In 1939 a young man by the name of Joseph S. Hall lugged some early recording equipment around the Great Smoky Mountains with the purpose of capturing the real music of the Smokies before it was changed forever. It was a tumultuous time when hundreds of families were leaving or had left their mountain farms to make way for the creation of the new national park. There was lots of music in the hills and hollows in those days: ballads, blues, folk, gospel, and country.