Our Road Trip East

Planning for this trip started several months back, when I realized that a niece of ours would be graduating from high school in May. John and I had promised her that we would be there to celebrate the occasion. Her grandmother, my sister Linda, was also planning to be there at that time- as well as another sister,Julia. By "there" I mean Marietta, Georgia. Sister Linda said that her trip would begin in Savannah, where she was meeting up with a friend. I loved Savannah when John and I were there some years back, so without thinking too much about it, I said that we would meet up with her there before heading to Marietta. My, I did not realize at the time the extra miles I was adding to our trip! As it turned out, the time we spent in Savannah was spent in a hospital because John had a fainting spell the day we were planning on touring the city. After he was discharged from the hospital we drove to Marietta. We spent several days there, celebrating the graduation with a dinner at a local restaurant and doing some shopping with Ellie and my two sisters. Then John and I drove north to Abingdon, Virginia to spend some time with our son Dan  and his wife Amanda.

We had a couple of days to spend with them so we did some touring around, checking out the local places of interest. I do not pay much attention when John plans our trips, so I was surprised that Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee (the city lies in two states)  is the birthplace of country music. Could have fooled me- I thought it was Nashville! Pictured above is the museum we toured, giving us the complete story of how the "Big Bang" of country music began. By the way, the museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian.

The entrance hall of the museum is pictured above. An orientation film "Bound to Bristol", narrated by Johnny Carter Cash (grandson of Johnny Cash), told us the story of how, in 1927, Ralph Peer came to Bristol to record the songs of the people of Appalachia. He was a record producer  from Victor Talking Machine Company, located in New York City. Prior to this time any vocal or instrumental artists had to bring their music to New York- quite a distance for many Southerners to travel in 1927.  Peer recorded 76 songs by 19 different acts over the course of two weeks. According to Johnny Cash "these recordings are the single most important event in the history of country music". The museum also has exhibits showing the technology that shaped the success of the recordings, as well as a gallery demonstrating the vocals, guitar, fiddle, banjo, autoharp and mandolin which made the new industry of country music successful.  Capping off our afternoon at the museum was a jam session of local country music artists, which we were able to attend in one of the museum's rooms. That evening we also attended a country music concert at the Carter Family Fold music theater in Hiltons, Virginia.

The rustic concert hall was built in 1976, and enlarged in 2005. Before the concert we walked over to the Carter family cabin, built in the mid 1800s. The Carter Family, known as "The First Family of Country Music"  was comprised of A.P.Carter, his wife Sara, and her sister Maybelle. The cabin was the home of A.P.'s parents who raised 8 children in it.

We were able to tour the cabin, which had been moved in 2003 and relocated near the Fold concert hall. An interesting item to add here is that Maybelle's son-in-law was Johnny Cash. Our son Daniel took the opportunity to sit a moment in Johnny's rocking chair.

That was our first day in southern Virginia. I will share more with you in the next posting about the rest of our adventures in this interesting and very beautiful part of our country.