Birthplace of Country Music Museum

[FloridaClay]

While I grew up in upper east Tennessee, I only fairly recently learned of its importance in the early history of recorded country music. While visiting family there on my way back from Union I visited the Birthplace of Country Music Museum (a Smithsonian affiliated museum that opened last Fall) on the Virginia side of Bristol Tennessee/Virginia. (The state line run down the middle of the main street.)

The focus of the museum is a famous set of field recordings that Victor made in 1927, now referred to often as the 1927 Bristol Sessions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_sessions The sessions were electrically recorded and released on Victor's scroll label. While roots music recordings had been made before then, some of the recordings coming out of the Bristol sessions really took off and sold in big enough quantities that the industry really took notice, launching country music recording in a big way.

Here is a link to the museum's website. http://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/

The museum is nicely laid out and interesting, worth a visit if you travel that way. Here are some pictures I made there. Among other things, there are displays of phonographs that might have been in use at the time, from older outside horn machines up to a "state-of-the-art" Credenza.

Apologies for the glare in some of the pictures. I did not use flash, but the exhibits are behind glass.

Clay

[FloridaClay]

Here are three more.

Clay