Discover how Knoxville’s 1929 recording sessions gave voice to local musicians for the first time, influencing the early landscape of American recorded music.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In this episode of The Scruffy City Beat, host Jillian Taylor spoke with Eric Dawson about The Knoxville Sessions, when music was recorded locally for the very first time. Listen to the full episode here on WBIR.com.
Knoxville is teeming with local musicians who produce original music—much of it collected here, in a Spotify playlist managed by the Knox Music Coalition.
But this wasn’t always the case.
In the 1920s, music was rarely recorded outside of major cities. The equipment was large, expensive, and mostly limited to places like New York and Chicago. For musicians in smaller or rural areas, there was little opportunity to preserve their sound beyond live performance.
That began to change in 1929, when the Brunswick/Vocalion Company started bringing recording equipment directly to communities across the country—including Knoxville. For the first time, local musicians were able to record their music, marking the beginning of a new era in which rural sounds could be captured and distributed.
This period in Knoxville’s history is known as the Knoxville Sessions, a regional counterpart to the 1927 Bristol Sessions, often described as the “big bang” of country music.
The Knoxville Sessions were funded largely by the Sterchi brothers, owners of a furniture store chain that began in Knoxville. Recording equipment—weighing more than a thousand pounds and valued at roughly half a million dollars in today’s terms—was set up at the St. James Hotel, which also housed local radio station WNOX.
Over two recording trips, about 30 artists were recorded onto 78 rpm shellac records, an early form of recorded media made from hardened resin gathered from the female lac bug. The artists represented a wide range of styles, including old-time string bands, gospel, blues, and dance music. Notable performers included the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, an African American string band; gospel singer Leola Manning; and bandleader Maynard Baird and his orchestra.
The recordings did not achieve widespread commercial success. Released at the start of the Great Depression, many sold poorly, and some were never released at all.
Despite this, the Knoxville Sessions remain culturally significant. They offer an important snapshot of a local music scene at a time when few regional artists were being recorded. The sessions helped bring rural musicians into the broader world of recorded sound and contributed to the early development of American recorded music.
Special thanks to the Tennessee Archive of Moving Images and The McClung Collection for providing historical material for this episode.