"Thirty years before some fiddlers from Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia started recording a new genre of music called 'hillbilly,' a Creole of color from the Seventh Ward of New Orleans named Louis Vasnier ... beat them to the punch." That's the catalog description for "Thompson's Old Gray Mule," the song Vasnier recorded in 1891 that was released last month by the Archeophone vintage-recordings label as a 45rpm record, giving us "what is arguably the oldest country record in existence," per Archeophone co-founder Richard Martin's intel. "It might be the most important thing we've ever put out," Martin's wife and fellow Archeophone co-founder Meagan Hennessey tells the Washington Post of the song about a farmer's mule.
It's a stunning find in a genre that's more associated with Stetson-wearing or bedazzled white crooners, both male and female—from Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Luke Bryan to Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, and Carrie Underwood. In other words, the discovery is that of a "true unicorn," in the words of John Levin, a collector who stumbled upon a wax cylinder version of "Thompson's Old Gray Mule" about a decade ago at a Pennsylvania auction. "Black artists by and large, who were the ones who performed and recorded, get wiped out of the picture because [people] say, 'Well, it's not really country,'" Martin tells the Post, which notes there are only three Black musicians—Charley Pride, DeFord Bailey, and Ray Charles—who've been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. "So ours is partly a project of reclamation."
Vasnier, the son of a carpenter, began singing in public in the 1880s and started recording parody sermons in the early '90s, including "Adam and Eve and de Winter Apple," the B-side of the "Thompson's Old Gray Mule" record. That song is said to be the earliest known recording by a Louisiana native, per MLive. The Post notes that "Vasnier's story fits right in with the mission of Archeophone," as Martin and Hennessey "seek to uncover and share the real history of recorded sound." "The idea of country music was made up to sell records," Rhiannon Giddens, who plays the banjo opening for Beyonce's "Texas Hold 'Em," tells the Post. "[W]e have to talk about the fact that Vasnier was Black and that this is something that Black people played." Listen to a snippet of the tune here; more here on the song and on Vasnier. (More country music stories.)
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