Question: What Texas fiddler is thought to have made the first commercial recording of country music?
Answer: Alexander “Eck” Robertson. Robertson was born Arkansas in 1887 and moved with his family to a farm near Amarillo when he was three. His father, grandfather, and uncles all played the fiddle, and Robertson left home at age sixteen to pursue a career in music.
At the 1922 Old Confederate Soldiers’ Reunion in Richmond, Virginia, he met fiddler Henry C. Gilliland, who helped the duo book a recording with the Victor Talking Machine Company in New York. During a two-day recording session, Robertson and Gilliland played “Arkansas Traveler” and “Turkey in the Straw.”
