While Beyoncé continues to grab headlines and awards with her country music concert tour, her success is uncovering the unknown history of the genre. Country is just one of the genres at the heart of American music – genres flourishing and originating in and around New Orleans.
Beyoncé is just the latest musician of color to send shock waves through country music. In 2018, Lil Nas X was breaking the mold with his unique style of country in “Old Town Road.” Before him, Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish fame scored a number one country song in 2009 with “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It.” In the 2000s, Kane Brown and Cowboy Troy (who combined country with hip-hop) were joining the country music hit parade.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Pointer Sisters and even Aaron Neville added their distinctive styles to the country music genre. In the 60s and 70s, Charlie Pride became country music’s first black superstar, with songs like “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)“ and “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin.” Pride won Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year in 1971, and in 1973, he won the American Music Awards Favorite Country Male Artist and Favorite Country Album. In the 60s, Ray Charles recorded and released 24 country songs and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music 1&2, arguably among the best country albums ever.
Country music, like jazz, is considered to be a truly American art form. Country or “Hillbilly” music was said to have come into being around 1920. But more than 130 years ago, the first recording of country music was performed in New Orleans — by a Creole of color.
In 1891, Louis Vasnier, a Creole from New Orleans’ 7th Ward, made the first country music recording in the U.S. for the Louisiana Phonograph Company. The Louisiana Phonograph Company was one of the earliest recording companies, and the only one in the South in the 1890s. In those early days, songs were recorded on cylindrical vinyl cones, before the advent of flat records.
Louis Vasnier was one of only two people of color who recorded for the Louisiana Phonograph Company. His recording of “Thompson’s Old Grey Mule” is one of the two surviving cylinders of Vasnier’s music. Years later, in the 1920s, Uncle Dave Macon, a skilled banjo player, comedian and Grand Old Opry legend, would record Vasnier’s song, but titled it “The Braying Mule” and make it a hit.
Vasnier’s story is not an uncommon history of Creoles of color in New Orleans. His mother, Louise Pradines, a free woman of color, purchased his father, Louis Vasnier Sr.’s, freedom. She was able to do so before Anglos prohibited the freeing of slaves in Louisiana, which happened in 1857. In 1858, Louis “Bebe” Vasnier was born free, as had been his older sister and brother, Marie Philomene and Henry.
Louis Vasnier was a house painter and supplemented his income by performing comedy and playing the banjo. Louis formed the Johnson and Vasnier Colored Minstrel show in 1880, just when jazz was emerging in New Orleans. This is probably how he came to the attention of the Louisiana Phonograph Company.
Rather than being a trailblazer for jumping genres, Beyoncé is just one of the latest musicians of color to highlight the country genre, a genre with early beginnings in New Orleans.
New Orleans was a fertile brew of musical genres, people, and cultures from its very founding. African music survived and lived on vigorously in Louisiana. From the founding of New Orleans in 1718, the back of the city, now known as Congo Square, was a place where slaves and free people of color were allowed to congregate in large numbers to dance, drum and play music on homemade instruments. Before Anglos took over Louisiana, white and black musicians crossed musical and racial boundaries by playing together, teaching and collaborating.
The French, Spanish and other European settlers brought classical music to the city. Amateur and professional musicians played together. Creoles of color had their own symphonic orchestras like the Theatre de la Renaissance and the Société Philharmonique, active in the 1830s and 1840s.
As early as 1814, the colored troops who fought in the War of 1812 had their own orchestra to keep up troop morale. Starting in the 1820s and 1830s, as the Anglos streaming into Louisiana tried to strip away the rights of slaves and free people of color alike, social clubs and benevolent societies gave dances and soirees to benefit the Creole community.
This was a unique conglomeration of slaves and free people of color, of professional and amateur musicians, of African, Native American and European cultures. It is no wonder that all types of music flourished in New Orleans; from classical and opera to country, blues and jazz.
Jazz musician and New Orleans native Terence Blanchard was the first black man to have an opera debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Blanchard’s opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, debuted in 2021. Though not as uniquely American as jazz or country music, opera was also prominent in the musical history of New Orleans.
New Orleans had an opera season beginning in the late 1700s and was considered the opera capital of the U.S. for many years. The French Opera House opened in New Orleans in 1859. More than a decade ago, the historian, opera performer, and educator Giovanna Joseph and her daughter Aria formed OperaCreole, which performs operas of Creole of color composers.
Joseph is quick to point out that Creoles of color and slaves were allowed to attend opera performances. Opera was an accepted and thriving musical genre from very early in New Orleans’ history.
Just this past year, OperaCreole premiered a previously unknown opera by the historic Creole of color composer Edmund Dede, Morgiane. Joseph discovered and transcribed this work and brought Dede’s opera to life. The opera has been performed at venues in the U.S. and abroad.
We do not have much history of Louis Vasnier’s career during his lifetime. Sadly, Louis Vasnier died of consumption in 1902. He never got to see the flowering of jazz or country music as we know it today. But his influential recordings reveal the important contributions Creoles of color and black artists made to the early country music genre.
Today, Beyoncé and Lil Nas X capture the big paydays and limelight, but the table was set for them to break out by a series of earlier black and Creole country music performers. Now, the previously unknown history of Creole and people of color’s involvement in opera is being highlighted by Giovanna Joseph and jazz icon Terence Blanchard.
