At a June 1923 location session in Atlanta, OKeh Records producer Ralph Peer recorded two performances by a musician from the north Georgia hills named Fiddlin’ John Carson. That 78 rpm release quickly sold out its pressing of 500 copies, demonstrating country music’s commercial potential.

Peer moved on to work for Victor Records and produced the Bristol recording sessions. Among the musicians Peer recorded there were newcomers Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. The so-called “Bristol Sessions” generated modest sales and didn’t outperform other Appalachian sessions of the late 1920s.

But when the Great Depression slowed record sales and dimmed the record industry’s spirit of experimentation, Rodgers – later nicknamed “the Father of Country Music” – and the Carters, who became known as “the First Family of Country Music,” continued to issue new releases. Because of the enduring influence of these two recording artists, scholar Nolan Porterfield dubbed the Bristol Sessions “the Big Bang of Country Music” in 1988.

The city of Bristol has promoted itself as “the Birthplace of Country Music.” The Bristol story has become the mainstream country music origin story, inspiring the Smithsonian-affiliated Birthplace of Country Music museum.

Country boy turned city slicker

More recently, though, that story has been reexamined by several music historians, including Porterfield, who in 2015 retracted the sobriquet he had coined.

The Bristol-centered origin story denies earlier – but no less vital – contributions to the genre by such pioneering recording artists as Carson, Uncle Dave Macon, Riley Puckett, Frank Hutchison and Vernon Dalhart.

Indeed, if any artist should be considered as having proved the commercial viability of country music, it is Dalhart. Born Marion Try Slaughter II in Jefferson, Texas, on April 6, 1883, Dalhart grew up singing for family and neighbors in his East Texas hometown. Vernon Dalhart is a pseudonym derived from the names of two Texas towns near where he had worked as a summertime ranch hand during his youth.

Dalhart moved to New York City in 1907, hoping to pursue a career as a grand opera vocalist. He had taken vocal lessons at the Dallas Conservatory of Music before leaving Texas, and, once in New York, he continued his music studies with opera instructor Isador Luckstone. For several years, Dalhart toured nationally with light opera productions.

After 1916, in part to remain closer to some family members who lived near New York City, Dalhart concentrated on a recording career, making light opera, pop and jazz records in a succession of New York City-area studios, including Edison Records, where he was reportedly one of Thomas Edison’s favorite singers.

By the early 1920s, Dalhart was struggling for recording opportunities. Never realizing his aspiration to be received as a serious opera singer – and no longer touring for light opera shows – Dalhart had been relying on recording for his primary income. But he had failed to carve out a distinctive sound and personality to set him apart in the pop and jazz worlds.

Then, on Aug. 13, 1924, Dalhart stumbled on a new path forward. On that day he recorded two songs for the brand-new, not-yet-named country music market: “The Wreck of the Old 97” and “The Prisoner’s Song.” Victor released the two songs on a 78 rpm disc.

Country music’s first big hit

Virginia musician Henry Whitter had recorded “The Wreck of the Old 97” under a different title a few months earlier, to little fanfare. Thinking he could improve upon Whitter’s recording, Dalhart covered this Appalachian ballad about a 1903 train wreck, and while he misinterpreted some of Whitter’s lyrics, Dalhart introduced this now well-known narrative song to countless people beyond the mountains.

“The Prisoner’s Song” was the real revelation of this session. It was the perfect template for country music’s enduring tradition of songs evoking love and unrequited love. Claiming that the song was composed by his cousin Guy Massey, Dalhart received a share of publishing royalties. The song ultimately brought Dalhart fame and a modicum of wealth.

In an era before records were played on radio, this release became country music’s first major hit, selling an estimated 7 million copies (the first recording and subsequent versions combined) from 1924 to 1934 and an additional million copies as sheet music. Both of Dalhart’s breakthrough recordings on Victor are enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

By the time of the Bristol Sessions, Dalhart had already recorded hundreds of country songs for dozens of companies, and a number of Dalhart’s records had become widely popular, including “The Death of Floyd Collins,” a 1925 song about an explorer who had perished in a Kentucky cave; the 1927 smash hit “Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)”; and “The Runaway Train,” a song beloved in the U.K.

In the shadow of Bristol

While he was responsible for an estimated 3,000 commercial releases and was country music’s bestselling recording artist of the 1920s, Dalhart has been marginalized. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1981, but today he has few champions despite the fact that many leading country music stars, including Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, have covered songs from Dalhart’s vast repertoire.

Neglect of Dalhart is likely the result of the impression that he, an opera singer with formal musical training, lacked the authenticity to be considered a country musician, despite his deep Texas roots. Dalhart recorded for many labels under many pseudonyms, and his massive discography defies easy characterization.

The only biography of Dalhart to date, published in 2004 and written by Dalhart devotee Jack Palmer, was an earnest effort to establish the singer as “the first star of country music,” but that book quickly fell out of print.

To acknowledge the centennial of Dalhart’s emergence as a seminal figure in country music, Rivermont Records plans to release a box set in November 2024 featuring 100 of the singer’s key recordings from throughout his career. I believe it will be just and overdue commemoration.

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