The Nashville sound is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the 1950s in Nashville, Tennessee. It replaced the dominance of the rough Honky tonk with "smooth strings and choruses", "sophisticated background vocals" and "smooth tempos" associated with traditional pop.[
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Characteristics
According to Dave Lifton of Ultimate Classic Rock, the Nashville sound "had more in common with mainstream 50s vocal pop than Western swing or rockabilly."
Origins
The Nashville sound was pioneered by staff at RCA Victor, Columbia Records and Decca Records in Nashville, Tennessee. RCA Victor manager, producer and musician Chet Atkins, and producers Steve Sholes, Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, and recording engineer Bill Porter invented the form by replacing elements of the popular honky tonk style (, steel guitar, nasal lead vocals) with "smooth" elements from 1950s pop music (string sections, background vocals, crooning lead vocals), and using "slick" record producer, and pop music structures.[ The Tennessee Encyclopedia. Nashville Recording Industry. Accessed April 9, 2016.][Sanjek, Russell. (1988). "American Popular Music and Its Business: the first four hundred years". Oxford University Press. .] The producers relied on a small group of studio musicians known as the Nashville A-Team, whose quick adaptability and creative input made them vital to the hit-making process. The Anita Kerr was the main vocal backing group in the early 1960s.
The term "Nashville sound" was first mentioned in an article about Jim Reeves in 1958 in the Music Reporter and again in 1960 in a Time article about Reeves.[Bill Ivey, Encyclopedia of Country Music] Other observers have identified several recordings that helped establish the early Nashville sound. The country historian Rich Kienzle identified that "Gone", a Ferlin Husky hit recorded in November 1956, as a possible precursor. The writer Colin Escott argued that Reeves' "Four Walls", recorded February 1957, as the "first 'Nashville sound' record", and Chet Atkins, the RCA Victor producer and guitarist most often credited with being the sound's primary artistic creator, pointed to his production of Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" later the same year.[
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Regarding the Nashville sound, the record producer Owen Bradley stated
Bradley Studios, RCA Studio B and later RCA Studio A, located directly center of Music Row, were considered pivotal as well as essential locations to the development of the Nashville sound musical techniques. RCA Studio A specifically was designed and built to incorporate these techniques and was designed by RCA's sound engineer John E. Volkmann.
Countrypolitan
In the early 1960s, the Nashville sound began to be challenged by the rival Bakersfield sound on the country side
The Bakersfield sound, and later outlaw country, dominated country music among aficionados while countrypolitan reigned on the pop charts.
Country pop
By the late 1970s and 1980s, many pop music singers picked up the countrypolitan style and created what is known as country pop, the fusion of country music and pop music.
See also
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The Nashville A-Team
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Nashville Sounds, a baseball team that borrows its name from the style
External links
