Forget Nashville, Atlanta is where country music began. A building on Nassau St in Atlanta, thought to be the place a country hit was recorded in 1923, is being torn down for a hotel!
Demolition just began this week on a pretty historic building for Atlanta and for country music! Despite a current petition with thousands of signatures, a Charleston based company began to tear down the interior of the building that housed a recording studio in 1923, where Fiddlin' John Carson recorded "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane”. This is the beginning of "the hillbilly music industry", according to Bill Malone in the country-music history bible Country Music U.S.A..
The land has been of interest to the Margaritaville Hotel chain for several years and they finally pulled the trigger to start demo and build the hotel.
Even more sad though, is the “lot occupied by the historic building would be used for the dumpsters and grease traps next to the first-floor Margaritaville restaurant," according to research by Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Essentially, Atlanta could've ended up being Nashville if country music would've laid it's roots here, but losing this piece of country music kinda sucks, because we lose our proof that Country music's birthplace was actually the ATL!