American city, capital of Tennessee. In the mid-20th century it became known as the home of country music.
As in many American cities in the 19th century music instruction was offered principally in women’s seminaries and black schools. Opera was introduced as early as 1854, when a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor was given at the Adelphi Theatre by Luigi Arditi’s Italian Opera Company. By the 1860s operas by Verdi and other Italian composers were a regular feature of Nashville’s concert life. Amateur organizations, especially those made up of children, were active in benefit concerts, and amateur musical groups on European models were often formed. The Schiller Music Festival was held in 1859, at which oratorios by Handel and Haydn were performed. In the 1880s the impressive Vendôme theatre opened with a gala performance of Il trovatore. Later the theatre was the site of concerts by Paderewski, Caruso and the New York SO under Walter Damrosch (1904), and of a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal given by members of the Metropolitan Opera (1905).
There were several early attempts to form a symphony orchestra in Nashville; an orchestra performed under the name Nashville SO in 1904, as did an ensemble of 62 players, founded and led by F. Arthur Henkel, from 1920 to 1927. A permanent organization was formed in 1946 by Walter Sharp; its conductors have been William Strickland (1946–51), Guy Taylor (1951–9), Willis Page (1959–67), Thor Johnson (1967–75), Michael Charry (1976–82) and Kenneth Schermerhorn (from 1983). In 1980 the orchestra moved to Andrew Jackson Hall, a handsome structure with an auditorium seating 2440; the hall is one of three buildings in the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
Music instruction is offered at a number of colleges and universities, notably Belmont College, the music department at Fisk University, founded in 1885, and Tennessee State University.
Vernacular musical traditions date back to early times; in 1820 Cary Harris published a tunebook, Western Harmony for Singers. By 1823 riverboat traffic with New Orleans had been initiated, and Nashville began to reap the advantages of its geographical position. In the 1850s several minstrel groups visited Nashville. In the 1890s W.D. Scanlon and his Irish Singing Comedians were immensely popular. The Fairfield Four, from Nashville’s Fairfield Baptist Church, was perhaps the most influential male gospel quartet before World War II. Nashboro Records, established in the early 1950s, built an important catalogue of black gospel music, and its subsidiary Excello Records recorded several rhythm-and-blues artists in the 1950s.
Country music began to evolve and become commercially successful in the 1920s. George D. Hay, an announcer for radio station WSM, elicited a strongly favourable response from his audience when he programmed music by a string band and an old-time fiddler. He became the host of an hour-long radio show, ‘WSM Barn Dance’, modelled after that of Chicago’s station WLS; among the musicians who performed was Uncle Dave Macon, a banjo player and singer with a repertory of vaudeville material and black and white gospel music. The programme was expanded to three hours, and in 1927 was renamed the ‘Grand Ole Opry’; Hay helped to popularize the new name and also encouraged the (admittedly exaggerated) ‘hayseed’ image of country music. The ‘Grand Ole Opry’ was broadcast, before live audiences, from successively larger venues. Hank Williams joined the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ in 1949; his great popularity was an important factor in the growth of Nashville’s country-music industry.
Despite the popularity of the ‘Grand Ole Opry’, the focus of much country-music activity was eastward, in Knoxville and Bristol, Tennessee, for instance. Nashville did not have a significant recording or music-publishing industry until the 1950s, when the advent of rock and roll led rival cities (especially Chicago and Los Angeles) to abandon country music, leaving Nashville as its undisputed centre. Bullet Records, a small, independent recording company formed during World War II, gave Nashville its first recording studio and prepared the way for RCA (1946) and other important labels to establish operations in the city. The increasing popularity of country music abetted the growth of BMI, which opened an office in Nashville. Many musicians came to record in Nashville, and Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who owned studios, helped broaden the appeal of the ‘Nashville sound’. The Country Music Association (founded 1958) promotes and publicizes country music in Nashville, as do the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (founded 1961; museum opened 1967) and the Country Music Foundation Library and Media Center (opened 1972). Opryland USA, a music-orientated amusement centre, which also opened in 1972, was the home of the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ from 1974 until its closure in 1997.
F. Davenport: Cultural Life in Nashville on the Eve of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1941)
J. Burt: Nashville: its Life and Times (Nashville, 1959)
A. Crabb: Nashville, Personality of a City (Indianapolis, 1960)
W. Waller: Nashville in the 1890’s (Nashville, 1970)
W. Waller: Nashville, 1900–1910 (Nashville, 1972)
C. Crain: Music Performance and Pedagogy in Nashville: 1818–1900 (diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, 1975)
J. Egerton: Nashville: the Faces of Two Centuries 1780–1980 (Nashville, 1979)
W. Ivey: ‘Commercialization and Tradition in the Nashville Sound’, Folk Music and Modern Sound: University MS 1980, 129–38
J. Lomax: Nashville: Music City USA (New York, 1985)
D. Davis and A. Price: Looking for #1: Portraits and Passions of Nashville Songwriters (Nashville, 1994)
STEPHEN E. YOUNG