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Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?': the Johnson City Sessions Ted Olson East Tennessee State University, [email protected]

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Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?': the Johnson City Sessions Ted Olson East Tennessee State University, Olson@Etsu.Edu East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University ETSU Faculty Works Faculty Works 2013 'Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?': The Johnson City Sessions Ted Olson East Tennessee State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works Part of the Appalachian Studies Commons, and the Music Commons Citation Information Olson, Ted. 2013. 'Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?': The oJ hnson City Sessions. The Old-Time Herald. Vol.13(6). 10-17. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-13/13-6/johnsoncity.html ISSN: 1040-3582 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Works at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in ETSU Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 'Can You Sing Or Play Old-Time Music?': The ohnsonJ City Sessions Copyright Statement © Ted Olson This article is available at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University: https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1218 «'CAN YOU SING OR PLAY OLD-TIME MUSIC?" THE JOHNSON CITY SESSIONS By Ted Olson n a recent interview, musician Wynton Marsalis said, "I can't tell The idea of transporting recording you how many times I've suggested to musicians to get The Bristol equipment to Appalachia was, to record Sessions—Anglo-American folk music. It's a lot of different types of companies, a shift from their previous music: Appalachian, country, hillbilly. It's folk music in the Anglo- practice of depending on Appalachian musicians to leave the region to make IAmerican tradition. It's essential for musicians to know that." Johnny records in the large Southern cities, or Cash (who was not entirely unbiased, since he had married into the fa- up North. While these 1925 recordings mous family group "discovered" in Bristol) once referred to the 1927 Bris- from Asheville were hampered by the tol Sessions as "the single most important event in the history of country limited dynamic range rendered by ana- music." Scholar Nolan Porterfield went so far as to suggest that, "As a log recording. Peer realized that there was sort of shorthand notation, [the Bristol Sessions have] come to signal the more talent to be mined in the mountains. After accepting a position with Victor Re- Big Bang of country music evolution." cords in 1926, Peer began to speculate as to where his next recording foray in Ap- As important as Victor Records' 1927 genres, including old-üme, Americana, alt- palachia should be. Working with Ernest Bristol Sessions were (and are), the atten- country, bluegrass, and rock. Stoneman, who was by that time already a tion paid to their impact has led to a gen- For several years before the Bristol Ses- successful "hillbilly" recording artist, and eral neglect of the larger phenomenon sions, record companies had been setting who hailed from southwestern Virginia, of "location recording sessions" in Ap- up recording sessions on location near the Peer selected Bristol, a small yet modern palachia. The most noteworthy location places where Southern musicians actually city situated on the border between Vir- recording sessions to be staged in Appa- lived. This practice began in such major ginia and Tennessee, and a crossroads for lachia after the 1927 Bristol Sessions were Southern cities as Atlanta and Memphis, rail and automobile transportation. those held by Columbia Records in Oc- where A&R (Artist & Repertoire) scouts The Bristol Sessions recordings of 1927- tober 1928 and in October 1929, only 25 (in contemporary parlance, record pro- 1928 were dramatically superior to those miles away from Bristol in Johnson City, ducers) sought out traditional and pro- made at the 1925 Asheville Sessions. Tennessee, then a boomtown and a bus- fessional musicians in the effort to create Whereas the sessions in Asheville had tling railroad hub. Though they did not commercially viable records. By the early made use of low-fidelity acoustic horn uncover musicians of the caliber of Jim- 1920s, A&R scouts focused on finding microphones, for the Bristol Sessions mie Rodgers and the Carter Family, who black musicians to perform blues and jazz Peer utilized the recently-introduced first recorded in Bristol, the sessions in numbers, as such records were proving electronic carbon microphone system, Johnson City generated many fascinating popular to a broad record-buying audi- which made it possible to capture a full- recordings. Indeed, Columbia's Johnson ence. In June 1923, Ralph Peer, then work- er, more natural dynamic range of sound. City Sessions, taken as an entire corpus, ing for OKeh Records, cut and released The commercial success of many of are as worthy of our attention today as the first commercial record of Southern Peer's