Virginia's folk culture in country music: Part One

Note from the Editors: The Cadet and The Cadet Foundation are happy to consider submissions from individuals from outside VMI proper and especially from fellow student journalists who want their voices to be heard. This piece was submitted by another neighbor to the north attending Mary Baldwin University and relates to the history of country music within the beautiful state of Virginia. Country music convalesced as a genre in early twentieth century America. Defined by its songs of trouble, heartache, and love, it is one of the most recognizable forms of music today and has established itself as a music by, for, and of the people. The largest influence on its birth was the music and culture of the southern Appalachian region, much of which lies within Virginia (or once did). Virginia, a state rich with its own folk culture, played no small role in country music's inception. Without the Commonwealth, many of the faces, stories, and sounds would be absent, and the country music landscape would be entirely different. Pioneering country artists like the Carter Family have emerged from Virginian hills, several songs have been written about events or life in Virginia, and Virginia still contributes its strong folk culture to the growth and fostering of country music. Songwriter Harlan Howard once defined country music as "three chords and the truth." Those three chords and much of that truth has come from, and can still be found in, the culture of the Old Dominion. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, different folk songs travelled from across the world to the American colonies and later the United States. As the frontier opened a land of possibilities, people moved westward. With the movement of people, so came the movement of culture and song. Music reminded settlers of their homes, told stories of their lives and of their peoples, helped them in their religious worship, and it was a way to find enjoyment in the toil of work and survival. Country music can be traced back to religious music of the eighteenth and nineteenth century rural South. Many songs and musical traditions traveled through America with religious dissenters, according to Bill C. Malone in Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers. Baptists and Methodists began to infiltrate the South and tended to stay towards the East. Presbyterians and German Pietist groups traveled to the South from Pennsylvania by the Shenandoah Valley, staying towards the West. According to Bill C. Malones' Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineeers these groups brought "traditions of music that wedded secular tunes to religious lyrics." Eventually, the music was standardized and recorded through hymnals, which helped perpetuate the songs in southern culture. according to Malone and these rural religious songs began to create a distinctively Southern music style, and they helped pave the way for what became country music. By the nineteenth century, religious music was not enough. Southerners wanted something to dance and tap their feet to, yet there was a guilt felt for listening to secular music. Dancing to traditional folk songs had been popular for upper-class Virginians during the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century, "frolics" became popular events that usually centered around social events or community work, and they were meant for Southerners to dance. Here, music was made that represented and revolved around southern, and Virginian, life. Accompanying dance was the fiddle, but that does not mean the instrument, or the person that played it, was popular. Fiddles are a prominent part of the country music subgenre, bluegrass, and have made appearances many times in country music throughout the years. In nineteenth-century America, this now-defining instrument was looked down upon. It was popular among the elite in colonial Virginia, and after independence it was associated with England and began to lose some favor. There was also an old cultural image that the Devil was a fiddler. The fiddle, while looked down on, was in a paradox of still being loved by many people throughout the South. It actually became a tool for democratizing southern music, with rich and poor, as well as white and black, living within a strong folk culture. In that culture, folk music was able to travel across stratified social lines and help grow a southern musical identity in early America that would eventually be tapped into by the commercial music industry. In the early twentieth century, music recording had become a burgeoning industry. Eventually, recording companies' eyes turned to the music of the South that had grown into its distinctive sound over the many years prior. "The 1927 Bristol Sessions Story" explains that many recording companies, namely the Victor Talking Machine Company, began looking for lucrative new genres to record. Starting with recordings in 1922 of a fiddler named Eck Robertson, "hillbilly music" was born. A popular song about a Virginian event, "Wreck of the Old 97," was recorded by Vernon Dallhart in 1922. The song tells the story about a train (the Old 97) traveling then crashing in Danville, Virginia. A story, focused on Virginia, was brought into national listening, and it continued to stay there. Later artists like the folk group The Seekers, country giant Johnny Cash, and even John Mellencamp covered the tune. Virginia already had one large contribution to country music from the beginning. Throughout the decade, more and more artists were recorded at location recording sessions, which meant the companies set up a temporary studio in a place to find local talent representing the area's music and culture. The most popular session, and the most important to country music, happened in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia. It came to be known as the birthplace of country music. Bristol was chosen because it and the surrounding area were well-known for their strong folk music culture. When the location had been established, the Victor Talking Machine Company placed an advertisement in newspapers to entice local artists to record folk songs they had learned as well as their own material. Inside of an old hat company building, the temporary studio was set up on July 22,1927. The sessions began on July 25 and ran through August 5. During those two weeks, artists from all over the region poured into the studio, especially artists from Virginia. A newspaper article from The Bristol News Bulletin published on July 27, 1927, recounts, with a tinge of pride, "Mountain Songs Recorded Here by Victor Co." A prominent figure it noted was Earnest Stoneman and his band from Grayson County, Virginia, who played popular folk songs like "I Love My Lulu Bell." The article goes on to list other artists and songs that were recorded, and it notes that there are people constantly in and out of the Bristol Sessions studio.The Bulletin, unknowingly at the time, provided an insight into the excitement of sharing Appalachian folk culture. In Bristol, the sounds of Appalachia, especially those of Virginia, could be shared with the world. The group whose name became closely associated with the Sessions, the Carter Family, brought songs from Virginian hills and established themselves as figureheads of country music. There is more to follow. Look for part two of "Virginia's Folk Culture in Country Music" in the next issue of The Cadet. The next installment will go further into the influences of Virginia's rich culture in country music. Shane Woods is a history major at Mary Baldwin University and works at the Frontier Culture Museum located in Staunton.