Native genius. Boy artist. These and other descriptors were often applied to Lloyd Branson, who grew from a precocious sketcher on his family’s East Tennessee farm to an accomplished artist best known for portraits of Southern politicians and depictions of early Tennessee history. For the first time, Branson is the subject of a major retrospective, which chronicles his life, works of art, and legacy as one of the most influential figures in Knoxville’s early art circles. Please join us in celebrating Branson’s life and art!

In 1929 and again in 1930, Brunswick Records’ Vocalion label set up a temporary recording studio at the St. James Hotel in downtown Knoxville and invited locals to come make records. These old-time, jazz, blues, and gospel recordings added Knoxville’s voice to American popular music and inspired the next generation of country music stars. In an exciting new exhibition, the East Tennessee Historical Society and the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound present a first-time look at the impact of these recordings and the region’s contributions to American popular music. The exhibition features an array of artifacts, videos, sound recordings, and photographs showcasing East Tennessee’s diverse musical heritage.

Come to Make Records explores Knoxville’s growth in the early 20^th century, the importance of fiddling contests in generating fans and driving record sales, the role of Sterchi Bros. in exposing local talent to a national audience, and examines why Knoxville was selected for the recordings. The exhibit offers a closer look at the St. James Hotel, the site of the Knoxville Sessions, an overview of the local talent that arose from the sessions, and a look at the next generation of artists, such as Chet Atkins and Roy Acuff.

The exhibit includes a display demonstrating 130 years of recorded sound from the wax cylinder to the iPod, a re-creation of the St. James Hotel room where the Knoxville Sessions took place, Roy Acuff’s fiddle, Cal Davenport’s banjo, a Bairdola, and an assortment of other instruments. Other artifacts featured are original records from the Knoxville Sessions, a painting by Howard Armstrong, and Carl and Pearl Butler’s performance suits, designed by Nathan Turk. Special video presentations include a film produced by East Tennessee PBS on the Knoxville Sessions, a look at how 78 rpm discs are made, rare footage of Knoxville Sessions artists, and recordings of Roy Acuff, Uncle Dave Macon, and Carl and Pearl Butler.

The exhibition by the East Tennessee Historical Society is made possible through a collaboration with the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound and the Knox County Public Library and is sponsored by Clayton Homes with support by East Tennessee PBS. The exhibit is also a supporting component of the Knoxville Stomp Festival of Lost Music to be held May 5-8 in celebration of the Bear Family Records release of The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930:  Knox County Stomp. Previous acclaimed releases from the Bear Family include the Grammy-nominated The Bristol Sessions and The Johnson City Sessions. The exhibit is on view at the Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville through October 30, 2016.

The Museum of East Tennessee History is open 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday; 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Saturday; and 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Sunday. Museum admission is $5.00 for adults, $4.00 for seniors, and FREE for children under 16.  Each Sunday admission is FREE to all and ETHS members always receive FREE admission.

Based on the research contained in The Knoxville Sessions, 1929-1930: Knox County Stomp by Dr. Ted Olson and Tony Russell, published by Bear Family Records

Guest curators: Bradley Reeves and Eric Dawson, Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, Knox County Public Library

Volunteers: Denise Alfrey, Ryan Caylor, Dan MacDonald, Katherine McPhaul, B. J. Wiseman

Special thanks: Lisa Horstman

Related Resources:

To learn more about the Bristol Sessions, visit the Birthplace of Country Music Museum

The marble industry was once an important sector of East Tennessee’s economy. By the mid-1850s, East Tennessee marble from Knox County had been chosen for the interiors of the Tennessee State Capitol and marble from Hawkins County was being installed inside the new House of Representatives and Senate wings of the United States Capitol. In the decades that followed, East Tennessee’s varicolored marble was sought by architects and patrons for the interiors of public buildings: state capitol buildings, courthouses, and city halls. Tennessee marble would soon also be ordered for high traffic railroad terminal flooring across the United States and Canada.

