Victrola, Circa 1920

"I want to throw my music across the American"

Uncle Jimmy Thompson, an early country performer

The "Golden Age of Country Music", 1923-33, began when the Okeh recording company, of New York City, issued "Fiddlin" John Carson's performance of "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow". Recorded in Atlanta by Ralph Peer, who later applied the term "hillbilly" to the music, this record and the many other "old-timey" records that followed it created the commercial country music industry. Regional musicians such as Charlie Poole and the Carolina Ramblers, Uncle Am Stuart, Henry Whitter's Virginia Breakdowners, Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, and the original Hill Billies Band became established entertainers through phonograph recordings and radio shows such as The WLS Radio Barn Dance of Chicago and The Grand Ole Opry of Nashville. The landmark recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers determined the direction of country music in the following decades.

Gift of Amos W. Abrams