FIDDLIN' JOHN CARSON
(1868 - 1949)
(born March 23, 1868, Fannin County, Georgia; died December 11, 1949,
Atlanta, Georgia)
The music of Fiddlin' John Carson from Fannin
County, Georgia, was the first of what we know today as "country music"
to be broadcast by radio and recorded for phonograph. He and his
daughter, Rosa Lee, who was known as "Moonshine Kate," were the first stars
despite the fact that little of the fame and none of the fortunes produced
in the country music industry ever were theirs.
Carson was fifty-four years old, had won the Georgia Fiddlin' Championship
seven times, and had a colorful reputation as a traveling performer who
made a living playing and "passing the hat" when he was not working in
the cotton mill, painting houses, or making moonshine when he walked into
the "studios" of the brand new radio station WSB started by the Atlanta
Journal.
When he announced that he would "like to have a try at the newfangled
contraption," Lambdin Kay obliged him. His only pay being a snort
of the engineer's whiskey, Carson performed "Little Old Log Cabin in the
Lane."
The Journal reported that Carson's fame spread "to every corner of the
United States were WSB was heard." His popularity inspired Polk Brockman,
an Atlanta furniture dealer who had been successful in developing and merchandising
"race" records for the black market for OKeh records, to persuade OKeh
president Ralph Peer
to bring his recording equipment to Atlanta to record Fiddlin' John.
On June 14, 1923, in a vacant building on Nassau Street in Atlanta,
Georgia, Carson cut two sides, "Little Old Log Cabin" and "The Old Hen
Cackled and the Rooster's going to Crow." Peer announced them "pluperful
awful" but agreed to press five hundred on a blank label for Brockman's
personal use.
With Fiddlin' John hawking them from the stage of the next Fiddler's
convention, Brockman promptly sold every disc. Peer immediately rushed
into a major pressing on the OKeh label and invited Carson to New York
to record twelve more sides.
Zell
Miller - They Heard Georgia Singing
