East Tennessee State University Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University ETSU Faculty Works Faculty Works 1-1-2016 The 1927 rB istol Sessions and Ralph Peer: A Myth and A Legend Losing Luster in the Cold Light of Recent Scholarship 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. 2016. The 1927 rB istol Sessions and Ralph Peer: A Myth and A Legend Losing Luster in the Cold Light of Recent Scholarship. The Old-Time Herald. Vol.14(3). 20-22. http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-14/14-3/ bristol.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]. The 1927 rB istol Sessions and Ralph Peer: A Myth and A Legend Losing Luster in the Cold Light of Recent Scholarship Copyright Statement © Ted Olson This article is available at Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University: https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1203 THE 1927 BRISTOL SESSIONS AND RALPH PEER: A MYTH AND A LEGEND LOSING LUSTER IN THE COLD LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP By Ted Olson he so-called 1927 Bristol sessions-the recording sessions conducted in Bristol, Ten­ nessee / Virginia, during July-August 1927 by A&R (Artists & Repertoire) producer TRalph Peer and his employer, the Victor Talking Machine Company-garnered relatively little attention until the 1970s. At that point, a few scholars (notably, music his­ torians Charles K. Wolfe, Bill C. Malone, Tony Russell, and Nolan Porterfield) and some serious music fans began to view this long-ago event in a small Appalachian city as one of the most important recording sessions of all time. As evidence of the distinctiveness of those sessions, these scholars pointed to Peer's "discovery" in Bristol, while record­ ing amateur and semi-professional musicians from Appalachia during the summer of 1927, of future country music superstars the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Also, observed these scholars, at the 1927 Bristol sessions (Peer would hold additional sessions in Bristol the next year, so one needs to specify the year) Peer introduced an influential music business model that involved song publishing and artist management contracts. According to the emerging narrative, the modern country music industry was thus a direct outgrowth of the 1927 Bristol sessions. Sealing the fate of the sessions were two now oft-quoted phrases that emerged during the 1980s. In the mid-1980s Bristol's politi­ cal leaders began referring to their city as the "birthplace" of country music. And in 1988 Porterfield referred to the 1927 Bristol sessions as a "big bang of Country Music evolu­ tion." Eventually people began repeating the two phrases as sobriquets-"the Birthplace of Country Music" and "the Big Bang of Country Music" -and those separate yet related notions, repeated incessantly, soon took on the gravitas of myth and legend. I too have pondered the Bristol sessions also spawned some w1exceptional record­ the first vocal performance by a blues act, story, having co-authored two books ings. The Museum's generalizing, multi­ a 1920 record fea turing "Crazy Blues" by (one with Charles Wolfe, the other with media approach to telling the story of the Mamie Smith, Walker three years later Tony Russell) exploring the subject and 1927 Bristol sessions tends to smooth over signed Bessie Smith, who would prove to having produced the 2011 Bear Family nuances and ignore subtle1~ more contextu­ be the most influential and popular per­ Records box set in which the complete alized interpretations of the event. The in­ former among the many early blues acts. contents of the 1927 and 1928 Bristol ses­ formed museun1-goer 111.ight well wonder Peer may have "discovered" the Carter sions-including alternate takes-were what the fuss is all about. One can't help Family and Jimmie Rodgers in Bristol first made available publicly. And I have but wonder if the 1927 Bristol sessions, pre­ in 1927, but Walker had by that time al­ noticed how often the 1927 Bristol ses­ viously infused with mystique only a few ready signed and recorded such iconic sions and Ralph Peer are mentioned in years ago, will soon be viewed not as cata­ 1920s-era "hillbilly music" acts as Riley general conversations about American clysmic, but as a business-as-usual location Puckett, Gid Tanner, Charlie Poole, and music, even though such conversations recording session of the 1920s and 1930s. Vernon Dalhart. Decades later, these acts rarely divulge more than skeletal facts In the final analysis, that is what that event would not matter as much to the Nash­ about that event or about the man who was-one of many, and not the first, not ville country