“Riley’s continuous success in his lifetime . . . demonstrates that his musical talent and ambition transcended the marketing initiatives that ubiquitously upsold his disability.”

A case study of Riley Puckett, a bestselling—yet largely forgotten—name in the fledgling country music industry of the early 1920s, starkly demonstrates how the genre’s century-long appeal to authenticity is fabricated through ever-changing relationships between recording artists, record companies, and the “commonfolk” from whom much of its songs and fables were harvested. Tracking Puckett’s success, as well as his later descent into obscurity, against the environment in which he musically came of age, and along the axes of disability and race, reveals country music’s ability to silence the voices of practitioners who contradict its stylized image. This analytical perspective also comments on the genre’s enduring mythos, which determines what is “authentic” according to changing—and often contradicting—standards.