Earliest Banjo and Folk Music Recordings
At the end of the Nineteenth Century and start of the Twentieth during the earliest era of commercial acoustic music, sound spectrum recording limitations made some instruments more favorable to capture than others. In this, the banjo was advantageous. Banjo performers like Vess Ossman [Columbia A228] became popular and were widely recorded.
Ossman and other recorded contemporaries played a plectrum banjo style used for pop and ragtime material. This was neither an African-based clawhammer playing style nor material adjacent to old-time country music. Even when traditional American songs were released through popular singers like Vernon Dalhart, it was in a distinctly pop patina.
The First Country Music Recordings – The Fiddlers
Fiddlers Henry C. Gilliland and A. C. “Eck” Robertson are usually credited with the first commercial country record [Victor 18956]. Limited distribution began September 1, 1922; the record was brought into full circulation by April 1923 [New Victor Records April 1923].
In August, Fiddlin’ John Carson’s inaugural release became the first successful, trend-starting country music record, prompting Victor to release more material from Gilliland and Robertson’s June 30 and July 1, 1922 session [Victor 19149] and OKeh to bring Carson back for a second studio session [OKeh 40020].
Columbia strategically signed John Carson’s fiddle convention rival, Gid Tanner, and organized a band of well-known regional players like fiddler Clayton McMichen and blind guitarist Riley Puckett. The first song they recorded was Hand Me Down My Walking Cane [Columbia 15091-D] in 1926. This ensemble, dubbed Gid Tanner and His Skillet-Lickers with Riley Puckett, released early hits like Dance All Night With A Bottle In Your Hand [Columbia 15108-D] and captured one of the oldest pre-Civil War Black-composed plantation songs, Run Nigger Run [Columbia 15158-D].
The First Country Music Recordings – The Singers and String Bands
Henry Whitter became the first recorded country singer by December of 1923. He performed harmonica pieces and sang tunes over simple guitar work. Subsequent sessions recruited more musicians; in 1924 and 1925, several records were released as Whitter’s Virginia Breakdowners, employing John Rector’s banjo and James Sutphin’s fiddle [OKeh 1925].
Samantha Bumgarner and Eva Davis were the first female act to record country music. Three months later, Roba Stanley became the second. Her first recordings with William Patterson [OKeh 40213] took place in July of 1924 when she was fourteen or sixteen years old.
Also in 1924, Fiddlin’ Powers and Family cut seventeen tunes, of which Victor released eight sides [Victor 19434, Victor 19448, Victor 19449, Victor 19450]. The ensemble was comprised of James Cowan Powers and his still-growing children and was the first instance of recording a working string band – one consistently performing for pay. Their records sold well, rousing interest from rival companies.
In this early period of recorded old-time music, record companies didn’t use a consistent label for the genre. Then, during the first session of a band fronted by Al Hopkins [OKeh 40336], recording engineer Ralph Peer asked what the group’s name should be listed as. Hopkins responded, “Call us anything. We’re nothing but a bunch of hillbillies from North Carolina and Virginia.” The band’s subsequent label, the Hill Billies, provided the appellation by which magazines and newspapers started calling the genre. Hillbilly music would only be renamed in the 1950s – but the Hill Billies were going by Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters by the end of the '20s [Brunswick 175].
Hillbilly music was eclectic from the beginning, encompassing such diverse sounds as Western cowboy songs and Appalachian ballads. The 1920s captured authentic old-time music, heard in repertoire like fiddle and guitar-clawhammer banjo duo Burnett and Rutherford [Columbia 15122-D]. Recording companies divided music by race, labeling white output as “hillbilly” and Black output as “Race,” and while this created an artificial sonic split, a kaleidoscope of sounds were being performed by all races. This could be heard with material like the Five Harmaniacs jug band [Victor 20293], who, while white, played with a close ear to Black music and the blues.
The Bristol Sessions
Talent scout, recording engineer, and record producer Ralph Peer had stumbled into a jackpot when he supervised the recording of Mamie Smith’s Crazy Blues, the first blues record aimed at the African-American market. Smith had recorded one pop-oriented release before Crazy Blues in February 1920 [OKeh 4113], the first Black blue singer to cut a record, and who, upon bursting through the color barrier with success, established a new trend in music. More Black women began cutting female blues (also known as vaudeville blues) in the ‘20s.
Ralph Peer similarly supervised the opening floodgates of the hillbilly market when, in 1927, he arranged the Bristol Sessions. The 1927-1928 recording sessions in Bristol, Tennessee are considered the Big Bang of country music, as they launched country music into a viable, professional recording industry, and brought about its first star, Jimmie Rodgers [Victor 20864], and star band, the Carter Family [Victor 21074]. While most material from the Bristol Sessions sold poorly and bands like the West Virginia Coon Hunters [Victor 20862] never recorded again, Rodgers and the Carter Family were quickly brought in for follow-up studio sessions.
