Birthplace of Country Music Museum — Bristol, Virginia/Tennessee

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum at 520 Cumberland Street in Bristol, Virginia — right on the state line between Virginia and Tennessee — commemorates the Bristol Sessions of August 1927, the recording events that are widely regarded as the founding moment of commercial country music. Over eleven days in a makeshift studio in a building on State Street, Victor Records talent scout Ralph Peer recorded nineteen acts from the surrounding Appalachian region. Among them were the Carter Family — A.P., Sara, and Maybelle — and Jimmie Rodgers, whose recordings from those sessions launched two of the most significant careers in the history of American music and established the template for both the country and folk traditions that followed.

The Bristol Sessions produced 'Wildwood Flower', 'Single Girl Married Girl', and 'Keep on the Sunny Side' by the Carter Family, and 'The Soldier's Sweetheart' and 'Sleep Baby Sleep' by Jimmie Rodgers — recordings that sound, even today, like the foundation being poured. Ralph Peer had advertised for local talent in the Bristol newspaper, and the musicians who responded came from the hollows and farms of the Virginia-Tennessee border country, bringing a music shaped by British ballad tradition, African American influence, church music, and the particular social world of Appalachia. Bristol's claim to be the 'Birthplace of Country Music' rests entirely on these eleven days.

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, opened in 2014 and provides extensive documentation of the Bristol Sessions and their legacy. It is open Tuesday through Sunday and admission is charged. Bristol itself straddles the Virginia-Tennessee state line — State Street runs along the border, with one side of the street in each state — which gives the city an unusual character. The museum is a short walk from the historic downtown and is the centrepiece of a broader Bristol music heritage district.