In the 1870s, with the example of Knoxville’s handsome new Custom House, the marble became known for its strength and durability as an exterior stone. The Custom House marble was extracted from a quarry in the Forks of the River district, near the confluence of the French Broad and Holston rivers. By 1873, this quarry was being operated by the Knoxville Marble Company, one of East Tennessee’s first modern marble businesses. Others were soon to follow on both sides of the Tennessee River, the Crescent Marble Company in the Boyd’s Bridge area providing marble for the Memphis Custom House (completed 1885) and the Ross and Mead Marble quarries, developed by John M. Ross in the Island Home section, furnishing marble for two exemplary museum buildings: the Morgan Library (1906) and the National Gallery of Art (1941). While the Mead quarry pit is now filled with water, the integrity of the Ross quarry has been preserved. Both quarries are situated in Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness, within the Ijams Nature Center. What remains of the industrial landscape includes a rock wall created from marble waste blocks, two intact pits that demonstrate bench quarrying techniques, historic road traces and railroad berms, scattered piles and stacks of marble blocks, and the location of the former railroad bed.

Along this same railroad line, about 4 miles south in the Vestal neighborhood, is the Candoro Marble Company’s office and mill buildings. Candoro, founded in 1914, housed a marble mill, finishing plant, and shipping office for the John J. Craig Companies, which had quarries in both Knox and Blount counties. The company office building, a Beaux Arts masterpiece designed by Knoxville architect Charles Barber in 1923, is a fine example of exterior use of light pink marble. The interior walls and floors served as a showroom for the types and finishes of marble offered by the company.

Reminders of the once prominent Tennessee marble industry can be seen today, in late-19^th, early-20^th century buildings on Gay Street and other corners of downtown, in building facades, steps and entranceways, and interior lobbies. The Knoxville Post Office and Federal Building on Main Street is a particularly fine example dating from the 1930s. And Knoxville, a city that has won national recognition for historic preservation, continues to embrace its marble heritage in modern buildings. Notice how seamlessly the new three-story East Tennessee History Center adjoins the original Custom House and how the exterior marble of the contemporary Knoxville Museum of Art brings the building’s formal geometry to life.

Ramsey House, Knoxville, Tenn. (1797)

Knoxville Customs House, Knoxville, Tenn. (1874)

James Blackstone Memorial Library, Branford, Conn. (1896)

Adriance Memorial Library, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (1896)

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, N.Y. (1906)

Mechanics National Bank Building, Knoxville, Tenn. (facade) (1907)

Chilhowee Park bandstand, Knoxville, Tenn. (1910)

The Holston, Knoxville, Tenn. (lower Gay St. and Clinch Ave. facades) (1913)

James J. Hill Research Library and St. Paul Public Library, St. Paul, Minn. (1917)

Richard C. Lee U.S. Courthouse, New Haven, Conn. (1919)

Candoro Marble Company Office/Showroom, Knoxville, Tenn. (1923)

U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, Knoxville, Tenn. (1934)

Tennessee Supreme Court Building, Nashville, Tenn. (1937)

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1941, 1978)

National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C. (1975)

Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tenn. (1990)

East Tennessee History Center, Knoxville, Tenn. (2005)

Howard Baker Center for Public Policy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn. (2008)

East Tennessee families treasure quilts made by their ancestors. Besides warming and decorating the bed, quilts also serve as reminders of important events—births, weddings, service to our country, the death of loved ones. Often, these memories are preserved in notes attached to the quilts or through stories handed down to younger generations. Sometimes notes are lost and memories fade, leaving families with a “mystery quilt.”

Did Grandma Jones or Granny Smith make this quilt? Or, was it Aunt Jane? When did she make it? Why did she choose this pattern? What caused this stain or that tear? These are some of the mysteries that quilt historians try to address through genealogical research and technical analysis.

From histories handed down to mysteries that remain, this exhibition provides visitors the opportunity to learn the “stories in stitches” from the quilts that have been trusted to the East Tennessee Historical Society since 1992.

Guest curators: Merikay Waldvogel and Jan Wass

Sergeant York – English Version – 1941 – Gary Cooper – SDC Films from brtiAmerica on Vimeo.

Please note that while this exhibit ended in 2020, a few of the artifacts are still on display in the Museum of East Tennessee History.