The Carter Family’s second session yielded one of their most well-known classics, Keep On The Sunny Side [Victor 21434]. Rodgers, similarly, created history. He recorded Blue Yodel (T for Texas) [Victor 21142]. This began a series of “blue yodels” with risqué lyrics based on the twelve-bar blues. Several of these blue yodels, including T for Texas, are regarded as enduring country music standards.
Birth of Western Swing
The Black music market expanded, and in 1931, Cab Calloway may have become the first African-American to sell a million copies with Minnie the Moocher [Brunswick 6074].
Jazz’s popularity influenced country music’s output. Nowhere is this more evident than the repertoire of Bob Wills, who combined Western string band music with the complex, chromatic music theory and big brass sections of jazz. Western swing hits from Bob Wills came in the 1930s and endured well into the 1940s [Columbia 37313].
North Carolina Banjo and Pre-Bluegrass String Band Music
With the growth of the jazz age, the five-string banjo’s popularity dwindled. A few areas maintained a culture of banjo picking, such as in the North Carolina Piedmont, with its own regional styles. As recorded in the 1920s, Charlie Poole’s two-fingered technique [Columbia 15307-D], with roots in the classical style, became a precursor to a regional three-finger style.
Poole wasn’t the only picker in the area to employ such a regional banjo style. During the 1930s, ten years before bluegrass was born, North Carolinian music like that of Wade Mainer, J. E. Mainer, the Morris Brothers, and their interrelated bands demonstrated markedly similar sounds: blazing tempos; high-energy harmonies; an ensemble of fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar; and a two- or three-fingered banjo taking melodic lead.
Two-finger picker Wade Mainer joined forces with fiddling brother J. E. Mainer and guitarist Zeke Morris to create J. E. Mainer and His Crazy Mountaineers, or, as known after securing a 1935 recording contract, J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers. Wade and Zeke briefly split off for a duo act [Bluebird B-6596, Bluebird B-6993] while J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers recorded in a different lineup [Bluebird B-6440] but returned to J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers (or, Mainer’s Mountaineers) before a June 1936 recording session that employed Junior Misenheimer on fast-rolling, prominent banjo parts [Montgomery Ward M-7006, Montgomery Ward M-7008, Bluebird B-7289].
By 1937, the Mainer brothers had split again and formed separate bands. The offshoot with J. E. Mainer was formed by WIS radio promoter Byron Parker as Byron Parker’s Hillbillies. The Byron Parker-led act took on different names and formulations and lasted to the end of the '40s [Deluxe 5018]. This 1937 formulation, still recording as J. E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, boasted George Morris on guitar, Leonard Stokes on mandolin, J. E. Mainer on fiddle, and three-fingered banjo picker Snuffy Jenkins [Bluebird B-7289], the first three-fingered banjo picker to be heard on radio, and whose style would influence future bluegrass pioneers Don Reno and Earl Scruggs.
Meanwhile, Wade Mainer and Zeke Morris, with the addition of Wiley Morris, took their act to Raleigh on radio station WPTF. By 1938, Wade Mainer and the Morris Brothers split; Mainer created the short-lived Wade Mainer and His Smilin’ Rangers [Bluebird B-7249], which became Wade Mainer and Sons of the Mountaineers [Montgomery Ward M-7559, Montgomery Ward M-7560, Montgomery Ward M-7565]. Zeke and Wiley formed the Morris Brothers.
1930s Brother Acts
In the 1930s, brother acts spread across rural radio stations. These duos sang slow to moderate tempo pieces, focusing on close harmonies, as they accompanied themselves on instruments like guitar, bottle neck guitar, and mandolin. Such groups included the Morris Brothers and the Monroe Brothers.
Perhaps the Morris Brothers’s greatest claim to fame was their arrangement of Let Me Be Your Salty Dog, first put to disc in 1938 [Bluebird B-7937] months before a teenage Earl Scruggs joined the band. That song would become a bluegrass standard when Flatt and Scruggs recorded their version in 1950.
Meanwhile, the Monroe Brothers, comprised of Charlie and Bill Monroe, established a high level of musicianship through higher-speed guitar runs and a unique melody-oriented, fiddle-influenced mandolin style. What Would You Give In Exchange? [Bluebird B-6309] was the start of both men’s recording careers; it was their theme song, first release, first hit, from their first recording session on February 17, 1936.
While performing in the Carolinas, the Monroe Brothers partnered with Byron Parker on radio. They played the radio time slot on WPTF directly after Wade Mainer and the Morris Brothers, and on WIS alongside Byron Parker’s Hillbillies. Here, Bill Monroe came in contact with the string band formulation and even the three-fingered banjo style of the region – all of which became influential when he formed his own band in 1939.
