Music

Country music star Patsy Cline was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8, 1932, in Gore, Virginia. She was an entertainer from an early age but nearly lost her voice and her life when complications from a serious throat infection…

Waldo Cohn, prominent nuclear scientist, member of the Manhattan project, biochemist, and founder and first conductor of the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra, the state's oldest continuing symphony, came to Oak Ridge in 1943 with a biochemistry Ph.D. from the University…

The Country Music Association (CMA) is one of Tennessee’s most important musical trade associations. The CMA is dedicated to guiding and enhancing country music’s development and demonstrating its viability to advertisers, consumers, and media throughout the world. During the late…

The Country Music Foundation (CMF) is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving artifacts and disseminating information about country music’s development as an art and a business. The State of Tennessee chartered the CMF in 1964. In 1967,…

One of the most-visited popular-arts museums in the United States, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is now located in a $37 million facility of 135,000 square feet in downtown Nashville, next to the Sommet Center. The new…

In 1947, the most popular song in the United States was “Near You.” It was listed for a record-setting seventeen consecutive weeks as the nation’s number one song on Billboard magazine’s Honor Roll of Hits. It has been called the…

Vincent DeFrank, founder and musical director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra (MSO) from 1960 to 1983, was born June 18, 1915, in Long Island, New York. He first studied violin under George Frenz from 1920 to 1933 before converting to…

Jim Denny, music publisher, booking agent, longtime manager of the Grand Ole Opry, and promoter of Nashville's music industry, was born in Buffalo Valley, Putnam County. As a young man, Denny found work as a mail clerk with the National…

Dollywood is a theme park founded in Pigeon Forge by Tennessee singer-songwriter Dolly Parton to enhance the economy of her native Sevier County. As the jaunty pun of the name implies, Dollywood involves the endless layerings and juxtapositions of traditional…

Located outside of Clarksville, the Dunbar Cave State Natural Area contains 110 acres centered around a historic cave that has been a source of legend and recreation since the early history of Montgomery County. Prehistoric peoples used the cave for…

Ralph Emery became the dominant disc jockey in country music in the late twentieth century, featured on major syndicated radio programs and national cable television networks. Born in McEwen, Tennessee, in 1933, Emery spent the first seven years of his…

John Adam “Sleepy John” Estes, was born in Ripley, Tennessee, around 1900. A highly skilled blues musician, Estes played a pivotal role in reestablishing rural blues within the American music canon during the folk blues revival of the 1960s. His…

Tennessee towns host over thirty fiddle and old-time music contests every year. Many of these current music festivals date only to the 1970s as Tennesseans rediscovered their local musical and folklore traditions, but fiddle contests have a long history in…

Tenor and guitarist Lester Flatt is best know as half of the famous duo Flatt and Scruggs, credited for pioneering and popularizing bluegrass music. Born in rural Overton County, Flatt moved with his family to Sparta in White County when…

Tennessee Ernie Ford, radio announcer, singer, and television personality, was born Ernest Jennings Ford on February 13, 1919, in Fordtown, Sullivan County, and raised in nearby Bristol. Ford began a radio career at Bristol's WOPI, where he worked as an…

Bud Garrett, traditional blues musician and marble maker, was born January 28, 1916, to John Tom Garrett and Adeline Hamilton Garrett in Free Hill, a small African American settlement in Clay County established by freed slaves prior to the Civil…

Violinist Noel A. Gilbert was born in Scott's Hill, where he learned the fundamentals of the violin. In 1925 he moved to Memphis and began studies with Joseph Henkel, teacher and conductor of the Memphis Philharmonic. After joining the Memphis…

Elvis Presley's Graceland ranks with Mount Vernon and Monticello as the most popular of American house museums. Though this may startle many and outrage some, the heavy visitation these three sites annually receive is the result of a similar confluence…

No mass media event has been more associated with the state of Tennessee than the WSM radio program called the Grand Ole Opry. Not only is it the longest-running radio show in U.S. history, but it has become the cornerstone…

Amy Grant has done more than blaze a trail for contemporary Christian music. Her later crossover and pop-rock albums determined the dialogue within evangelical popular music about what constitutes “Christian music.” She has been both the darling of the Christian…