A term used in the late 1950s and early 1960s to describe the rock- and pop-influenced Country music being recorded in Nashville. The emergence of this style was the result of an attempt by the country-music industry to preserve and expand its audience in the face of the threat posed by the enormous popularity of rock-and-roll. Chet Atkins, the guitarist and country-music director for RCA in Nashville, supported by Ken Nelson of Capitol, Owen Bradley of MCA, Billy Sherrill and Glen Sutton of Columbia, and other leaders of the industry, sought to create a musical sound that would preserve a rural flavour within an urban style, and thus broaden the appeal of country music to urban, middle-class listeners. Some critics, however, felt that such a compromise with popular taste destroyed the character of country music. Banjos, steel guitars and the honky-tonk sound were replaced by string sections, brass instruments and vocal choruses, and the studios built up a group of backing musicians who performed with a variety of soloists. The repertory emphasized melodic ballads and novelty songs over more traditional country material. Among the earliest performers influenced by this trend were Eddy Arnold, Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves. From the 1970s the term gained broader usage, describing any kind of popular or traditional music produced in Nashville.
B.C. Malone: Country Music U.S.A.: a Fifty-year History (Austin, 1968, 2/1985)
P. Hemphill: The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music (New York, 1970)
W. Ivey: ‘Commercialization and tradition in the Nashville Sound’, Folk Music and Modern Sound, eds. M.L. Hart and W. Ferris (Jackson, MS, 1982)
J.K. Jensen: Creating the Nashville Sound: a Case Study in Commercial Culture Production (diss., U. of Illinois, 1984)
J.K. Jensen: ‘Genre and Recalcitrance: Country Music’s Move Uptown’, Tracking, i/1 (1988), 30–41
G.H. Lewis, ed: All that Glitters: Country Music in America (Bowling Green, OH, 1993)
BILL C. MALONE/R