Nashville's sparkling night skyline.

A City That Rocks

With The Rise Of The Phonograph, Radio, Nashville As Music Center Of The South Is Born

Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph and audio recording technology, should rightly be credited as a founding father of Nashville, Tennessee. Without the recording industry, a good deal of what you find in Tennessee's capital city, would not exist today. It's easy to think music recordings have always been around. Actually, Edison patented his invention in 1877. Before that people attended live performances by musicians or made their own music.

Radio technology took off following World War I, and by 1921, Westinghouse Corporation had established four major broadcast stations in Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, and New York City. In 1922, a "broadcasting boom" took place and more than 500 stations of all varieties sprung up across the nation. The tremendous success of radio provided a ready market for recorded music and the record business took off.

How Nashville became the southern base for the burgeoning recording industry is an interesting story. A Vanderbilt University student named Francis Craig began a jazz band in 1921 and later lead a dance band a Nashville's famed Hermitage Hotel for 22 years. Many credit his 1947 hit song "Near You" with putting the city on the map as a recording center.

Music historian Martin Hawkins researching the early days of the Nashville recording industry turned up familiar names such as Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins. He also found a much more diverse musical scene in Nashville before it became known worldwide for country music.

Beasley Smith, for a time Craig's college roommate, also became a Nashville bandleader and led the WSM Radio Orchestra before becoming music director at the station and writing or co-writing hits for Grand Ole Opry luminary Roy Acuff ("Night Train to Memphis" and "Tennessee Central Number Nine") and pop standards including "That Lucky Old Sun".

Singer Dinah Shore sang with Smith's band before moving on to a national singing, television and movie career. She attended Nashville's Hume-Fogg High School before enrolling at Vanderbilt. Early in her career, she was known as the "Nashville Nightingale".

Vanderbilt graduate James Michelinie and his partner Harold Walker launched the recorded business here in the early 1940s with the Nashville Recording Studio. They recording anything paying customers wanted preserved for posterity and got business from some up-and-coming Opry performers.

In the early days, gospel and R&B music were just as prominent in Nashville as country music. The emphasis on country music evolved in large part because of the growing prominence of the Grand Ole Opry's weekly radio show on WSM, which led listeners to associate Nashville with country.

"The national recording companies needed a base somewhere in the South where the musicians were, and the Opry was in Nashville," Hawkins explained. "In the end, the big companies had to have a presence in Nashville to stop the local independent record companies from signing up all the top talent."

Nashville's Music Row (a dozen professional recording studios on 16th Avenue South) developed in the 1950s and the city rapidly become one of the nation's major music centers. During a 1950 broadcast, WSM announcer David Cobb referred to Nashville as Music City U.S.A. and the name stuck.

When Elvis Presley left Sun Records and signed with RCA Victor, the company recognized the need for recording operation in the Southeast and chose Nashville. It was here Elvis's first RCA recording sessions occurred.

Nashville played an even more crucial role in the career of the Everly Brothers. They had come to the attention of Chet Atkins in 1955. The result was a string of hits on Cadence Records, including Bye Bye Love, All I Have To Do Is Dream, and Wake Up Little Susie.

Rock & roll now dominated the airwaves and country music sales dropped. Record executives realized it must change to compete on the pop music charts. Chief architects of the new sound were Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins who found a way to soften and sweeten country music to gain wider public acceptance. The "Nashville Sound", smooth and sophisticated, featured mellow strings and vocal choruses.

RCA's Studio B (now a historic site operated by the Country Music Hall of Fame) studio is where Elvis Presley recorded more than 200 popular hits, along with many other popular artists including The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, and Willie Nelson. Built in 1957, it's the oldest surviving recording studio. In 1996, it was restored to its vintage 1957 look and is open for public tours.

Studio musicians have played a major role in the success of the recording business. The new (opened 2006) Musician's Hall of Fame & Museum in downtown Nashville recognizes this contribution. Although its not widely known, record company's hire musicians to play at recording sessions. So the band you hear on a record is NOT the band whose name is on the record label or the one seen on tour. In Nashville, the best studio musicians were the "A-Team". Record producers would simply say we wanted the A-Team and studio managers would know who to contact.

The A-Team played on over 45,000 recordings. Some of the songs and artists include Stand By Your Man by Tammy Wynette, He Stopped Loving Her Today by George Jones, Take This Job and Shove It by Johnny Paycheck, Delta Dawn by Tanya Tucker, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and Behind Closed Doors by Charlie Rich, I Fall to Pieces and Crazy by Patsy Cline, Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley, Comes a Time by Neil Young, Lay, Lady, Lay by Bob Dylan, Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, Don't it Make my Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gale, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson.

The Musician's Hall of Fame is not limited to country music or Nashville, but salutes studio musicians throughout the country in all musicals forms. There's a fascinating collection of musical instruments and recording equipment, but it comes alive with a narrated tour by Museum President Joe Chambers who knew many of the musicians personally. Learn more at www.musicianshalloffame.com

Nearby are the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Ryman Auditorium (the original home of the Grand Ole Opry).

Beyond the recordings, Nashville is a great place for live music as well. Everything from the Nashville Symphony Orchestra to the country bands that play at clubs on Honky Tonk Row. Plan to visit soon and begin your plan at www.musiccityusa.com.