Vernon Dalhart
Vernon Dalhart (
6 April,
1883 -
15 September,
1948) was a popular
United States singer and
songwriter of the early decades of the 20th century. He is a major influence in the field of
Country Music.
Dalhart was born
Marion Try Slaughter in
Marion County,
Jefferson, Texas. He took his stage-name from two towns,
Vernon and
Dalhart in
Texas, between which he punched cattle in the 1890's. (Decades later,
Conway Twitty would derive his
stage name through the same method.) Dalhart's father, Robert Marion Slaughter was killed in a fight with his brother-in-law, Bob Castleberry, when Vernon was age 10.
At the age of 12 or 13, the family moved from Jefferson to
Dallas, Texas. Vernon, who already could play the
guitar,
jew's harp and
harmonica, received vocal training at the
Dallas Conservatory of Music.
He married Sadie Lee Moore-Livingston in
1901 and had two children, a son and a daughter. Around
1910 the family moved to
New York City. He found employment in a
piano warehouse and took occasional singing jobs. One of his first roles was in
Giacomo Puccini's
opera Girl of the Golden West; following this he played the part of Ralph Rackstraw in a production of
HMS Pinafore. He also played the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton in
Madame Butterfly.
He saw an advertisement in the local paper for singers and applied and was auditioned by
Thomas Alva Edison; he would thereafter make numerous records for
Edison Records. From
1916 until
1923, using numerous
pseudonyms, he made over 400 recordings of light
classical music and early dance band vocals for various record labels. He was already an established singer when he made his first country music recordings which cemented his place in music history. It was his recordings of "The Prisoner's Song" and "The Wreck of the Old 97" for the
Victor Talking Machine Company which became run away hits, alerting the record companies to the existence of a sizable market for country style vocals. In 1998, "The Prisoner's Song" was honored with a
Grammy Hall of Fame Award and the
Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the
Songs of the Century.
Dalhart's songs often told tragic stories of
mining disasters and train wrecks. His 1920s recording of his composition,
"The Wreck of the Old 97", a classic American ballad about the September 27, 1903 derailment of Southern Railway train No. 97 near Danville, Virginia, is sometimes cited as the American music industry's first million-seller; it certainly sold very well . He recorded under a host of pseudonyms given to him by recording managers. The pseudonym Vel Veteran often was used by
Arthur Fields (Fields also used Mr. X).
While some country music purists always viewed Dalhart with some suspicion because of his light opera background and a vocal style that was closer to pop than country, he was inducted into the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in
1981.
Dalhart died in
Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1948 and is interred there in the Mountain Grove Cemetery.
*
Biography at the Country Music Hall of Fame*
Biography at CMT.com * http://www.garlic.com/~tgracyk/dalhart.htm
*
Vernon Dalhart cylinder recordings, from the
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the
University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
