Virginia - Tennessee

Heritage Music Trail

Submitted by Kathleen Walls Contributing Editor AmericanRoads.net

There are three stops on Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail called “The Crooked Road”

When you stand in the middle of Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia’s main street, State Street, you have one foot in Tennessee and one in Virginia.

Bristol is known as the Birthplace of Country Music and is the perfect place to explore the beginnings of American music. Yes, Americans, both Black and white, had been creating music on porches, in fields, and in churches, for a while, but recording was a new science that made the music portable and readily available. It was “The Big Bang” of music.

Bristol: Birthplace of Country Music

The place to start your journey is the Birthplace of Country Music Museum. The Museum tells the story of the famous 1927 Bristol Sessions. It’s done with videos and interactiveexhibits where you can listen, mix, and even record your own versions of the songs from that session.

Ralph Peer, who was a producer for Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Victor, wanted to record “Hillbilly music” using the newest electrical recording equipment developed in 1925. He asked Ernest Stoneman, who was already playing and recording that music with his wife, Hattie, where would be the best place to set up recording sessions?

Remember, although due to segregation and the mores of that time, music was classified by race, there was already a big crossover of music. The banjo, an African instrument, was common in “Hillbilly bands” of the time. The blues, considered “race music,” melded into much so-called white music. El Watson was the lone African American artist to record at Bristol Sessions. He recorded “Pot Licker Blues” and “Cold Penitentiary Blues.”

He was backed by white musician Charles Johnson, who played guitar on Watson’s recordings. Watson returned the favor, played bones on a few songs recorded by the Johnson Brothers. These are some of the earliest integrated recordings of country music. When Peer returned to Bristol in 1928 to record more musicians, another African American act was a duo Tarter & Gay. Like Watson, they recorded two sides, “Brownie Blues” and “Unknown Blues.” They were all labeled race records, not country.

Two of the most revered names in country music came out of the 1927 sessions, Jimmy Rogers and The Carter Family. A.P. Carter traveled around the Appalachians collecting the old-time ballads brought from mostly Scotland and Ireland by settlers both before and after the Bristol Sessions. After Bristol, A.P. became friends with a Black one-legged guitar player named Lesley Riddle. They traveled in the remote areas collecting songs. Since a white man coming to an isolated mountain, black home would have been unlikely to be trusted even if he could convince them he wasn’t a lawman or someone out to harm them. A black family would not have welcomed him and invited him to join them in singing on their back porch. White families would have been even less likely to welcome a Black man into their home.

Carter and Riddle had a system that worked. When they approached a home, Carter would go first if it was a white household. Only after he was invited in would he have Riddle join them. They did the opposite with a Black home. Carter would stay in the background until Riddle gained acceptance from the family. Riddle had an almost photographic memory. Once he heard the song, he could later write out the music.

A. P., his wife, Sara, and Maybelle Carter, A.P.’s brother’s wife, and Sara’s cousin, recorded six songs “Bury Me Under The Weeping Willow,” “Little Log Cabin By The Sea,” “The Poor Orphan Child,” “The Storms Are On The Ocean,” “Single Girl, Married Girl,” and “The Wandering Boy” in Bristol in 1927.

Jimmie Rodgers from near Meridian, Mississippi, grew up steeped in the African-American music of the Mississippi Delta. Working on the railroad, he heard the songs of the Black gandy dancers as they laid down railroad tracks. He recorded “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.”

Country music, as it emerged in the next few years, was a fusion of the white mountain ballads brought over mainly from Scotland and Ireland and the African-American blues. One video at the museum is amazing. In the May the Circle be Unbroken Theater, as the old song plays, the surround screen shows the multitude of musicians who have sung and recorded the song.

Beginning with The Carter Family, there is the next generation of June Carter Cash and Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, and so many others.

At the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2002, they ranked the 1927 Bristol Sessions among the 50 most significant sound recording events of all time and officially named Bristol “The Birthplace of Country Music.”

Ernest Tube Recording Studio

While you are in Bristol, you can see how records are made today at The Ernest Tube. Clint Holley took me on a tour of where aspiring artists can cut a direct-to-lacquer recording. The Ernest Tube strives to re-create the essence of how people recorded in 1927 with slightly more modern equipment. He records using a Rek-O-Kut Imperial lathe fitted with a mono Grampian cutting head. There’s a compact ’80s-era Sony/MCI desk. He explained the details to me, but not being mechanically inclined, it was over my pay grade. The mixing controls looked complicated, but I loved the open feel of the studio. It’s very personal here when they cut a record.

The studio is in a building older than the Bristol Sessions. Holley and his wife bought it in 2016 and renovated it with the one room open-studio on the ground floor and their living space above. It’s just around the corner from the Birthplace Museum and a few hundred feet from where the Bristol Sessions were held. Sadly, that building burned down and there is a parking lot there with commemorative markers.

When you visit, be sure to visit the bathroom. It’s the most innovative wallpapering job I ever saw using country music ads. If you want to make a record or just do a tour, contact Clint.

