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

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Ted Olson, East Tennessee State University

(THE CONVERSATION) Country music’s origin story has been heavily influenced by a romanticized notion of authenticity. Today, celebrations of the genre’s origins tend to focus on one event: recording sessions in late July and early August 1927 in the small Appalachian city of Bristol, located on the Tennessee-Virginia border.

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...