photo courtesy Texas Music Museum and US Dept. of the Interior, NPS, Edison National Historic Site (1883-1948) Genre: Country Western Influenced: all later country singers, Carl Sprague, Gene Autry

Vernon Dalhart's 1924 recording for Victor of "The Prisoner's Song" showed the young recording industry that Country music could be a commercial success beyond anything then imagined, eventually selling 25 million copies during the singer's lifetime.

Born Marion Try Slaughter II on April 6, 1883, Vernon Dalhart took his country-western pseudonym from the towns of Vernon in north Texas and Dalhart in the Panhandle. Unlike many wannabes, Dalhart, who is now recognized as "the first singing cowboy," was actually raised on the family ranch in Marion County. In the late 1890s, after his father was stabbed to death by a drunken brother-in-law, Dalhart worked summers as a cowboy in the Texas Panhandle, where he picked up many of the campfire songs and ballads that later appeared on his recordings.

Dalhart began singing publicly at the age of 12, but his road to country music was circuitous. Just before the turn of the century he and his mother moved from Jefferson to cosmopolitan Dallas, where his singing talent led him to the Dallas Conservatory of Music. Soon he was a paid soloist at the First Baptist Church. His music teachers, having imparted all the training they could, sent him off to New York City to pursue more professional instruction in 1910. Dalhart sang at churches and funeral homes for extra cash, as he pursued a career in opera. Beginning in 1912, he achieved his goal, gaining a bit part in Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West and later a leading role in Madame Butterfly.

But the new medium of the Edison cylinder discs also intrigued him, and in 1916 he made his first recording for Columbia, which led to an audition with Thomas A. Edison himself. For Edison Diamond Disc and later, for Victor, Dalhart recorded light classical and many other songs under dozens of pseudonyms and in various ethnic styles, including songs in Southern negro dialect.

But sales were slowing by 1924 when he decided to try out some "hillbilly" songs under the new pseudonym of Vernon Dalhart. His Victor recording of "The Prisoner's Song," a "B-side" recording paired with "The Wreck of the Old '97," turned out to be his biggest hit, and Country music's first million seller. Between 1924 and 1928 Vernon Dalhart was America's best-selling recording artist, singing such classic songs as "Golden Slippers," "My Blue Ridge Mountain Home," and the defininitive national best seller of 1927, "Home on the Range."

His success inspired others to try country and cowboy music, including another Texan, Carl T. Sprague, who in 1925 recorded ten songs for Victor. His version of "When the Work's All Done This Fall," a song about the vicissitudes of working a herd of longhorns, sold some 90,000 copies (but see note below). Sprague earned the title "The Original Singing Cowboy," and is credited with the igniting a national interest in cowboy songs.

The onset of the Great Depression brought an end to many budding recording careers, and Sprague faded from public attention until the 1960s. Vernon Dalhart lost much of the fortune he had earned in the stock market collapse of 1929, and record sales plummeted as well. Although Dalhart kept trying, often with clever topical songs, a comparable blockbuster eluded him. Under more than 100 pseudonyms he recorded nearly 1,000 songs before his death from a heart attack in 1948. All but forgotten for decades, Dalhart was honored at last by the Country Music Hall of Fame, which elected him a member in 1981.

Dennis Williams of Bryan, Texas sent us this comment. (8/1/02)

A 1965 RCA Victor Vintage reissue of "Authentic Cowboys and Their Western Folksongs" (LPV 522) includes sales figure of more than 900,000 copies for "When The Work's All Done This Fall" in the album notes by western music collector and historian, Fred Hoeptner. Also, the figure appears in the following:
White, John I. "Git Along, Little Dogies" (Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1975) pp. 85, 191

Both the footnotes in White's work cite the RCA Victor release of 1965 but I include them because getting that incredible figure past an editor twice in the same book should, and I emphasize should, increase the possibility that the number is accurate. White also uses this figure in the liner notes for Bear Family's "Carl T. Sprague: Classic Cowboy Songs" (BCD 15456).

Jack Palmer of Battle Creek, Michigan sent us this comment. (10/27/99)

I don't like to be picky, but I have researched Vernon Dalhart's life for over 20 years and am writing a biography now. Your article on Dalhart is not bad but there are two serious errors.
1). Dalhart began using the Vernon Dalhart name instead of his real name, Marion Try Slaughter II, in 1911 when he first appeared on stage in "Girl of the Golden West." It was not adopted for recording purposes, although other pseudonyms were.
2). His recording career was not slowing down at the time he recorded Wreck Of The Old 97 but was actually growing, albeit slowly. The Wreck and The Prisoner's Song just accelerated his career.