Although Jimmie Rodgers is considered the father of country music, it took Texan Vernon Dalhart, shown here circa 1918, to show the way. That’s because it was Dalhart’s 1924 recording “The Wreck of the Old ’97” that was the first megahit in the history of recorded music. The song —– a classic American railroad ballad about the September 27, 1903 derailment of Southern Railway Fast Mail train No. 97 near Danville, Virginia —– sold seven million copies, a colossal number for a mid-1920s recording. The “B” side of the recording was “The Prisoner’s Song.” The recording was the biggest-selling non-holiday record in the first 70 years of recorded music and in 1998 was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. Additionally, the Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the Songs of the Century. On top of all that, it was the desire of the Victor Talking Machine Company to duplicate the sales success of ‘Wreck/Prisoner’ that led them to contract with Ralph S. Peer to go to the southern mountains in the summer of 1927 to facilitate the Bristol Sessions, which are arguably the single most important recording event in the history of country music because it was at the Bristol Sessions that Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family were discovered. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Dalhart’s recordings are estimated to have sold 75 MILLION copies over the years. Despite this success, he was a night baggage clerk at Barnum’s Hotel in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut when he had a heart attack in January 1948. He never fully recovered and died from a second attack on 15 September 1948.