Maybe we were trying to bring a little visibility to the project while the sunshine from Ken Burns’ Country Music documentary was still pouring in and spoke too soon. Nonetheless, the scope of Before the Big Bang: Country Music Origins in the Acoustic Era, 1890-1926 has expanded.
It now will contain six CDs, with more than 160 tracks by more than 130 artists, covering 37 years of recording history. The first four CDs explore the roots, resources, origins, and inspirations that fed into what would become known as country music. The fifth and sixth CDs are dedicated to the emergence of “hillbilly” and old-time music that began to appear on records in the six years before the Bristol Sessions of 1927.