Historic Asheville Sessions Project
- August 6, 2024 -
The Blue Ridge Music Center and North Carolina Arts Foundation will host an information session about the Historic Asheville Sessions project from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 15, at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville.
Historic Asheville Sessions Project Information Session
When: 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, Aug. 15
Where: Citizen Vinyl, 14 O’Henry Ave., Asheville, N.C.
Admission: Free
Additional information: BlueRidgeMusicCenter.org
The public is invited to learn about the project, which presents, interprets, and celebrates recordings made by OKeh General Phonograph Corporation in the summer of 1925 in Western North Carolina. These sessions were the first performances of traditional music from the Southern Appalachians to be documented for commercial sale to a broader American audience. This event accelerated the evolution of American vernacular and homemade music into the emerging genre of country music, which is now known around the globe. Despite its historical importance, the OKeh recordings made in Asheville have never been reissued and the impacts of these sessions have never been publicly explored and presented. In fact, few North Carolinians are aware of this event of international significance.
The information session will feature presentations about the project and the significance of the sessions by Ted Olson and Wayne Martin. Guests will also hear a sampling of the songs recorded during the sessions.
Olson is a professor in the Department of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University and a cultural historian, record producer, editor, poet, photographer, and musician. The author and editor of numerous books, he has published articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, poems, creative nonfiction pieces, reviews, and oral histories in literary and scholarly anthologies and periodicals. For many years he has taught classes exploring Appalachia’s complex cultural history. Currently, he serves as book series editor for the Charles K. Wolfe Music Series (University of Tennessee Press). He and Tony Russell have collaborated on three books included in box sets released by Germany’s Bear Family Records (The Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928; The Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929; and The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930).
Martin is the executive director of the North Carolina Arts Foundation. He led the team that created Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina in 2003, which was used to advocate for the creation of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area. Martin has recorded many outstanding traditional musicians of Western North Carolina, including guitarist Etta Baker of Morganton and Madison County ballad singers Doug and Jack Wallin. He collaborated with Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s daughter, Jo Herron, to produce a documentary CD for Smithsonian Folkways that presents Lunsford’s performances of songs and tunes from his “memory collection.”
The North Carolina Arts Foundation engages the private sector for the purpose of regional and statewide arts development with a focus on arts education, including programs that teach young people the music traditions of their home communities.
About the Blue Ridge Music Center
The Blue Ridge Music Center, located at milepost 213 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Galax, Va., celebrates the music and musicians of the mountains. The Music Center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., daily through October. It is a national park facility, a major attraction along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a venue partner of The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail and Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina. The Blue Ridge Parkway/National Park Service maintains and operates the facility, and staffs the Music Center Visitor/Interpretive Center. The programs are managed, coordinated, promoted, and produced by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation. Learn more at BlueRidgeMusicCenter.org.
About the North Carolina Arts Foundation
The North Carolina Arts Foundation brings private and public sector partners into collaborations
that extend the benefits of the arts to residents across the state. Arts education, a key to
helping young people achieve success in school and in life, is the priority for the foundation as
North Carolina emerges from the pandemic. In 2023 the Arts Foundation negotiated a
groundbreaking partnership between private donors and the state on behalf of A+ Schools of
North Carolina, a school choice program noted for its success in using arts to teach the state’s
educational curriculum. The Arts Foundation collaborated with North Carolina musician Ben
Folds to create Keys for Kids in 2022, which provides music lessons and keyboards to low-wealth students. The Foundation also supports a rising generation of musicians in western North Carolina by providing resources to afterschool programs that teach young people the traditional arts of their home communities. For more information, visit ncartsfoundation.org.
