Fact Friday 454 - The Week Country Music Came to South Tryon Street

Photo: Marty Roberts and the Tennessee Ramblers on WBT by Marty Roberts, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Friday!

Ninety years ago this week, a second-floor room on South Tryon Street was one of the busiest spots in American country music. From October 11 to 13, 1936, RCA Victor set up a temporary studio upstairs in the Southern Radio Corporation building at 208 S. Tryon Street and recorded a run of Carolina string bands, brother duets and gospel singers for its Bluebird label.

In just three days, the lineup included the McClendon Brothers, Dick Hartman's Tennessee Ramblers (recording as the Washboard Wonders), the Monroe Brothers, Fred Kirby, Wade Mainer and Zeke Morris, the Dixon Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys and the Tobacco Tags.

That week wasn't a one-off. Bill Monroe, later known as the father of bluegrass, made his very first recordings in the same building on February 17, 1936, alongside his brother Charlie. Between 1927 and 1945, labels including Victor and Decca kept coming back to Charlotte, setting up in rented rooms and, later, in the Hotel Charlotte. The Carter Family recorded here. So did Uncle Dave Macon. By the late 1930s, Charlotte was perhaps the busiest country music recording center in the nation, and historian Tom Hanchett has argued it was more important than Nashville at the time.

Photo: WBT transmitter towers by KyleAndMelissa22, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why Charlotte? Radio. WBT, the first commercial radio station in North Carolina, filled hours of airtime every week with live "hillbilly" music, and its signal reached listeners hundreds of miles away. Its best-known show was sponsored by Crazy Water Crystals, and acts like the Briarhoppers (see Fact Friday 308: The Briarhoppers) called the station home. Musicians came to town for the radio work, and the record companies came looking for them.

By the 1940s, the Grand Ole Opry's national broadcasts pulled the music business toward Nashville, and Charlotte's moment faded. Today a historic marker on South Tryon near Fourth Street remembers RCA Victor's Charlotte studio.

Next time you're walking South Tryon in Uptown, picture a fiddle and a microphone upstairs. For the story of WBT itself, check out Fact Friday 82: The Carolinas' First TV & Radio Station. And while you're at it, rep the 704 with our SevenOhhhFour Records Tee or 704 Records Hoodie.

More Fact Friday: The Briarhoppers, The Carolinas' First TV and Radio Station and South Tryon, the Wall Street of the South.

Sources: Tom Hanchett: Recorded in Charlotte and Rock Hill, 1927-1946 (discography); HistorySouth: Recorded in Charlotte; WFAE: Before Nashville, There Was Charlotte; NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: WBT / WBTV marker (L-114); HMdb: RCA Victor marker