Wayside Exhibits

America’s commercial country music began in a cotton mill in Fries in 1923. Mill hand Henry Whitter traveled to New York and recorded a hit, “The Wreck of the Old ’97”. In 1924 a second mill hand, Ernest V. Stoneman, went north to record. They were followed within months by two bands assembled by singer Kelly Harrell and banjoist John Read more...

Welcome to Franklin County, the eastern gateway to The Crooked Road, a journey through Southwest Virginia’s musical heritage that winds through the Appalachian Mountains for 265 miles. Franklin County has always been a cultural crossroads where black and white musicians shared ideas and learned from each other. The music they created is kept alive in frequent jam sessions and concerts. Read more...

Virginia’s traditional songs and melodies were carried westward along the Wilderness Road, spreading north to Illinois and other areas of the Midwest, and west to Texas and California. Civil War soldiers of both sides learned the song “Cumberland Gap” as well as other melodies of the upland south, and they took this traditional music to their homes. Radio and recordings Read more...

The traditional music of Dickenson County has a special sound. Based upon tones from the Primitive Baptist and “Dunkard” churches, this sound has influenced singers in the string bands of the region. The most famous of these singers is Ralph Stanley. With his brother Carter, Ralph Stanley created a band in 1946 that riveted the world’s attention on the coalfields Read more...

Much of America’s music was invented in Virginia, and Galax and surrounding communities have long been an epicenter for the keeping of historic sounds and the creation of new ones. Greenberry Leonard lived in the Old Town section of Galax and knew tunes he’d learned when Andrew Jackson was president. Leonard’s student, Emmett Lundy, born before the Civil War, brought Read more...

In 1927 the Victor Talking Machine Company sent a portable studio to Bristol, and music publisher Ralph Peer advertised for traditional musicians wishing to try their hand at recording. The test pressings of the resulting “Bristol Sessions” involved mountain string bands, gospel singers, blues artists, and vaudeville performers. Among those that sold best were recordings by Jimmie Rodgers and the Read more...

Ferrum College’s Blue Ridge Institute &Museum si part of a local heritage rich with singers and musicians. The English scholar Cecil Sharpe collected ballads in Franklin County in 1916. County fiddler Posey Rorer and North Carolina banjo great Charlie Poole picked, partied, and even made moonshine here before starting their recording careers. The Ferrum fiddle and guitar duo William Lloyd Read more...