How Vernon Dalhart’s groundbreaking 1924 recordings sparked a genre

The origin story of country music has been heavily influenced by a romantic notion of authenticity. Today, celebrations of the genre’s origins tend to focus on one event: the recording sessions in late July and early August 1927 in the small Appalachian town of Bristol, located on the border between Tennessee and Virginia.

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

However, a recording session three years earlier, on August 13, 1924, is more influential in launching country music as a genre. That session, however, featured a classically trained singer living in New York City who had previously recorded opera, pop and jazz.

A legendary recording session

By the early 1920s, after years of catering to middle- and upper-class urban listeners (and with increasing competition from radio), record companies were looking for new markets. They found potential new audiences among blacks who craved performances by black artists, as well as among rural whites who longed to hear music that reflected their own tastes and experiences.

After trying to satisfy these new markets with records made in established Northern studios, record companies soon decided that it would be easier to discover new talent by recording “on the spot,” that is, closer to where the audience for the new records lived. Many of these commercial “location sessions”—to distinguish them from the noncommercial documentary recordings of John and Alan Lomax and other folklorists—were made in the South.

At a session in Atlanta in June 1923, 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 run of 500 copies, demonstrating the commercial potential of country music.

Peer went on to work for Victor Records and produced the Bristol recording sessions. Among the musicians Peer recorded were newcomers Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. The so-called “Bristol sessions” generated modest sales and did not outperform other Appalachia sessions of the late 1920s.

But as the Great Depression slowed record sales and dampened the record industry’s spirit of experimentation, Rodgers (later dubbed “the father of country music”) and the Carters, who became known as “country music’s first family,” continued to release new records. Because of the lasting influence of these two artists, scholar Nolan Porterfield dubbed the Bristol Sessions “country music’s Big Bang” in 1988.

The city of Bristol has been touted as “the birthplace of country music.” Bristol’s history has become the primary origin story of country music, inspiring the Smithsonian-affiliated Birthplace of Country Music museum.

From country boy to urbanite

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

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

In fact, if there’s one artist who has proven the commercial viability of country music, it’s Dalhart. Born Marion Try Slaughter II in Jefferson, Texas, on April 6, 1883, Dalhart grew up singing for his 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 summer ranch hand during his youth.

Dalhart moved to New York City in 1907 hoping to pursue a career as an opera singer. She had taken singing lessons at the Dallas Conservatory of Music before leaving Texas, and once in New York she continued her music studies with opera instructor Isador Luckstone. For several years Dalhart toured nationally with light opera productions.

After 1916, partly 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 at 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 to secure recording opportunities. Having never fulfilled his aspiration to be recognized as a serious opera singer (and not touring for light opera shows), Dalhart relied on recordings for his main income, but had failed to forge a distinctive sound and personality that would set him apart in the worlds of pop and jazz.

On August 13, 1924, Dalhart struck a new path. That day he recorded two songs for the then-unnamed country music market: “The Wreck of the Old 97” and “The Prisoner’s Song.” Victor released both songs on a 78 rpm record.

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, without much fanfare. Thinking he could improve on Whitter’s recording, Dalhart covered this Appalachian ballad about a 1903 train wreck, and although 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 model for country music’s enduring tradition of songs evoking love and unrequited love. Dalhart claimed the song had been composed by her cousin Guy Massey and received a share of the publishing royalties. The song ultimately brought Dalhart fame and a modicum of wealth.

At a time when records were not played on the radio, this release became country music’s first major hit, selling (the first recording and subsequent versions combined) an estimated 7 million copies between 1924 and 1934 and an additional one million copies in sheet music format. Both of Dalhart’s groundbreaking Victor recordings 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 several of his 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 “Lindbergh (The Eagle of the USA)”; and “The Runaway Train,” a beloved song in the United Kingdom.

In the shadow of Bristol

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

Dalhart’s neglect probably stems from the impression that, despite his deep Texas roots, he, an opera singer with formal musical training, lacked the authenticity necessary to be considered a country musician. Dalhart recorded for many record labels under many pseudonyms, and his massive discography defies characterization.

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

To mark the 100th anniversary of Dalhart’s emergence as a seminal figure in country music, Rivermont Records plans to release a box set in November 2024 that will include 100 of the singer’s key recordings from throughout his career. I think it will be a fitting and long-awaited commemoration.