Book Signing for the Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music

The Birthplace of Country Music Aliance will host a book signing, including author discussion and musical performances on August 6th at the BCMA museum. Drs. Ted Olson and Charles Wolfe, co-editors of the newly released Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music will be at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, lower level Bristol Mall, on Saturday August 6 from 11:00 A.M. until 1:00 P.M. for a book signing, discussion, and musical performance.

The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music is a collection of nineteen essays which provide a definitive overview of the historical musical events of the region. “Dr. Olson and Wolfe have combined new research, current scholarship, and first-hand accounts to present in a comprehensive, lively, and readable form the story of one of the pivotal developments in country, bluegrass, and traditional American music,” commented Bill Hartley, Executive Director of the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance.

The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music provides the reader with an overview of the people and music from our region that was carried around the world and remains popular today. It includes essays about the historic significance of the 1927 Bristol Sessions and other early recording sessions in the region, firsthand accounts, essays about the performers who attended the sessions, essay about the musicological significance of the sessions, and an overview of the continuing legacy of those recordings in the region. Copies of The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music are for sale in the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance Gift Shop.

In the summer of 1927, Ralph Peer, a record producer for Victor Talking Machine Company, traveled to Bristol to record traditional mountain music. Artists throughout the mountain empire traveled to Peer’s make-shift recording studio in a warehouse in downtown Bristol, on the Tennessee side of the street. During his twelve days in Bristol, Peer recorded seventy-six performances by nineteen different groups, capturing a wide cross-section of music including old pop and vaudeville songs, traditional mountain ballads, fiddle and banjo tunes, and gospel songs.

From these recording sessions came the discovery of the first country music "stars," Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family, and these "Bristol Sessions" mark the beginning of what became country music. Music Historians have called those sessions, the “Big Bang of Country Music,” and they have recently been recognized by the Library of Congress and one of the nation’s fifty most important recorded sounds.

At the book-signing, Wolfe and Olson will discuss their new book as well as talk about the historical impact of the Bristol sessions. Also appearing at the book-signing will be John Lilly, a noted writer-musician from West Virginia who contributed two essays to The Bristol Sessions: Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music. In addition to talking about his participation in the book, Lilly will perform songs from the Bristol sessions-era and will also sign copies of his newly reissued CD, Blue Highway: Old-Time Songs and Long Bow Fiddle. John Lilly was accompanied on that CD by the late Ralph Blizard, renowned old-time fiddler and National heritage Fellowship recipient. The new Bristol sessions book is dedicated to Blizard, to acknowledge the fiddler’s important role in reviving interest among younger generations of Tri-Cities residents in the area’s internationally renowned musical legacy.

Ted Olson is an associate professor at ETSU, where he teaches courses in Appalachian studies and English. He is the author of several other works, including Blue Ridge Folklife. Charles Wolfe is a professor of English and Folklore at Middle Tennessee State University and a leading historian of American music history, is the author of approximately twenty books, including A Good-Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry, The Devil’s Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling, Tennessee Strings: The Story of Country Music in Tennessee, as well as a forthcoming book on Bill Monroe, the founder of bluegrass music.

The Birthplace of Country Music Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to telling the story of the living musical heritage of the Appalachian mountains and the cultural traditions that sustain it. The BCMA is funded in part by grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Tennessee Arts Commission. For more information, call (276) 645-0111.