Bristol Sessions records for Victor the recordings made in Bristol for Victor. vernacular music by a white musician, led A&R scouts from competing record The Bristol Sessions, conducted by Vic- Fiddlin' John Carson. The record's success companies to set up location recording tor Records producer Ralph Peer in July proved that there was an audience for sessions in and near Appalachia. Other - August 1927, yielded memorable record- the new commercial music genre, which such occasions included a September ings by influential Appalachian musicians, would be referred to by several names, 1927 session by OKeh in Winston-Salem, including such often-overlooked old-time including "hillbilly music," and which North Carolina; a February 1928 session music luminaries as Ernest Stoneman, Bund would eventually be termed "country and by the Brunswick label in Ashland, Ken- Alfred Reed, Henry Whitter, Ernest Phipps, western" and then "country music." tucky; two sessions, in August 1929 and and Alfred G. Kames, as well as artists who There was one location recording ses- in April 1930, by Brunswick in Knoxville, would change the direction of country mu- sion in Appalachia before the Bristol Tennessee; and Columbia Records' John- sic—Jimmie Rodgers and fhe Carter Family. Sessions: Peer's 1925 recording visit for son City Sessions in October 1928 and Experiencing commercial success with the OKeh Records to Asheville, North Caro- October 1929. recordings and management contracts he lina. In late August and early September Peer's Bristol Sessions recordings were had generated in Bristol that summer. Peer 1925, Peer set up a temporary studio in revolutionary in their influence, of course, returned the next year to make additional Asheville's George Vanderbilt Hotel and but the Johnson City recordings, overseen recordings by Stoneman and his group, recorded such important 1920s-era mu- by Columbia's pioneering A&R scout Ernest Phipps and his quartet, Kames, and sicians as Stoneman, Whitter, Bascom Frank B. Walker, reflect Walker's more other musicians. The location recording ses- Lamar Lunsford, Wade Ward, and Kelly eclectic tastes and keener sense of humor. sions Peer conducted in Bristol became leg- Harrell. (In the fall of 1925, Robert W. Indeed, the recordings from the Johnson endary for having marked the emergence Gordon of the Library of Congress also City Sessions provide a disfinctly different of the modem country music industry and, traveled to Appalachia to make noncom- portrayal of Appalachian music. Peer was equally important, for continuing to in- mercial documentary cylinder record- interested primarily in capturing vocal spire musicians working in a range of other ings of regional music.) performances of sacred material or secular THE OLD-TIME HERALD WWW.OLDT1MEHERALD.ORG VOLUME 13, NUMBER 6 11 12 THE OLD-TIME HERALD WWW.OLDTIMEHERALD.ORG VOLUME 13, NUMBER 6 songs with concisely-structured lyrics pro- jecfing generalized emofions—ostensibly to reach the broadest possible audience. For his part. Walker maintained an ojDen- tent approach, which led him to make re- cordings that would not have interested Peer. And by the sheer happenstance of who showed up to make records for Walk- er, the Johnson City Sessions also docu- mented some different regional sounds and styles from those recorded during the Bristol Sessions. Walker recorded a wide range of Appalachian musicians, primarily from Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and North Carolina. In Bristol, Peer had recorded musicians from the first three of those states plus Virginia, but had not attracted North Carolinians. Like Peer, Frank Walker was a pioneer of the commercial recorded sound industry. Born in 1889 and reared in Fly Summit, New York, Walker when young played music in a string band and ultimately considered rural white vernacular music as his "first love" (his own words, taken from his interview with Mike Seeger). After World War I Walker promoted concerts for Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso, then left to work for Columbia Records. By 1923 he was successfully re- cording Bessie Smith and other blues per- formers. (By his own recollection. Walker had already begun recording rural white music by 1922. He claimed that his label, believing such music was commercially unprofitable, refused to release these ear- lier recordings.) By January 1925, he had convinced Columbia to launch a series of commercial records that eventually featured performances by such white musicians as Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, and Charlie Poole. As was the industry standard at the time. Walker inifially worked in temporary studios set up in lowland Southern cities. After Peer's success at Bristol in 1927, Walker decided to set up his own temporary studio in nearby Johnson City. A few of the 78 RPM records made in Johnson City in 1928 sold well when re- leased by Columbia in early 1929. One record by the duo of Earl Shirkey and Roy Harper, "Steamboat Man" backed with "When the Roses Bloom Again for the Bootlegger," sold nearly 75,000 cop- ies.
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