After several years of work and remodeling, Ashe County’s Historic Courtroom is back to hosting live concerts. If you’d like to experience music in one of North Carolina’s most historic venues, look out for upcoming events on the museum’s website: www.ashehistory.org. Tomorrow, June 28th, at 7p.m. come out to hear world champion fiddler Tim Smith. Tickets are $15 at the door. (Given the historic nature of the courthouse, which was constructed in 1904, the upstairs courtroom is not currently handicap accessible)
When thinking back on the early history of country music, a few iconic sites come to mind: the impromptu recording studio in Bristol that has since been turned in to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum where the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers first performed, the Okeh recoding studios at 25 West 45th Street in New York where Henry Whitter, Fiddling John Carson and the Hillbillies made some of the first country music records ever recorded, and of course, the Ryman auditorium in Nashville, which hosted the Grand Ole Opry for decades. However, there are other sites as well which served to foster and develop early country music, though most have been lost or forgotten.
The historic Ashe County Courthouse is one such example. Although it has never received sufficient recognition, this venue is the most significant site for the development of early country music in North Carolina.
For over a decade, this building served as the primary performance venue for Ashe County and hosted dozens of early country music stars, who frequently toured the South between radio performances. Although dozens of venues across the state hosted these same artists, using advertisements of upcoming shows published in newspapers across North Carolina helps to underscore the unique significance of the Ashe Courthouse.
Prior to 1950, twenty four future Country Music Hall of Fame musicians had begun their professional careers; however, many of these, like Jimmy Davis and Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry, were locally anchored by radio or film performances and rarely made public appearances outside of their local area. Others, like Merle Travis and Jimmy Dickens were early in their solo careers before 1950 and similarly did not tour wide areas. In fact, of the twenty four who were active in any capacity prior to 1950, only ten made any live performance in North Carolina, based on available newspaper articles and advertisements.
Some of these ten artists who performed in North Carolina toured widely. The Delmore Brothers appeared at 17 different venues across the state, Uncle Dave Macon appeared at 26, and Bill Monroe, who for a time was a featured performer on Charlotte radio, appeared either as a solo artist or with his brother Charlie at 69 different venues across the state.
Other artists hardly ever performed in North Carolina. Bill Carlisle appeared once, at Etowah High School. Red Foley, similarly, made one advertised performance prior to 1950, at the North Carolina Strawberry Festival. Eddy Arnold appeared at three different venues and the Carter Family, who were featured primarily on radio, only appeared at ten venues in the state.
Taken together, well over 100 venues in the state hosted a future Country Music Hall of Fame inductee prior to 1950. But which venue hosted the most?
The majority of the venues only featured one or two Hall of Fame performances. A few, like the Tryon Theater and the Marion Theater, hosted three. Despite the fact that so many venues hosted these artists, however, only three hosted more than three different performers. Lawsonville High School, in Stokes County, hosted four future hall of fame artists. The Colonial Theater, which operated in Valdese, North Carolina, hosted five, but the venue that hosted the most overall, with six different future Country Music Hall of Fame artists, was the Ashe County Courthouse.
Additionally, the courtroom hosted dozens of other early country music celebrities during this period, including the Stanley Brothers, Wade Mainer, Clayton McMichen and the Georgia Wildcats, the Sauceman Brothers, Roy Hall and his Blue Ridge Entertainers, J.E. Mainer and the Mountaineers, Fred Kirby and many more.
At this point, it is worth wondering why the Ashe County Courthouse was able to attract so many more famous country artists than other, bigger venues in more populated areas. The answer is in the rural and underdeveloped nature of Ashe County in the 1930s and 1940s. Ashe County clearly had a ready audience and a high demand for rural acts. Newspaper accounts mention shows for the Monroe Brothers and Uncle Dave Macon selling out rapidly and resulting in standing room only crowds in the courtroom for performances. However, unlike other counties, this high demand was limited by a lack of venues. Most early country artists performed in movie theaters, like the Appalachian Theater in Boone or the Spartan Theater in Sparta. Because many counties had multiple theaters, in addition to high school auditoriums and courtrooms, these venues competed with one another, and no single venue was able to attract all the headlining acts. Ashe County, by contrast, was limited in seating spaces. The only theater prior to 1938 was the Jeffersonian in West Jefferson, which was not large enough to accommodate large crowds, and even after the opening of the Parkway, which would ultimately feature live shows from Bill Monroe, Uncle Dave Macon and the Stanley Brothers, most performances were still held in the courtroom, possibly because of the easier access or superior acoustics.
Other music venues in North Carolina were also quite significant. As previously mentioned, several other venues hosted nearly as many hall of fame performers, and the original WBT radio studios in Charlotte hosted many as well. However, none of these venues still exist. Almost all have been torn down or remodeled and are not recognizable today. The Ashe County Courtroom, which was used consistently as a government building for almost 100 years and underwent no major remodels, is still almost exactly the same as it was when Flatt and Scruggs, Deford Bailey, The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, The Delmore Brothers, and Uncle Dave Macon performed there. It is not only one of the most significant historic buildings in Ashe County; for country music fans, it is one of the most significant buildings in the entire state of North Carolina.