NASHVILLE SOUND/NEW COUNTRY

During the 1950s and 1960s there was a change in musical tastes. So far as country music was concerned, innovators such as Chet ATKINS, Paul Cohen, Don Law, and brothers Owen and Harold Bradley, gave birth to a new style of music that became known as the Nashville Sound.

The term Nashville Sound can be used to mean several things. First, it is a particular style of recording. Second, it refers to an era in the emergence of Nashville as a recording centre. Third, it is also used as a descriptive term for the intertwining of pop and country music to create an entirely new style.

MUSIC CITY, U.S.A.

The Nashville recording method differed in several ways from practice in the studios of Los Angeles and New York. Nashville studio musicians worked on sessions with many different singers, for many different labels. Moreover, they did not usually read music during a recording session (although this did not mean they could not read music). Most Nashville session players had learned their instruments by ear and preferred an aural approach to arrangements.

An individual and recognisable style of orchestration was also part of the Nashville Sound. Nashville was (and is) solidly based on the sounds of the rhythm section, especially the sound of the guitar. The standard recording band of the 1960s consisted of drums, bass, piano, often a fiddle or two, and usually more than one guitar. The instruments were combined in a unique Nashville-style. The local musicians knew when to play and when not to play—their main purpose was to showcase the featured singer rather than their own virtuosity.

The development of a number of high quality recording studios in Nashville was as important in the evolution of the Nashville Sound as anything else. It produced a group of studio musicians who played together so frequently and flowingly, that they made recording in Nashville indulgent, comfortable, and extraordinarily efficient. In the 1970s, a certain amount of censure was directed at this automated, businesslike approach to music, but when the technique was new, it was a thrill for both the artist and the producer. The artist got a top-class backing band and the producer saved considerable time and money on projects, without having to sacrifice the quality of the recordings.

A NEW SOUND

The first country star to cross over into the pop charts was Jim REEVES. Starting in 1957, with “Four Walls,” Reeves scored a succession of hits in the U.S., culminating in 1959 with the single, “He’ll Have to Go,” which remained in the pop charts for 30 weeks and reached No. 12.

This new sound enticed singers to record in Nashville, and the huge public popularity of albums from Reeves, Patsy CLINE, and Eddie Arnold brought country music to Middle America for the first time since the days of the singing cowboys of Hollywood. At a time when traditional country music was dead, the Nashville Sound resurrected an interest in country by spicing it with pop music.

Whether this union between country and popular music enhanced or devastated the quality of country music is still being debated. What is certain, however, is that the Nashville Sound rescued the city's declining recording industry.

Renee Jinks