Lighting the Fuse
JD Harris (far left) with two unknown musicians.
A century ago, a record producer from New York City headed into Western North Carolina in search of the sound of Southern Appalachia. Landing in downtown Asheville, Ralph Peer set up a recording space in the former George Vanderbilt Hotel and set into motion a series of field recordings that would forever change the course of American music.
“Peer was the producer responsible for releasing the earliest commercial recordings of the genre that came to be known as country music,” said Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. “Once Peer identified a market for recordings of ‘hillbilly music,’ he sought out new artists who performed that type of music to record for sale to customers.”
Known as the “Asheville Sessions,” the 1925 recordings by Peer have been mostly unknown to music lovers and historians alike, let alone the general public of Southern Appalachia and beyond. But, with Olson and the help of Rivermont Records, the sessions have finally received their due—something 100 years in the making with the recent release of the new album “Music from the Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions.”
Lighting the Fuse
Asheville’s George Vanderbilt Hotel is pictured on this 1920s postcard.
“I hope that listeners will comprehend Appalachia’s profound importance in the evolution of country music,” Olson said. “And that listeners will identify Asheville’s vital role as a catalyst for fostering positive cultural change within this misunderstood region.”
Peer was a producer for OKeh Records, a New York label which, beyond releasing popular melodies and dance tunes at the time, was also leaning into niche areas of music, often neglected segments of the record buying public. This included European recordings for the immigrant communities in the United States, as well as early jazz selections for Black audiences.
In 1924, Peer crossed paths with Bascom Lamar Lunsford during an OKeh recording session in Atlanta. Now regarded as a cultural icon of Western North Carolina, Lunsford was a talented musician and promoter in the Asheville area, something that parlayed itself into him attracting Peer to come to the Blue Ridge Mountains and see what he could record and capture.
“[Lunsford] was responsible for drawing Peer to ‘The Land of the Sky’ [that is Western North Carolina] as a likely place to record musicians from Appalachia, a region deemed a hotbed of ‘hillbilly’ music,” Olson said.
Coming to Asheville in August 1925, Peer put the word out in local newspapers looking for local musicians to come to the hotel and share their songs, with the finished product being a wax recording. After 10 days, there were 60 wax recordings created during the sessions at the hotel (nowadays senior apartment housing, located next to the Harrah’s Cherokee Center and Thomas Wolfe Auditorium).
In method, the recordings were primitive compared to modern technologies. Back then, a musician would have a large recording horn placed in front of them. From there, engineers would “cut grooves into warm wax”—the result a mix of melody and background noise, with imperfections being the true beauty of the recordings when one listens to the selections a century later.
“Peer was a brilliant businessman who understood the possibilities and limitations of the portable acoustic recording technology,” Olson said.
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Bascom Lamar Lunsford, 1920.
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Fisher Hendley.
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Henry Whittier.
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Kelly Harrell.
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Lighting the Fuse
Ernest Helton (left) and Osey Helton.
During the sessions, a slew of local musicians emerged, including Lunsford, Henry Whitter, Kelly Harrell, Wade Ward, Ernest Stoneman, J.D. Harris, and more. Vaudeville performer Ernest Miller and the house jazz band for the George Vanderbilt Hotel were also captured during the sessions. In truth, the essence of the recordings is the variety of genres—gospel, blues, folk, jazz, etc.—which exposed the depth of the talent living in these mountains.
When Peer finished up the session, he left Asheville and took what he found back to the record label, with many of the melodies eventually being manufactured into records sold across the country and beyond. And yet, the sessions would become overshadowed by the seismic musical discovery made by Peer when he headed to Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia in 1927.
Known as the “Big Bang of Country Music,” the Bristol Sessions was a much larger operation than what occurred in Asheville just two years earlier. With an open invite to local musicians in that area, Peer was able to capture the first recordings of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers (the “Father of Country Music” who lived in Asheville for a period prior to the Bristol Sessions), with those melodies soon sparking a musical revolution in America.
Since the culmination of the Bristol Sessions, the community is regarded as the starting line for modern country music, which now includes the Birthplace of Country Music Museum and the highly-popular Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion festival every September that overtakes the downtown corridor with tens of thousands of attendees and countless marquee names onstage.
“My initial impression [of the Asheville Sessions] project animated a story as compelling and as worthy of public dissemination as that associated with the 1927 Bristol Sessions,” Olson said.
Skip ahead to the here and now, with Rivermont Records and the North Carolina Arts Foundation looking to track down the recordings from the 1925 Asheville Sessions. With the initial discussion about the album project starting in 2017, those involved have spent the better part of the last decade gathering and remastering these recordings in time for the 100th anniversary.
“After funding was secured and a record label was identified, the next steps toward realizing the album involved locating all the discs, which involved networking with collectors far and wide,” Olson said. “Because there are no original masters of the Asheville recordings.”
Once the recordings were secured, the label and foundation tapped Grammy-nominated producer/sound engineer Bryan Wright to breathe new life into the songs, 28 tracks being used for the final album, now known as “Music from the Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions.” To note, the extensive liner notes for the album and the historical background for the project was done by Olson and Tony Russell.
“It is my hope that listeners, after reading the liner notes, will develop respect for the lives and the music of the various musicians who travelled to Asheville during the summer of 1925 to make records,” Olson said. “[We researched] the story of the sessions and the lives of the participating musicians, some of whom were obscure. And drafting the essays and the biographies, and undertaking the planning of the album launch celebration.”
And with respect to the Bristol Sessions, the tagline for the Asheville Sessions is: “If the 1927 Bristol Sessions are considered ‘the Big Bang of Country Music,’ then Asheville ‘lit the fuse.’” In November 2025, ExploreAsheville.com and other local/regional entities came together for the official album launch.
Dubbed “Asheville Sessions: Celebrating 100 years of Americana and Appalachia,” the event took place at various venues around the city. Alongside in-depth panel discussions about the legend, lore, and legacy of the recordings and a handful of performances, the culmination of the weekend was the showcase at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, located right next door to the former George Vanderbilt Hotel.
“This album sounds remarkably clear and accessible,” Olson said. “These 28 recordings from Asheville constitute seminal performances of vernacular ‘hillbilly’ music from the 1920s, the golden decade of early country music.”
The album release featured Asheville-based bands River Whyless, Tyler Ramsey, Toubab Krewe, and Floating Action. Each group hit the stage in front of a frenzied audience. But, the real heart of the matter was that every artist on the bill was asked to learn one of the songs from the recordings and perform it at the showcase—a truly full circle moment for all involved.
“People should realize that the Asheville Sessions yielded the earliest commercial recordings from Appalachia, [and] that those sessions truly were groundbreaking,” Olson said. “The release of [this album] might well deepen, and even correct, general awareness of [this] region’s music history.”
Want to listen?
If you’d like to listen to the album “Music from the Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions,” you can purchase a vinyl record, CD or download the mp3 files through Rivermont Records by visiting rivermontrecords.com and scrolling the new releases on the home page. To note, the vinyl is limited to 1,000 pressings and was manufactured by Citizen Vinyl in Asheville. To learn more about the 1925 “Asheville Sessions,” visit exploreasheville.com/historic-asheville-sessions.