Now this is cool. Country music has a rich history dating back to the early 1900s. The first country recordings were generally considered to be made by Eck Robertson back in 1922 when he recorded four fiddle songs including "Turkey In The Straw" and "Arkansaw Traveler" for the Victor Talking Machine Company. In the 1920s, artists like Uncle Dave Macon and Vernon Dalhart traveled to New York City to record what was then known as "hillbilly music." But country music changed for good in 1927 when producer Ralph Peer stopped in Bristol, Tennessee to record artists like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. The "Bristol Sessions," as they came to be known, are generally regarded as the most influential in country music history and earned Bristol the nickname of the "Birthplace of Country Music." But as it turns out, there are actually country recordings that are more than 30 years older than the Bristol Sessions. A collector named John Levin purchased a box of wax cylinders at an auction in Pennsylvania. And when he put them on his player, he found that they contain what may be the first country recording ever made. The song is "Thompson’s Old Gray Mule," which was later recorded by Uncle Dave Macon. But the recording, which dates back to 1891, was made by a black New Orleans singer named Louis Vasnier. According to the Washington Post, Vasnier began singing publicly in the 1880s, and in the 1890s began recording parody sermons for the Louisiana Phonograph Company. It's not clear where the cylinder containing this recording came from, but it's probably safe to say that at one point it was played on a jukebox somewhere in the New Orleans area. And late last month, the recording became available for the first time. Released by Archeophone, a small record label dedicated to discovering and releasing long-lost recordings, the 45-rpm record contains not only Vasnier's recording of "Thompson's Old Gray Mule" but the B-side contains one of his parody sermons called "Adam and Eve and de Winter Apple." Obviously the sound quality isn't the best, but considering the original recording is 133 years old, it's amazing that it survived at all. And unfortunately, Archeophone wasn't able to find a photo of Vasnier to use for the record cover, instead ch According to Levin, the wax cylinders are extremely fragile and have to be handled with extreme care: “I treat these things, they’re like polar bears or the California condor. If they’re not brought in from the wild, they’re basically getting destroyed. Every 10 or 20 years, they go from one private collector to another and they’re soft wax. You drop them from one half inch on a table and they shatter.” It's pretty cool to get a look into the early days of country music - recordings that pre-date what we had originally thought were the first country music records by nearly three decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgfhU8Tt0s