Fred Hager and the Birth of Country Music

The recent release of Ken Burns’ multi-part documentary Country Music has sparked much conversation in the music history community. Just a few months before this series premiered, something else resurfaced that could be cause for some re-writing of the very complicated history of the first country music to be captured by record companies. In 1924, the Okeh phonograph company sent out a small crew of engineers and talent scouts throughout the Southern states as well as into the Appalachian region. This group of field recordings were the first of their kind, and sparked a new market and craze in American music. Soon all the other record companies were anxious to send out their best recording folks to capture these seemingly new sounds, which was soon given the name of hillbilly music. In each history of this revolutionary group of recordings, the sole credit is generally given to Ralph Peer, who was said to have been the driving force for making these recordings. Peer was undoubtedly the most prominent figure in recording these itinerant performers, but another Okeh executive stated otherwise. About eighteen years after the first group of Okeh field recordings, Fred Hager typed out a dramatic play of sorts that allowed him, with the help of his long-time partner Justin Ring, to tell the st