In 1927 the Victor Talking Machine Company sent a portable studio to Bristol, where music publisher Ralph Peer advertised for traditional musicians who wanted to try recording. The resulting Bristol Sessions produced test pressings by mountain string bands, gospel singers, blues artists, and vaudeville performers, with recordings by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family among the best sellers. In the 1940s and 1950s, the live radio broadcast Farm and Fun Time, originating on a Bristol station and heard in five states, was linked to the development of bluegrass music; performers included the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Jim and Jesse, and Mac Wiseman, while the most popular band was Curly King and the Tennessee Hilltoppers, led by local singer Cecil Crusenberry, who used King as a stage name. Bristol’s musical heritage is preserved by the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance, whose offices are near State Street, where Virginia and Tennessee meet in the middle of the street. For the past 50 years, musicians have gathered at the Star Barbershop on State Street for a weekly jam session, and State Street is also home to the Paramount Center for Arts, a historic theater presenting a variety of cultural events and performances. Bristol also stands within The Crooked Road, Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, a southwest Virginia region of historic and contemporary music venues, musicians, and fretted instrument makers, where old time mountain music, bluegrass, and gospel have been sustained through musical families, museums, festivals, concerts, radio shows, and jam sessions.