Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Song Of The Day #1004



Ranch Radio continues our week of Country Roots music.

As a teenager, "Fiddlin' John" Carson (1868-1949) learned to play a fiddle that had been brought from Ireland.  Over the years he worked in various cotton mills, as a horse jockey and as a moonshiner.  As a result of a cotton mill workers strike in 1914 Carson was forced to make a living by playing for tips in the streets of Atlanta.  Between 1914 and 1922 he was proclaimed "Champion Fiddler of Georgia" seven times

The New Georgia Encyclopedia writes:

In the spring of 1922, Georgia's "Fiddlin' John" Carson, at the age of fifty-four, became the first genuine old-time country musician to broadcast genuine old-time country music over a radio station. A year later, on June 14, 1923, the country-music recording industry was launched when Carson made his first phonograph record...

 When Atlanta's WSB, the South's first radio station, went on the air on March 16, 1922, Fiddlin' John Carson took notice. A week later, fiddle in hand, he visited the studios to inquire about being allowed to have a try at this latest marvel of entertainment technology. Taking his place before the microphone, Carson launched into an impromptu concert of mountain music that lasted, according to one station official, until "exhaustion set in." The response from listeners was instantaneous and profuse. Telephone calls, telegrams, and letters poured in for days afterward...

 Carson began making records in 1923, when an official with a New York record company, visiting Atlanta for the OKeh label, reluctantly allowed Carson to record two songs, "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" and "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow." Although the record company held this effort in low esteem, the record-buying public depleted the initial supply of 500 records within days, and company record-pressing facilities were rushed into service to fill back orders. When sales reached the 500,000 figure, the company greatly altered its assessment of Fiddlin' John Carson's abilities. Carson was called to New York to record more of the music from his considerable repertoire of old-time ballads and traditional fiddle tunes. His recording career, which yielded some 165 recorded songs, lasted into the 1930s...

Carson went on to record many songs that became the standard repertoire of fiddlers and country bands.  Tunes suchs as Billy In The Low Ground, Old Sallie Goodman, Old Joe Clark, Arkansas Traveler, Boil Them Cabbage Down, Sally Ann, Bully Of The Town, Soldiers Joy and many others were recorded by Carson..

Here's those first two songs recorded by Carson, Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane and  The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to Crow. 



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