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Specialised Markets
Early in the twentieth century, the American recording industry discovered the value of market segmentation arranging their publicity, their distribution systems and eventually their catalog numbering so as best to target communities of immigrant and first-generation Americans. From 1920 the segment of African American record-buyers was discovered, and eventually named Race Records. From 1922, a similar market was recognised and exploited for music played by Whites in the American South. The market was known as Hillbilly although many found the term offensive and other names have been substituted such as Old Timey. The music had at its core "tunes played on the fiddle, banjo and other instruments, sometimes with incidental singing; 'traditional' ballads, event songs, love songs, comic songs and new compositions more or less similarly conceived." To some extent the market could be served by versatile trained singers such as Vernon Dalhart performing the repertoire, but there was also a demand for performers in an authentic Souther style. Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman and other Southern musicians travelled to studios in New York City.

Field Recordings
In 1923, Okeh Records discovered that a wider range of commercial talent could be recorded if the Northern studios transported equipment to Southern cities. Originally, the idea came from a furniture store owner and record distributors in Atlanta, Polk Brockman, who was familiar with local Black and White musicians, in particular the champion fiddler and popular radio personality Fiddling John Carson. The session was organised by Ralph Peer, who combined the roles of A &  R man and record producer. He thought Carson was "pluperfect awful", but the instant local success of the fiddler's first record encouraged him to re-evaluate the tastes of the  Southern White market, to make further recording of  Carson, and to make more field recordings. He held annual sessions in Atlanta,  New Orleans and St Louis for the four years to 1926, and a single sessions in Asheville, North Carolina in 1925.

Ralph Peer's vision
At Okeh, Peer had managed the Hillbilly and Race field recordings and the development of artists. In 1926, the recording industry changed dramatically, following the development by Bell Laboratories of electrical recording. The parent company of Okeh could not afford the price demanded by Bell, so the label was sold to Columbia, which itself had been bought up by English Columbia. Okeh continued for a time to operate separately, but Peer chose to move his services to Victor Records. The Race Record market was largely closed to Victor since it depended on Black female vaudeville stars, the best of whom were contracted to other labels. So Peer decided that the prosperity for Victor and himself lay in developing the Hillbilly market. A key decision was to forgo a salary in favour of royalties to be shared with the artists. By claiming money for the artists, Peer created sufficient trust for them to enter copyright agreements with his Southern Music publishing firm and to make him their manager. Peer's commercial acumen, was backed by a pressing incentive to find and develop new talent, his proven expertise in field recording, and the enhanced sound quality of electrical recordings. All these led to the success of the Bristol Sessions and the start of the change from the Hillbilly record market to the modern Country Music industry.

Peer's vision was also aesthetic. According to Charles Wolfe, "Peer sensed that he was developing a new commercial art form — the genre of music eventually called country music — and that this art form was to be derived from, though not fully reflective of, traditional mountain music." He was very selective in his recording of instrumental music, and encouraged bands to add vocals to their tunes. In 1958 he recalled "My policy was always to expand each artist by adding accompaniment or adding a vocalist." The new electrical recording allowed a singer to be heard even against the backing of a string band. The Bristol Sessions differed from previous field recordings in their greater emphasis on vocal music, which, in Wolfe's view, "in the end, was possibly the most important contribution of all."

Choice of Bristol
The recording took place in the small city of Bristol, Tennessee, but this was part of a larger centre with its twin city Bristol, Virginia. They in turn were part of a still larger urban rea, the Tri-Cities, along with Johnson City to the south and the recently established city of Kingsport to the west. With a combined population of 32,000 the Tri-Cities constituted the largest urban are in Appalachia, bigger than Asheville, North Carolina where Peer had held recordings for Okeh in 1925. Bristol was on the Tennessee-Virgina border, and within easy driving distance from Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia. The folksong collectors Cecil Sharp and John Harrington Cox had operated in the area, but these were probably not the "experts" Peer had in mind when he told a Bristol newspaper "In no section of the South have the pre-war melodies and old mountaineer songs been better preserved than in the mountains of East Tennessee and southwest Virginia, experts declare, and it was primarily for this reason that the Victor Company chose Bristol as its operating base." More likely, the "experts" were the various talent scouts who had travelled the South. No company had yet recorded in Britol, but both Okeh and Columbia had sent scouts there. At least thirteen hillbilly acts from the Bristol are had been recorded, including four that would participate in the first Bristol session: Henry Whitter, Ernest Stoneman, the Avoca Quartet and the Johnson Brothers.