Mountain Dew. Your parents likely warned you about the neon-green soda. Doctors and dentists despise it. Yet, across the United States—especially in the South and Midwest—there are “superfans” of the beverage who will not drink anything else.

High in sugar and caffeine, it’s the all-night elixir of gamers and programmers. It fuels skateboarders, snowboarders, and racecar drivers. And for some, it’s the perfect pairing for Doritos or Taco Bell fare.

Mountain Dew ranks as the third most popular “liquid refreshment brand,” behind only Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. How did Mountain Dew become so popular, at a time when many Americans are looking for healthier beverage options?

Explore the drink’s storied history, which began here in the hills of Appalachia.

Dr. Daniel Pierce

Special thanks to “Dewologist” Dick Bridgforth for his generosity and support of the exhibition

In the exhibition’s text, mountain dew (lower-cased) refers to the colloquial nickname for whiskey. Mountain Dew (initial-capped) refers to the soft drink owned by PepsiCo. All artwork and likenesses are copyright of their owner(s), if applicable, and are used solely for historical and scholarly illustrative purposes.

Dick Bridgforth, Mountain Dew: The History, 2007

Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, 2004

Portraits were the “social media posts” of the American colonial and antebellum periods.

Today, social media allows users to not only visually document and share life’s moments but also curate how others see themselves.

Early Tennessee portraits afforded the sitter the same duality. “They are,” as one art historian puts it, “the rhetoric–not the record–of self-representation.”

As viewers two centuries removed, how are we to understand early portraiture in East Tennessee? Is it history, fiction, or perhaps a bit of both? This exhibition of works by Samuel M. Shaver, East Tennessee’s first native-born artist, provides interesting examples for discussion.

Samuel Moore Shaver was the youngest or next to youngest child born to David and Catherine Barringer Shaver on Reedy Creek (near present-day Kingsport) in 1816. Little is known about his formative years. He may have studied at Jefferson Academy in Blountville; a Leonidas Shaver is listed as a teacher there, and his older brother David, Jr., operated a tavern nearby.

In 1833, William Harrison Scarborough (1812-1871), a traveling portrait painter from Middle Tennessee, visited Sullivan County. What impact did Scarborough’s stay have on 17-year-old Shaver? Did he watch Scarborough paint the portraits of his neighbors? Or did he simply benefit by imitating the works Scarborough left behind?

Whether by native talent, with formal instruction, or both, Shaver possessed the skill set to begin producing competently done portraits by the late 1830s.

Knoxville occupies a unique place in the American South. Following the Civil War, residents felt it was one of the few racially tolerant cities in the region. Unlike most cities in the South, African Americans in Knoxville could vote, hold public office, serve as police officers, and sit on juries. Despite this, racial tensions still held the city captive, and life for black citizens was not the same as that for white citizens.

What was life like for African Americans in Knoxville during the Jim Crow era?

What influence did the city have in the early lives of artists Beauford and Joseph Delaney?

Could an African American artist, such as Ruth Cobb Brice, gain recognition without leaving home?

This exhibition, presented as a timeline, provides historical context to these questions beginning with Reconstruction and continuing through the height of segregation during the Jim Crow era.

Brothers Beauford and Joseph Delaney were internationally known artists whose works are now part of some of the world’s most prestigious collections. The Delaneys were born in Knoxville in the aftermath of slavery and the Civil War. Their education was often informal and sporadic, as they attended one rural school after another while traveling with their circuit-riding preacher father. They grew up amidst racial segregation, witnessed the upheaval of Knoxville’s race riot in 1919, and were aware of the lynching of blacks throughout the South. They were part of the Great Migration, during which thousands of African Americans left the South looking for opportunities.

Beauford and Joseph took different paths, yet their paintings reflect the world they experienced, beginning with life in Knoxville.

Ruth Cobb Brice was a Knoxville-born educator, writer, and artist contemporary with Beauford and Joseph Delaney. Like the Delaneys, Brice grew up amidst racial segregation. But unlike them, Brice worked from Knoxville.

Even without the direct influence of large art centers, Brice’s paintings and poems gained national notoriety.