He recorded under a host of pseudonyms given to him by recording managers. Peer to go to the southern mountains in the Summer of 1927 to facilitate ‘The Bristol Sessions’, arguably the single-most important recording event in the history of country music, where Jimmie Rodgers and the original Carter Family were first discovered, and after which, Peer’s royalty model would become the standard of the entire recorded music industry. It was the desire of the Victor Talking Machine Company to duplicate the sales success of ‘Wreck/Prisoner’ that led them to contract with Ralph S. In 1998, “The Prisoner’s Song” was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and the Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the Songs of the Century. Research by Billboard statistician Joel Whitburn determined “ The Prisoner’s Song” to have been a No. It was the best-selling single to its time, and was the biggest-selling non-holiday record in the first 70 years of recorded music. The double-sided single eventually sold more than seven million copies, a colossal number for a mid-1920s recording.

It became the first Southern song to become a national success. 97 near Danville, Virginia-for the Victor Talking Machine Company, became a runaway hit, alerting the national record companies to the existence of a sizable market for country-style vocals. He was already an established singer when he made his first country music recordings which cemented his place in music history.ĭalhart’s 1924 recording of “ The Wreck of the Old 97“-a classic American railroad ballad about the Septemderailment of Southern Railway Fast Mail train No. From 1916 until 1923, using numerous pseudonyms, he made over 400 recordings of light classical music and early dance band vocals for various record labels. He saw an advertisement in the local newspaper for singers and applied, and was auditioned by Thomas Alva Edison he would thereafter make numerous records for Edison Records. He also played the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly.

One of his first roles was in Giacomo Puccini‘s opera Girl of the Golden West following this he played the part of Ralph Rackstraw in a production of HMS Pinafore. He found employment in a piano warehouse and took occasional singing jobs.

Around 1910 the family moved to New York City. He married Sadie Lee Moore-Livingston in 1901 and had two children, a son and a daughter. Vernon, who already could play the jaw harp and harmonica, received vocal training at the Dallas Conservatory of Music. When Vernon was 12 or 13, the family moved from Jefferson to Dallas, Texas. Dalhart’s father, Robert Marion Slaughter was killed in a fight with his brother-in-law, Bob Castleberry, when Vernon was age 10. He took his stage name from two towns, Vernon and Dalhart in Texas, between which he punched cattle in the 1890s.

Brunswick phonograph serial numbers