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Marion Try Slaughter, born
April 6, 1883, near Jefferson in Marion County, Texas, would
become country music’s first million-selling recording artist
as Vernon Dalhart.
Slaughter’s early life is
sketchy, but he studied at the Dallas Conservatory of Music
and spent at least one summer as a cowpuncher in northwest
Texas. In 1910 he moved to New York City, where he took the
stage name of Vernon Dalhart after performing in two towns in
Texas, reportedly the two between which he had been a
cowpuncher.
On July 13, 1924, down on his
luck and needing a recording session to bring in some money,
Dalhart recorded two country sides for Victor Records – “Wreck
Of The Old 97” and “The Prisoner’s Song.” Released in
November, the “B” side, “The Prisoner’s Song,” was an
immediate hit, selling over a million copies.
Dalhart had another million
seller with “The Death Of Floyd Collins” and major hits with
such numbers as “The Letter Edged In Black,” “My Blue Ridge
Mountain Home,” “The Convict And The Rose,” “The Little
Rosewood Casket” and “The Dream Of The Miner’s Child.”
The 1929 stock market crash
took most of Dalhart’s personal fortune, and record sales
declined greatly during the Depression. His last years were
spent working as a night watchman, a voice coach and night
checkout clerk at the Barnum Hotel in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
He died of a coronary occlusion on September *15, 1948, and
was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1981.
CMT.COM
(*Some records indicate that
Dalhart died on the 18th – Dusty Owens, TCM News)
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