Much about Eck and Henry Gilliland's time at Victor Studios in New York is shrouded in mystery, except the date: June 30, 1922.
Nonetheless, Gilliland and Robertson made history, showing up unannounced at Victor Studios on June 29 near the start of a visit with a friend of Gilliland, attorney Martin W. Littleton, a former congressman who likely had connections with Victor executives. The fiddlers had recently performed for a Confederate veterans reunion in Richmond, Va.
Much about the actual session is shrouded in mystery, according to Hall of Fame and Museum historian/editor. It’s not clear which fiddler is playing lead, it’s uncertain if they were wearing out-of-place Confederate uniforms or cowboy duds, and there’s also some fuzziness about the release of the first two recordings: “Arkansaw Traveler” and the flip side, Robertson’s version of “Sallie Gooden” , which Robertson recorded on July 1 with a pianist.
“It’s released in April of 1923, and we don’t know why Victor waited so long to release that coupling,” Huber says. “Usually, companies released records about two to three months after they were cut.” The whiny fiddles and crackly sound quality of “Arkansaw Traveler” beat the first country vocal recording, Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” to market by just a few months, but it was the first in a series of developments that advanced the recorded sound of country. Those shifts include:in the mid-1920s, which improved sound quality and evened out the speed of recordings.
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