The Bristol Sessions: The Big Bang of Country Music

In the summer of 1927, in a rented building on State Street in Bristol, Tennessee, a talent scout named Ralph Peer pressed "record" and changed American music forever.

Ralph Peer worked for the Victor Talking Machine Company, one of the major record labels of the era. Peer had already demonstrated a talent for finding commercial potential in regional folk music — he had recorded Fiddlin' John Carson in Atlanta in 1923, launching the commercial "hillbilly" music industry. But Peer believed there was more untapped talent in the Appalachian mountains, and he set out to find it.

Peer chose Bristol for practical reasons: it was a railroad town, centrally located in the Appalachian region, and accessible to the rural musicians he wanted to record. He set up a temporary recording studio in a vacant building at 408 State Street — the street that straddles the Tennessee-Virginia state line — and put out word through local newspapers and radio that he was looking for talent.

The recording sessions ran from July 25 to August 5, 1927. In those twelve days, Peer recorded nineteen artists and groups, capturing 76 individual recordings. Most of those artists faded into obscurity. Two did not.

A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and his sister-in-law Maybelle Carter drove from Maces Spring, Virginia, to Bristol to audition for Peer. They performed six songs on August 1 and 2, including "The Wandering Boy" and "Single Girl, Married Girl." Peer immediately recognized their commercial potential.

The Carter Family's recordings from the Bristol Sessions launched one of the most influential careers in American music. Their repertoire of traditional Appalachian songs, Sara's distinctive vocal style, and Maybelle's revolutionary guitar technique (the "Carter scratch," which allowed her to play melody and rhythm simultaneously) established the template for country music instrumentation and vocal style for generations.

The Carter Family's influence is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of record. Their songs — "Wildwood Flower," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," "Keep on the Sunny Side" — are foundational texts of American popular music.

Jimmie Rodgers, a former railroad brakeman from Meridian, Mississippi, arrived in Bristol with a group called the Jimmie Rodgers Entertainers. After a dispute with his bandmates, Rodgers recorded solo for Peer on August 4, performing "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep."

Rodgers's recordings revealed a performer who combined blues, yodeling, and folk music into something entirely new. His subsequent recordings for Victor — including "Blue Yodel (T for Texas)" — made him the first solo star of country music and one of the best-selling recording artists of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Rodgers died of tuberculosis in 1933 at age 35, but his influence on country music, rock and roll, and popular music broadly is immeasurable. He was among the first three inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961.

The 1927 Bristol Sessions didn't create country music — the musical traditions that Peer recorded had existed in Appalachia for generations. But the Bristol Sessions did something equally important: they proved that Appalachian folk music had commercial value. Peer demonstrated that rural musicians could sell records, that regional music had national appeal, and that the mountains held an untapped reservoir of artistic talent.

The sessions launched the careers of the two acts — the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers — who would define the first generation of commercial country music. Every country artist who followed owes something to what happened in that rented building on State Street.

In 1998, the U.S. Congress officially recognized Bristol as the "Birthplace of Country Music." The designation is not honorary. It is descriptive.

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum opened in Bristol in 2014 as a Smithsonian affiliate. The museum tells the Bristol Sessions story through immersive exhibits, rare recordings, interactive experiences, and careful scholarship. Visitors can hear the original recordings, explore the cultural context that produced the music, and understand why twelve days in a small Appalachian city changed the sound of the world.

The museum sits steps from where Peer set up his studio. When you stand on State Street — one foot in Tennessee, one foot in Virginia — and listen to the Carter Family's voices coming through museum speakers, the distance between 1927 and today collapses entirely.