Music

Nashville has rightfully earned the moniker “Music City, USA.” With the abundance of musicians living in the area, music aficionados can walk into any dive bar, theater, cafe, coffee shop, restaurant, nightclub, motel, or concert hall on any given night…

The Nashville recording industry actually began after World War II, although there were several earlier events and factors that played a significant role in its success. During the 1920s and 1930s recording executives traveled across the country, making field recordings…

Operatic music has long been performed on stages throughout Tennessee, although the establishment of permanent local opera companies is a far more recent trend. Famous stars and opera companies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often presented performances in…

This Nashville entertainment and convention complex began in the early 1970s, when the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, the parent company of the nationally famous country music radio show the Grand Ole Opry decided to move the Opry from…

Dolly Parton emerged from a childhood of grim mountain poverty with formidable singing and songwriting talents, which she forged first into Nashville country music fame and then into international stardom. While some of her writing strains unnecessarily for approval, most…

Though arguably the most recognizable person in the history of country music, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon's name was never a household word. It was her alter ego, Minnie Pearl, with her frilly dresses, hat with dangling price tag, and shrill…

Carl Perkins, the son of Tiptonville sharecroppers, was Sun Record's first certified million-selling artist. Perkins began his musical career by forming the Perkins Brothers--Jackson's hottest honky-tonk group. The trio featured Carl as lead singer and songwriter, older brother Jay on…

Sam Phillips, most popularly known as the man who first recorded Elvis Presley, is more critically renowned for combining essential elements of Southern vernacular music, black and white, to produce the sound which heralded the age of rock-n-roll. As an…

The Porter Wagoner Show was a syndicated musical variety show filmed in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1961 to 1980. It was one of the longest running, most influential, and most successful country music television shows of the late twentieth century. Porter…

Elvis. The first name alone invokes images and sounds which spark instant recognition. While he may not have invented rock-n-roll, few can deny that Elvis Presley helped transform a musical fad into a national and international phenomenon. In the process,…

Frances W. Preston, a Nashville native who went to work for Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) at the age of twenty-one, serves now as that enterprise's worldwide president and CEO. While still a teenager Preston joined WSM as a receptionist, and…

The years between 1945 and 1960 represented the South's greatest period of upheaval in the twentieth century. In music, this period of transformation focused on what popular music observers identify as the rock-n-roll revolution, with the term "rockabilly" representing the…

Fred Rose, a prime mover in Nashville’s rise as a music center, was born in Evansville, Indiana. Rose initially made his mark in Chicago as a pop songwriter, radio performer, and recording artist during the 1920s, when he penned such…

Built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle between 1888 and 1892, Nashville's Ryman Auditorium gained international renown from 1943 to 1974 as home to the Grand Ole Opry, the premier live country music radio broadcast of Nashville station WSM. It is…

Music director and conductor for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (NSO) from 1983 until his death in 2005, Kenneth DeWitt Schermerhorn is credited with leading the orchestra to national prominence. His tenure with the NSO included critically acclaimed recordings (including four…

Shape-note singing, a predominantly rural, Protestant, Anglo-American music tradition, involves singing from hymnals or "tunebooks" having shaped notes (aka "character notes," "buckwheat notes," or "patent notes") as opposed to the standard "round notes." Shape-note singing is rooted in the Singing…

Leap-year baby Fannie Rose Shore was the second daughter born to Russian Jewish immigrants Anna and Sol Shore on February 19, 1916, in Winchester. In 1923 the family moved to Nashville where they prospered. Poliomyelitis left Fannie Rose with a…

Acclaimed blues singer Bessie Smith was born in Chattanooga and lived in a section of the city called Blue Goose Hollow at the foot of Cameron Hill. Her father, William Smith, a part-time Baptist minister, died when Smith was very…

The first record Elvis Presley released in 1954 shows the inspired ways Tennesseans merged musical traditions into something new and exciting called rock music. The A side was "That's All Right," a blues song by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, and…

Memphis's great soul music recording company was founded in 1960 by siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Aspiring to break into the music business, Stewart, a bond salesman, convinced his schoolteacher sister to mortgage her home for $2,500. Their company,…