Carter Family Fold

Just about a half hour drive from Bristol, you reach one of country music’s most iconic places. On his deathbed, A.P. asked his daughter, Janette, to keep the family’s music alive. She did this by founding The Carter Family Fold, a non-profit dedicated to the old music of the mountains.

A rustic frame building at the base of Clinch Mountain is home to Carter Family Fold. Janette had it built in 1976 and it’s expanded over the years. It carries on the Carter Family’s acoustic music style. Electric instruments are a rare exception. I visited twice. Last time was on the first weekend of August when they hosts a Friday and Saturday festival with craftsmen, good country cooking, and true country music. If you can be there, then it’s great, but any time spent here is wonderful.

You can tour A.P. Carter’s birthplace cabin. It was moved to here from the next valley over. Its original location was in Little Valley. It’s a simple tworoom log cabin with a tin roof and a stone chimney built in the mid-1800s.

The cabin is furnished as it would have been when A.P. was a child. There are family photos, clothing, cooking utensils, and early 20th century furniture. A. P. opened a store in the mid-1940s and ran to shortly before his death in 1960. The white frame building with twin peaked tin roofs is now a museum dedicated to the Carter Family. It was where the first concerts were held before the concert hall was built. It has memorabilia from the entire Carters’ career. There are dresses Sara and Maybelle wore at a 59th year anniversary performance, lots of old instruments, and more.

The band playing the first time I visited was Twin Creeks Stringband, an old-time mountain music group composed of Jared Boyd on claw-hammer banjo and vocal, Chris Prillaman on fiddle, Jason Hambrick playing guitar and vocal, and Stacy Boyd backing it up on his bass. They had the dance floor filled with folks dancing to tunes like “The Long Black Veil” and “Cotton Eye Joe.”

On my second visit, Carson Peters & Iron Mountain was playing first. Carson is a young fiddle player that has the art mastered. Later Whitetop Mountain Band, a family-based bluegrass band from the mountains of Whitetop, Virginia, took the stage. The youngest member, a lady named Martha Spencer, had her little yorkie with her and told us the cute pooch was named Minnie Pearl. They had been dancing a lot while Carson Peters played, and Minnie Pearl looked like she was having a great time. One lady was clogging on a square of wood to make it easier on her feet than the cement floor was. A little girl was bouncing all over the floor with more energy than a dozen adults. Some dancers looked professional, other just people having fun.

Ralph Stanley Museum

The Ralph Stanley Museum is about an hour and a half drive, but well worth it. Ralph Stanley’s Mountain Music helped create bluegrass, although he preferred the term “Mountain Music.” The interactive museum tells about the career of Dr. Ralph Stanley and Mountain Music. Ralph Stanley and his brother Carter formed the Clinch Mountain Boys Band in Norton, Virginia.

Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee, awarded Ralph an honorary Doctor of Music for his contributions to American music. He was the first artist awarded the Traditional American Music Award by the National Endowment for the Humanities and received a Living Legend Award and a National Medal of Arts from the Library of Congress.

The museum is interactive, so get a headset at the front desk and listen to stories and songs throughout. They have all the instruments used in Mountain Music, guitars, mandolins, banjos, and fiddles. The museum tells the story of how mountain music originated in primitive churches and later merged into country and then pop. Ralph Stanley first sang in his family’s Primitive Baptist Church.

I had a wonderful treat when I visited. Dr. Stanley’s grandson, Nathan Stanley, was there, and he sang a song he dedicated to his grandfather, “He’ll Always Be Papaw to Me.”

Lodging

Bristol Hotel is the perfect place to stay while you follow the Crooked Road. It was built in 1925 by Hardin Reynolds, the son of a Civil War veteran and nephew of tobacco mogul R.J. Reynolds. It was originally a hotel called the Reynolds Arcade but later used as professional office space. Today, this architectural landmark is Bristol’s first-ever boutique hotel. It still has some Classical Revival style elements like the Roman arched entryway, a stucco exterior, and display windows.

The rooms are comfortable and have all the modern amenities. The bed is super comfy. Wi-Fi connected easily, and I had a wonderful view of the Appalachian Mountains. As a bonus, your room key gets you free admission to The Birthplace of Country Music.

Dining

There are lots of great dining spots in Bristol. Vivians Table and the Lumac Rooftop Bar are in the Bristol Hotel. The Rooftop Bar is the perfect place to view Bristol’s iconic two states sign after dark. Tying in with the music theme, just outside The Burger Bar was the last place Hank Williams was seen alive. His driver asked if he wanted something to eat, but Hank said no. Union 41 has some unusual dishes and an open kitchen where you can watch the food being prepared. It was once a Greyhound Bus station. J. Frank offers upscale dining in a historic home and had a great Sunday Brunch. Bloom is a new upscale restaurant that was once a bank. If you need a caffeine fix, Trailblazer Coffee is a locally owned alternative to Starbucks. Michael Waltrip Brewing Company is where to go for an adult beverage.

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