music industry because made the event possible. Indeed, people the last, and perhaps not even the best. they did not compose the kinds of songs have tended to speak of both with a kind The second 2014 occurrence to force a readily reinterpreted by subsequent re­ of rapturous language u sually reserved reassessment of the 1927 Bristol sessions cording acts, yet Walker's mid-1920s for cultural myths and legends. was the publication of a book that reveals "hillbilly music" signees were w1deni­ Because of ongoing scholarship, though, fue man behind the myth. While receiving ably influential (Poole, in particulai~ has the mystique of the 1927 Bristol sessions less fanfare than the Birthplace of Country had a lasting impact). Peer's location re­ and the centrality of Peer in the music in­ Music Museum, this book-Ralph Peer and cordings in Bristol in 1927 may have be­ dustry he helped to create are being sub­ the Making of Popular Roots Music (Chicago come the catalyst for a legend, yet Walker jected to widespread scrutiny, and this may Review Press), written by music journalist oversaw recording sessions in 1928 and necessarily alter the narrative. As more Barry Mazor-has made the deeper con­ 1929 in nearby Johnson City, Tennessee, people enter the fray of discussions over tribution toward expanding our collective that rivaled Peer's Bristol work in terms the significance of this early-but indis­ understanding of the 1927 Bristol sessions of yielding powerful, even iconic record­ putably not the earliest-event in country and their ultimate influence. The first ings; less focused on finding potential music history, some will accept the estab­ biographical study of a seminal figure in "hits" or publishable songs than Peer's lished narrative, while others will invari­ commercial recording history, Mazor's Bristol sessions, Walker's Johnson City ably challenge it. This will no doubt result book positions Ralph Peer as the founding sessions were more wide-ranging, gen­ from the broader dissemination of facts father of the commercial music industry erating records that represented a broad­ and the deeper font of knowledge made and the linchpin of American roots music. er overview of regional music sounds possible by two recent developments. Some of the book's justification for plac­ and styles associated with Appalachian The first is the opening of downtown ing Peer on such a pedestal hinges on the whites of that era (the story of Walker's Bristol's multi-million-dollar Birthplace of old narrative of the perceived superiority Johnson City sessions is documented Country Music Museum, which celebrates of the 1927 Bristol sessions as a singular in a 2013 boxed set I co-produced with (some might say capitalizes on) the 1927 historical event. Mazor writes: "If anyone, Tony Russell for Bear Family Records). Bristol sessions. To place that historical even then, saw broader potential or musi­ The 1929-1930 Knoxville sessions for event into an approachable cultural frame­ cal power in the down-home roots music Brunswick/ Vocalion, conducted by A&R work, the museum attempts to render ac­ being skipped over so cavalierly, they cer­ producer Richard Voynow, yielded re­ cessible a narrative previously advanced tainly weren't doing anything about it. .. cordings by a more diverse array of Ap­ to a specialist audience by a small cadre And then Ralph Peer came along. He saw palachia-based musicians-jazz, blues, of music historians; yet, through this mu­ as much potential in passed-over, under­ and black gospel acts, as well as "hillbil­ seum's simplified and sentimentalized explored, professionally neglected music, ly" acts of every variety-than heard in presentation of the event, the narrative and did as much to make someiliing of it, Bristol and Johnson City combined (this about the distinctiveness of the Bristol as any one person has" (page 3). exceptional diversity of Appalachian re­ sessions-pitched for a mainstream audi­ As such, Mazor's book arguably over­ gional music is now documented on the ence-arguably weakens, with the 1927 reaches, as Peer was not the only recordist 2016 Bear Family Records boxed set that Bristol sessions recordings collectively fall­ during this era to seek out and make com­ Russell and I produced in order to com­ ing short of the expectations placed upon mercial recordings of talented amateur plete the trilogy of East Tennessee loca­ them by the weight of hype and public and semi-professional musicians repre­ tion recording sessions). opinion. Like other location recording ses­ senting various folk and popular music Mazor's book describes how, by the late sions in the American South from the 1920s genres.