Bill Monroe and the Development of Bluegrass
Bill Monroe formed the Blue Grass Boys in 1939. He used his high-pitched, high-speed version of Mule Skinner Blues to seal an audition with the Grand Ole Opry, give his first Opry performance, and cut his first record as a band leader [Bluebird B-8568]. In the years that followed, Monroe’s style shifted, and he experimented with instrumentation – at one point employing, for instance, accordion player Wilene “Sally Ann” Forrester and two-finger banjo picker Dave Akeman [Columbia 37960].
Following Akeman’s departure, Bill Monroe auditioned and hired Earl Scruggs. Scruggs’s December 8, 1945 debut on the Grand Ole Opry is frequently cited as the birth of bluegrass music.
The 1946-1948 lineup of the Blue Grass Boys, consisting of Bill Monroe on mandolin and tenor vocals, Lester Flatt on guitar and lead vocals, Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, and Howard Watts on bass (sometimes with Birch Monroe [Bill Monroe’s Grand Ole Opry WSM Song Folio No. 1]), are considered the seminal bluegrass band. Their first song recorded in studio was Heavy Traffic Ahead [Columbia 20595] in 1947, though they cut many records [Columbia 37960, Columbia 20488, Columbia 20503, Columbia 20552, Columbia 20612].
The First Major Bluegrass Groups
In early 1948, the classic bluegrass band disbanded. Flatt, Scruggs, and Watts became founding members of a new group, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys. Their first recording sessions contained lingering old-time music elements [Mercury 6181, Mercury 6200], while their third session produced one of the most well-known banjo pieces in music history, Foggy Mountain Breakdown [Mercury 6247]. Their Hurricane Sessions, recorded in Tampa while Hurricane King made landfall on October 20, 1950, produced some of the greatest material from their band [Mercury 6317, Mercury 6333, Mercury 6372].
A renewed interest in banjo arose out of Earl Scruggs’s popularity; today, the predominant, foundational style of banjo worldwide is Scruggs Style. Scruggs continued to push ground; he developed a technique which detuned strings with the tuning peg as part of the melody line. This debuted in 1951 with the release of Earl’s Breakdown [Columbia 20886].
Flatt, Scruggs, and Monroe had a working relationship in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but early straining points formed. This included the release of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, a Scruggs composition subtly altered from Blue Grass Breakdown, under Bill Monroe’s name [Columbia 20552]. In response to Foggy Mountain Breakdown’s success, Monroe composed the highly technical mandolin-led piece Raw Hide [Decca 46392]. Furthermore, recordings from the classic bluegrass band were still being released as late as 1949 – many times, with Lester Flatt’s name credited on them [Columbia 37960, Columbia 20552, Columbia 20612] – which, by now, was aiding Monroe’s competition.
By the end of the 1940s, another band, the Stanley Brothers, played numbers closely imitating Monroe’s style, even releasing a Rich-R-Tone single of Molly and Tenbrooks prior to Monroe’s release [Columbia 20612]. Clashes arose with Flatt and Scruggs, too, when the Stanley Brothers played their material on radio and at performances, and this prompted Carter Stanley to become a prolific songwriter. At the Stanley Brothers’s first recording session on a major label, they recorded Carter’s early piece, The White Dove, in 1949 [Columbia 20577]. Ralph Stanley’s output never grew to be as large and well-known as his brother’s, though he contributed both instrumental and vocal pieces like Hard Times and I Worship You [Mercury 70546].
Meanwhile, the Blue Grass Boys lineup refined Monroe’s style. Bill Monroe’s music by the early 1950s [Bill Monroe Blue Grass Country Songs] was employing high lonesome vocals and “true songs” [Decca 28878], autobiographical songs that would become the bulk of his repertoire in decades following.
Bluegrass Spreads
Monroe felt leery of Flatt and Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers due to their “copying” his band’s sound. Nevertheless, more acts arose with similar styles across every recording label.
Carl Sauceman recorded in 1947 and 1948 before the first Flatt and Scruggs recording session [Mercury 6130]. He stayed regional but continued recording and performing in the 1950s [Capitol 2121]. Shannon Grayson was picking three-fingered banjo in North Carolina with the Briarhoppers by 1942; in 1950, he was heading his own band with a style that nobody today would second-guess as bluegrass [King 880, King 892].
Mac Wiseman, who worked as both an inaugural member of the Foggy Mountain Boys and a Blue Grass Boy in the late 1940s, released his first single [Dot 1091] in 1952. The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers [RCA Victor 20-4857] debuted in 1950 with Bobby Osborne, Larry Richardson, Ezra Cline, and Ray Morgan. Smaller acts with small or independent labels, like the Tennessee Valley Boys on Mode, made their way onto record [Mode 101].