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Ralph Peer (May 22, 1892 – January 19, 1960) was born Ralph Sylvester Peer in Independence, Missouri. He died in Hollywood, California. Peer was a talent scout, recording engineer and record producer in the field of music in the 1920s and 1930s.
Peer spent some years working for Columbia Records, in Kansas City, Missouri until 1920 when he was hired as recording director of General Phonograph's OKeh Records label in New York. In the same year he supervised the recording of Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues", reputed to be the first blues recording specifically aimed at the African-American market. In 1924 he supervised the first commercial recording session in New Orleans, Louisiana, recording jazz, blues, and gospel music groups there.
He is also credited with what is often called the first country music recording, Fiddlin' John Carson's "Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane"/"That Old Hen Cackled and The Rooster's Goin' To Crow". In August 1927, while talent hunting in the southern states with Victor Records he recorded both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family in the same session at a makeshift studio in Bristol, Tennessee, known as the Bristol Barn Session. This momentous event could be described as the genesis of country music as we know it today. Rodgers, who later became known as the Father Of Country Music, cut "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep", while the Carters' first sides included "Single Girl, Married Girl".