Vernon Dalhart was born Marion Try Slaughter in Marion County, Jefferson, Texas, on April 6, 1883. He is a major influence in the field of Country Music.

He took his stage-name from two towns, Vernon and Dalhart in Texas, between which he punched cattle in the 1890's. (Decades later, Conway Twitty would derive his stage name through the same method.) Dalhart's father, Robert Marion Slaughter was killed in a fight with his brother-in-law, Bob Castleberry, when Vernon was age 10.

At the age of 12 or 13, the family moved from Jefferson to Dallas, Texas. Vernon who already could play the guitar, jew's harp, and harmonica, received vocal training at the Dallas Conservatory of Music .

He married Sadie Lee Moore-Livingston in 1901 and had two children, a son and a daughter. Around 1910 the family moved to New York City. He found employment in a piano warehouse and took occasional singing jobs. One of his first roles was in Puccini's Girl of the Golden West as the part of Ralph Rackstraw. He also played the part of Lieutenant Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. He saw an advertisement in the local paper for singers and applied and was auditioned by Thomas Alva Edison. From 1916 until 1923, using numerous pseudonyms, he made over 400 recordings of light Classical Music and early Dance Band Vocals, but his early country music recordings cemented his place in music history. Dalhart's songs often told tragic stories of mining disasters and train wrecks. While country music purists always viewed Dalhart with some suspicion because of his light opera background and a vocal style that was closer to pop than country, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1981.

Dalhart died in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1948.

Biography http://www.geocities.com/robtmorca/dalhart_1