Victor Talking Machine Company

This is the record that first brought him to attention, or the record that started the whole thing, his practice of recording country music.

This is The Wreck of the Old 97 by Vernon Dalhart from 1924, off Victor Records.

His orders at Monroe, Virginia, saying, Pete, you're way behind time.

This is not 38, but it's old 97.

You must put her in center on time.

he looked around this to his black crazy farming just jump on in a little more coal and when we cross that white old mountain you can watch old 97

that was the wreck of the old 97 by vernon dalhart from 1924 on victor records big hit uh but the b-side the prisoner song became an even bigger hit like i said but We've got a little bit more ground to cover before we get to the story of the wreck of the old 97 and how Vernon came to record it.

First, I want to talk a little bit more about his operatic training.

I am your host, P.W. Fenton.

On this day in 1938, Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra recorded their classic Boogie Woogie for Victor Records.

Speaking of Boogie, on this day in 1966, former 50s imperial recording artist Boogie Bill Webb was rediscovered by David Evans, and he recorded eight tunes for the Say Disc Matchbox label in New Orleans.

Crying, ain't going down there.

And I didn't know them, but they do audio products, and they've got a very long history.

The name goes back to 1906 when they were the Victor Talking Machine Company.

And then they became RCA Victor.

You may know that name.

But what happened at those sessions, just called the Bristol sessions, is what everybody calls them.

The Bristol sessions were... set up by a guy named Ralph Peer, and he worked for a company called the Victor Talking Machine Company.

And so Ralph as early as 1924, had this realization that people would buy music from people that they identified with.

So he noticed that they were producing records that they would call at that time hillbilly records, and people weren't really buying those.

The publishing company gets 50%.

And that's how Ralph Peer made all of his music.

The legend is he got his job at Victor Talking Machine Company and never took a salary.

All he wanted was the royalties.

Ezra had broken off his engagement with the town's schoolteacher and Maybel left her boyfriend to be with him.

In the summer of 1927, AP saw an ad in the newspaper from Victor Recording Company.

They were bringing a state-of-the-art recording machine to Bristol, Tennessee, and were paying a whopping $50 for each song they deemed worthy of recording.

He packed up Sarah and a heavily pregnant Maybel in the car and set off for Tennessee.

So you, when she talks about Pigeon Forge, she talks about that part of Tennessee, she's really talking about, um, a 19th century upbringing in a 19th century community, and she spans that.

And, um, I, I, I think the flickering, uh, the, the weird staticky radio and the music and all of that kind of incredible explosion of creativity that was going on in those hills, um, you know, when they, uh, when they did those early recordings of, um, people in the hills coming down, the Carter family, people like that, came down to Bristol, Tennessee to record, um, for the, uh, uh, RCA, the Victor Recording Company.

I mean, what they discovered was that people had been in those hills for 100 years singing songs that were centuries old.

I mean, you can go to Wales and Ireland and Scotland and weird parts of, of, uh, of England, and you can hear that music and you can hear those accents.