12 Days That Changed Country Music Forever
Celebrating 10 Years of Telling the 1927 Bristol Sessions Story at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum
"These recordings in Bristol are the single most important event in the history of country music."
- Johnny Cash
Story by Cindy Dupree Holloway
It has been almost 100 years since Ralph Peer brought his “talking machine” to Bristol, TN/VA to record what became the 1927 Bristol Sessions, an event that catapulted “hillbilly music” (early commercial country music) into mainstream America. The Bristol Sessions – 12 days that changed country music forever – resulted in recordings by a wide variety of artists, including debut recordings of future music legends The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. In 1998, the U.S. Congress designated Bristol “the birthplace of country music.”
In 2014 the doors of Bristol’s Birthplace of Country Music Museum swung open wide and sealed in brick, mortar, and high-tech exhibits the collaborative achievements of those 12 days in 1927, now known as “The Big Bang of Country Music.”
It’s impossible to measure the importance of the 12 days, like the notion of measuring the impact of the 12 disciples or the 12 steps. In the world of commercial country music nearly 100 years later — and 10 years since the museum’s grand opening — the story of this place is as essential as ever to the reason why back porch, Appalachian music moved to the center stage of the world.
The “Big Bang'' created a fallout of music and artists: People like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Lainey Wilson, Dr. Ralph Stanley, Beyoncé, Toby Keith, Vince Gill, Darius Rucker, Hank Williams, Miranda Lambert, and Blake Shelton. It led to songs like “He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today,” “Crazy,” “Jolene,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Friends in Low Places,” and “Wagon Wheel.” It’s hard even now to name a thimble-full of examples without the floodgates bursting open.
“Creating a museum is a big job. At the early planning stages, a local content team was pulled together, led by ethnomusicologist and museum director Dr. Jessica Turner,” says Dr. René Rodgers, head curator, Birthplace of Country Music Museum. “The team included scholars and musicians, local experts, and former Birthplace of Country Music Alliance director Bill Hartley.”
Amythyst Kiah, now a Grammy-nominated artist, was a BCM intern at the time and part of the team. The group met regularly with architects Peyton Boyd and Michael Haslam, the design team at studioMUSarx, and audio-visual/content delivery experts from Hillmann & Carr. Finally, the Smithsonian-affiliated Birthplace of Country Music Museum officially opened its doors.
From that hot August grand-opening day in 2014, the museum not only shares the history of the past but continues to press play on the current and future artists who keep the music alive.
The long list of VIP guests and artists gracing the stages of the Birthplace of Country Music reads like a celebrity who’s who. Performers at the grand opening included the iconic Dr. Ralph Stanley, GRAMMY Award-winning Americana artist Jim Lauderdale, Carlene Carter, and Bluegrass Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry member Jesse McReynolds. Jesse paid tribute to his grandfather, Charles McReynolds, with a special performance on the fiddle played by Charles on the 1927 Bristol Sessions.
For three days each September, top artists converge on Bristol to perform at the famous Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion.
This year’s event will be Sept. 13-15, honoring that longstanding tradition.
Hitmakers who have performed include Tyler Childers, the Avett Brothers, Sturgill Simpson, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Emmylou Harris, Tanya Tucker, and Rosanne Cash, among hundreds more.
The Birthplace of Country Music Museum is a global brand with national and international impact, having welcomed guests from all 50 states and more than 45 countries. It is also a hyper-local endeavor, offering community-free days and deeply discounted admissions to the museum, plus WBCM Radio Bristol and the legendary Farm and Fun Time radio show.
As this music grows, so does the need to keep telling the stories. A major museum expansion is in the works, thanks to the donation of a historic building to BCM by Joe and Cindy Gregory. The project is expected to increase the museum’s size from 24,000 to 41,000 square feet.
Bristol, through happenstance, critical connection, and miraculous intervention was chosen in 1927, and is strategic now, to tell the sacred stories of the past and forge a path into the future. That’s why music lovers from all over the world come to Bristol to experience the Birthplace of Country Music Museum.
Roseanne Cash created an “unbroken circle” moment at her Bristol Rhythm & Roots performance in 2022 when she said, “I owe The Carter Family a tremendous debt because all of those Carter women … the first things I learned on guitar were those Carter Family songs.” Then she broke into the Carter Family classic “Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow” from the 1927 Sessions.
Ralph Peer and the musicians from the Sessions would likely smile to see an annual celebration of their work and the collaborative, lasting achievement that was “The Big Bang of Country Music.” Maybe they do, since the “Big Bang” continues to expand the universe of country music note after note, song after song, until it feels like the whole world is singing country music.
Learn More: