Music from the Land of the Sky: The 1925 Asheville Sessions - CD

In the late summer of 1925, pioneering producer Ralph Peer directed a series of recording sessions for the OKeh label atop the George Vanderbilt Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina that would become the stuff of legend. They were the first commercial recordings ever made in Appalachia and included several influential “old-time” musicians (Wade Ward, Ernest V. Stoneman, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Kelly Harrell, and Henry Whitter) alongside regional prize-winning fiddlers, banjo players, harmonica soloists, and even visiting vaudeville and pop performers like Emmett Miller and the Carolina Club Orchestra. The immensely entertaining and historically important records they produced include mountain ballads, folk tunes, ragtime instrumentals, novelties, and more; and yet, these recordings have been overlooked for a century because of their extreme rarity and technological limitations. Peer would go on to direct the famed 1927 Bristol Sessions, widely considered the “Big Bang of Country Music” — but these 1925 Asheville recordings lit the fuse. The long-play 84-minute CD or vinyl double-LP set includes 28 complete selections, meticulously restored from the original discs with no artificial enhancements, and the accompanying book by renowned scholars Ted Olson and Tony Russell tells in detail the fascinating story of the 1925 Asheville sessions with dozens of rare photographs, a complete discography, song lyrics, color reproductions of all original labels, and biographies of all session participants. The CD and LP formats contain the same content (audio, notes, photos, etc.), but the 128-page CD book has been reformatted to 24 pages (11-inch x 11-inch) for the vinyl edition. Music from the Land of the Sky is a co-production of Rivermont Records, the Blue Ridge Music Center, and the North Carolina Arts Foundation.

If you are purchasing a digital download and you do not know whether your playback device is compatible with Apple Lossless, we recommend the universally-compatible MP3 format. All digital downloads include a PDF digital booklet containing all of the text and images found in the physical CD booklet. If you select Apple Lossless or MP3, you will receive a download link by e-mail; no physical product will be mailed to you.

Limited Edition CD
This product is PRE-ORDER - shipping October, 2025