Bristol's Sesquicentennial

Word of the day: grift\GRIFT\ verb:  to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game) [AS IN SNOWPEA].

Today, I learned more about the original recording sessions of The Carter Family and other musicians from East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia at the time that the country genre of music was founded in Bristol, VA/TN by The Carter Family in the 1920's.  Bristol has been acknowledged by U.S. Congress as "The Birthplace of Country Music".  This is what I learned new today about those original recording sessions and where exactly they were located.

Talent scout Ralph Peer used the shop of a Victrola dealer on the Virginia side of the street, 621 State St., as a place to meet with potential recording artists.

The actual recordings, as you know, were made over in Tennessee, at 410 State St., inside the Taylor Christian Hat Co. warehouse.
Hartley sent along a copy of an advertisement that appeared in this newspaper on July 24, 1927.

“The Victor Co. will have a recording machine in Bristol for 10 days beginning Monday to record records,” it read. “Inquire at our store.”
Those records, of course, went on to become the first commercially successful country music recordings in history and sealed Bristol’s fate as the birthplace of the genre, launching the careers of the Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers, often called the father of country music.