Woodlawn and adjacent areas of Carroll County have made a rich contribution to America’s traditional music. Ernest V. (Pop) Stoneman lived here. His recording career with his family began in 1924 and spanned decades of technology, beginning with the Edison cylinder and continuing to today’s compact disc. The Melton Family of traditional Appalachian dulcimer makers and players si from here. 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...

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...