Nashville Sound

Nashville sound is a mix of classic country music with pop music influences by a largely unified production technique and standardized arrangements.

General

In this context, a largely identical sound with the recorded music from different performers is denoted by the term " sound " in the professional world and the music industry. A connection is always made ​​to a city like especially when Memphis sound, Motown sound or Liverpool sound, to clarify the origin of the music. However, the Nashville sound calculated and recorded music sellers have only one real thing in common: they have been included in one of the many recording studios of Nashville. However, in sound, arrangement and instrumentation, they are often heterogeneous. The name of the sound according to the center of the country music suggests that the Nashville Sound, a sound variant of country music is called.

Genesis

The Nashville Sound was in response to the ever-growing Rock ' n' Roll, especially to the youth komsumfreudige exercised an irresistible attraction. The trade press dates the beginning of the Nashville Sounds uniform on November 7, 1956, when Ferlin Husky recorded his hit Gone. Another milestone was the recording of Four Walls by Jim Reeves, who was born on 7 February 1957. Ingredients intensified in the production of Oh Lonesome Me / I Can not Stop Loving You Don Gibson for by Chet Atkins on December 3, 1957. Solange Elvis Presley recorded under producer Steve Sholes in the New York RCA Studios, the result was usually rock & roll or blues. As in 1957, RCA be equipped with the latest technology Studio B, opened in Nashville and also Elvis began to produce in him the influence of the Nashville sound was unmistakable. On June 10, 1958, he took there on the first time and played among other things, A Fool Such As I, a. More noticeable was the Nashville Sound to his military service from March 20, 1960, as here among other things, Make Me Know it and Fame And Fortune emerged. To the head of the studio Chet Atkins was appointed, who also produced a variety of studio recordings. The studio is one of the ever world's most important studios with over 35,000 recorded here titles, including more than 1,000 top - ten hits in the U.S. and 150 Presley recordings (more than he recorded elsewhere: Sun Records, RCA, New York, Radio Recorders Hollywood, American Sound Studios).

The Time magazine reported in 1960 that Nashville had already replaced Hollywood as the second most important production center plate to New York. Already about 20 % of the hits of 1959 would have had their origin in Nashville. Country music had now an urban look for the traditional pedal steel guitar has given way to the saxophone. Over 100 publishers, more than 200 composers and more than 1,000 musicians stayed in the city. The mirror inventoried a total of 20 recording studios, their customers would contribute 26 record companies with 4 stamping plants marketing of disks in the value of € 200 million (1965). Later, the RCA recording studio was renamed " RCA Nashville Sound Studio ", detectable at about Willie Nelson Yesterday 's Wine LP, recorded there on 3 and 4 May 1971.

Personnel Basics

In particular, the Nashville sound is associated with a number of individuals who were responsible as a studio musician in the background for the intonation of the sound and are. He is focused on the RCA and Columbia Records recording studio in Nashville, where in 1956 the core of the so-called Nashville A- Team was particularly home. Producers such as Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley, Bob Ferguson, Bob Foster or Bob Moore attended - mostly independent of the recorded performers - at the same time for a largely uniform occupation by studio musicians. These included in particular Chet Atkins, Harold Bradley, Ray Edenton, Grady Martin and Hank " Sugarfoot " Garland ( guitar), Country Composer Boudleaux Bryant (rhythm guitar), Pete Drake ( steel guitar ), Bob Moore ( bass), Jethro Burns (mandolin ), Howard Carenter, Lilian Van Hunt and Brenton Banks ( violin), Hargus " Pig" Robbins and Floyd Cramer ( piano ), Boots Randolph (saxophone), Carl Garvin (trumpet / clarinet), Danny Davis and William McElhiney (trumpet ) and Murray M. "Buddy" Harman (drums). There was also a background choir, mostly recruited from the Anita Kerr Singers. With this lineup largely homogeneous productions were made with light pop music structures.

Music style

Stylistically, the Nashville Sound is classified as a country-pop. He has therefore led to a more intensive crossover in the more sizeable pop charts. Added to this was the informal, relaxed atmosphere in the recording studios, which tended to omit the classic country fiddle and banjo instruments, and moving it in place saxophone and mandolin. Unlisted - - Typically, the "head arrangements", so spontaneous and improvised scores were actually in the pop or jazz jam sessions belonging. The singing was less nasal and no longer invested in high pitch, without sluggish debate at the same time suppressed Southern accent ( " sowbelly accent" ). However, the Nashville Sound kept other attributes of country music, namely the simplicity, sincerity and warmth.

Further development

In the published in September 1970 book The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights And Country Music has author Paul Hemphill right to point out that not even the country music scene belonging to artists such as Buffy Sainte -Marie ( LP I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again, July 1968 ) and Bob Dylan ( LP Self Portrait, 8 June 1970, and Dylan, 19 November 1973 ) had occasionally produced on the search for the Nashville sound in the city. Beginning of the seventies brought " outlaws " like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson country music again more familiar rare to to their original back roots to the salaried producers and attacked increasingly turning to own a studio musician, especially by the almost unchanged permanent group of people the recordings had lost individuality and dynamism. Thus, although the Nashville Sound lost his musical dominance, remained the world of music, however. Although the concept of insiders in the music industry could never be properly explained, he remained a buzzword of the media and thus an automatic advertisement for the city.

The Nashville Sound meant a loss of power of the stars. The producers and session musicians grew stronger. It seemed quite possible that were mixed in later, and unbeknownst to the artist instruments of a receiving out - or in a. Also the change by background choirs could often not be prevented by the artist. Some musicians eventually rebelled and left Nashville to Austin, Texas (see: Outlaw Movement), or produced their records in independent recording studios. The age of the dominant Nashville Sounds was the mid-eighties to the end, some approaches were preserved until today.