Country music’s earliest, most popular recording sounds different than today’s country hits. When Fiddlin’ John Carson recorded “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” in 1923, he didn’t realize the Appalachian-tinged tune would become a timeless part of the genre’s history. His producer, Country Music Hall of Fame inductee and businessman Ralph Peer, ordered a mere 500 copies of the song to be distributed for sale.
The record contained one other song played by the fiddler, “The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster’s Going to Crow,” but it was “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” that stole the show. When Fiddlin’ John Carson’s copies quickly sold out, Peer hired him for more recording sessions. What would become the country music genre was introduced to a mass audience in America for the first time.
