a recounting by Don Harrison

1736 -- First fiddling contest announced.

According to the Nov. 26, 1736 issue of the "Virginia Gazette," the winner of a Hanover County, Va. contest received "a neat Hunting Saddle, with a fine Broad-cloth housing" plus a new fiddle. The fiddle was the most common musical tool among whites and blacks throughout the 19th century, and this is believed to be the first recorded reference to rural country music in America.

1737 -- First reference to black fiddlers

The Sept. 17, 1737 edition of the "South Carolina Gazette" has an advertisement by a white merchant desiring "any white person... or a negro... that can play on the violin. . . may be employ’d by the said Logan living in Union Street." Advertisements from this period offering bounties for escaped slaves often mention fiddles.

1761-- Earliest-known original American folk composition

Timothy Myrick of Massachusetts publishes "Springfield Mountain," the account of a deadly snakebite.

1776 -- "Our Goodman" is published in Britain.

The ballad of a hopeless drunk becomes a big hit in America and is later adapted as any number of hard-living honky-tonk songs in the modern era.

1825-- Francis James Child born

The Child Ballads -- early American and British folk songs -- were named after this 19th century Harvard University professor, who first compiled early American folk songs. Many of the lyrics to these ballads, some dating back to Elizabethan times, detail murder, abortion, debauchery and drunkenness. Ditties like "Barbara Allen" would be banned today from WalMart shelves if recited by a rap artist.

1826-- Stephen Foster is born.

America’s first great songwriter, Foster is an untrained melodist who composes timeless songs in his prime (like "Hard Times"). In an eerie foreshadowing of the way the music business will treat its innovators, this trailblazing songwriter is eventually cheated out of many of his copyrights and dies relatively young, a pauper and penniless.

1828 -- Thomas Dartmouth Rice writes "Jim Crow"

The bard of minstrelry, Rice makes his refashioned Negro worksong a huge international hit in 1836 and gives birth to blackface.

1843-- The Virginia Minstrels take the stage

Spurred by the solo performances and songs of Rice, the Virginia Minstrels debut on Feb. 6 at New York’s Bowery Circus and spark a hot pop music trend among bourgeois white audiences in the mid-19th century for white singers/musicians imitating the music of blacks. The tradition of minstrelry had roots in British dramas and operas, where black-faced white characters would sing "Negro" songs.

Like it or not, the cross-pollinization of American popular music can be traced to these derisive 19th century minstrel acts; the roots of Ragtime Jazz can be found in these early attempts to appropriate African song modes. One is also tempted to throw in the name of Mick Jagger here, for contemporary relevance.

1847 -- Yodeling comes to America

Tom Christian, the first Yodeling minstrel, makes his debut in Chicago. Yodeling had been common on the British stage, and would later form an important part of the early country music of Jimmie Rodgers and Emmett Miller and the blues of Leadbelly.

1850 -- Muzak is born

W.C. Peters & Sons of Cincinnati publishes "Household Melodies: A Selection of Popular Songs, Duets, Trios and Quartets, Arranged to Household Words," said to represent the first soft stirrings of easy listening music.

1855 -- Texarkana-born piano player Scott Joplin gives his first public performance in St. Louis.

Joplin, an African-American, would go on to write operas and classical music but his shuffling, blues-based piano rags were his genius. Joplin’s walking-bass line provided the blueprint for later innovations by New Orleans’ Jelly Roll Morton in inventing boogie-woogie piano.

1857- First failed format

1867-- The first black cross-over

In sharp contrast to the jokey minstrel shows, a group of singers from Nashville’s black Fisk College make their debut in Nashville, performing elegant and subdued spirituals and classical music suitable for "proper" audiences. Extended concert tours in Germany and the U.K bring them great fame.

1868 -- "Percy Reliques: Loose and Humorous Songs" is published.

1887 -- Edison invents the "Phonograph."

1888 --Berliner invents the "Gramophone"

Although Edison holds the patent on the phonograph, which utilizes heavy wax cylinders cut on vertical grooves, German immigrant Ernie Berliner invents the "gramophone," a machine that plays lateral-grooved discs.

1890 -- "Jazz" emerges in New Orleans

Although the style of music didn’t yet have a name, the Nov. 15, 1890 issue of the Mascot newspaper describes the music of newly-formed Basin St. brass bands as "a sad affliction."

1890-91-- Commercial recording begins.

Edison’s wax cylinders are the "industry format" of choice, and marching bands ala John Phillip Sousa are the first musical offerings. Early phonograph players are unwieldy, expensive and the wax cylinders (only two minutes of music) sound bloody awful.

1892 -- First yodeling cylinders are cut

The first yodeler on record is L.W. Lipp, who releases several on the New Jersey Phonograph Company label. Several companies follow suit with their own yodeling records, giving birth to the first recorded music fad.

1893 -- Tin Pan Alley emerges

M. Witmark and Sons are among the first song publishers to move their offices to 28th Street in New York City. By 1900 the area known as Tin Pan Alley would house most of the popular music publishing firms in America, specializing in the sentimental ballads of the era.

1894 -- Slide guitar is invented

Joseph Kekuku, a student in Oahu, Hawaii, uses a metal bar to glide onto the strings of his guitar as he plays. He discovers a wild new sound that would greatly influence American blues and country artists in the coming century.

1898 -- The Gramophone arrives

Ernie Berliner’s better-sounding Gramophone hits the market. In a few years, the machine (with further improvements) will become the new disc format instead of the cylinder and the heavy record discs will serve as the foremost medium for sound reproduction well into the next century. Hurt by lawsuits from Edison, Berliner would eventually sell the rights to his innovations.

1899 -- "Frankie and Johnnie" is written

Allen Britt shoots Frankie Baker in St. Louis on Oct. 15, 1899 and a saloon singer, Mammy Lou, writes a song based on the incident called "Frankie and Johnny" that becomes one of the most lasting ballads in American history, covered hundreds of times by singers in the next century.

1900 -- "Casey Jones" is killed

A few days after it occurs in April, 1900, Wallace Saunders, a black railroad worker, writes a song about the death of train engineer Casey Jones. The ballad eventually becomes a folk standard, a perennial favorite among rural performers white and black.

Prince Dorough -- "Popular Music Culture in America" (Ardsley House)

Peter Guralnick -- "Feels Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues & Rock ‘n’ Roll" (Vintage)

Greil Marcus -- "Invisible Republic" (Henry Holt)

Nick Tosches -- "Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll" (Da Capo Press)

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