Contemporary Authors

• Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry and the Transformation of Nashville University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst, MA), 2015

1. Country comes to town : the music industry and the transformation of Nashville LCCN 2015035259 Type of material Book Personal name Hill, Jeremy, 1975- author. Main title Country comes to town : the music industry and the transformation of Nashville / Jeremy Hill. Published/Produced Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2016] Description ix, 173 pages : $b illustrations ; $c 24 cm. ISBN 9781625341723 (paperback ; alkaline paper) 9781625341716 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) CALL NUMBER ML3524 .H56 2016 Copy 1 Request in Performing Arts Reading Room (Madison, LM113) CALL NUMBER ML3524 .H56 2016 Copy 2 Request in Performing Arts Reading Room (Madison, LM113)

• University of Massachusetts Press - http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/country-comes-town

  Jeremy Hill, who earned a PhD in American studies from George Washington University, is an independent scholar who lives in Chicago.

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Print Marked Items
Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry
and the Transformation of Nashville
Travis D. Stimeling
Notes.
73.3 (Mar. 2017): p518.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
Full Text:
Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry and the Transformation of Nashville. By Jeremy Hill. (American
Popular Music.) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. [ix, 173 p. ISBN 9781625341716 (hardcover),
$90; ISBN 9781625341723 (paperback), $26.95.] Notes, index.
Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport. By Jonathan R. Wynn.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. [vii, 312 p. ISBN 9780226305493 (hardcover), $90; ISBN
9780226305523 (paperback), $30; ISBN 9780226305660 (e-book), various.] Appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville. By Daniel B. Cornfield. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2015. [xiii, 218 p. ISBN 9780691160733 (hardcover), $35; ISBN 9781400873890 (e-book),
various.] Appendix, notes, bibliography, index.
In his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, sociologist Richard Florida proffered a provocative thesis: that the
places that attract creative people--"people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts,
music, and entertainment whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative
content"--would be economic leaders in the new century (Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class [New
York: Basic Books, 2002], 8). In the decade and a half since its publication, Florida's thesis has been scrutinized
widely by sociologists, economists, and other scholars, with several scholars and the press challenging Florida's
sometimes Pollyannaish outlook and drawing attention to the challenges that emerge when economic leaders recruit
"the creative class" to join their communities. But, until recently, musical communities have not been the focus of
significant analysis in light of Florida's thesis, despite their prominence in Florida's enumeration. The three books
under consideration in this review essay, however, provide valuable new insights into the ways that musical
communities transform local economies and, conversely, how city residents respond to these communities in their
midst.
Nashville, Tennessee--known to many music tourists as "Music City, U.S.A."--serves as an excellent site for scholars
to study the ways that musicians and the various industries that support them intersect with other spheres of social,
economic, and political activity in the city. Long a seat of government power, the city is probably best known for its
role as one of the premier centers of global commercial country music production, a role that it began to cultivate
deliberately in the 1960s as recording studios, music publishing houses, booking agents, and trade organizations
began to call Nashville home. As a number of country music scholars have demonstrated, though, country music--
and, in fact, popular music more generally--was not always linked closely with the city, and such cities as Atlanta,
Charlotte, and even Chicago could easily be considered to be leading centers of country music production prior to the
1950s (see, for instance, Wayne W. Daniel, Pickin' on Peachtree: A History of Country Music in Atlanta [Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1990]; and Patrick Huber, Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the
Piedmont South [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008]). But, as Diane Pecknold has shown in her
frequently-cited book The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry (Durham, NC: Duke University
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Press, 2007), Nashville eclipsed the others during the 1960s as the newly formed Country Music Association
launched a coordinated effort to promote the city's music industry infrastructure and talents, as well as the products
that emerged from the recording studios along Music Row.
American studies scholar Jeremy Hill's Country Comes to Town: 'The Music Industry and the Transformation of
Nashville extends Pecknold's work by focusing not on the industry itself (although plenty of familiar Nashville music
industry leaders appear as significant figures in the study), but by exploring the dynamics of the developing
relationship between the music industry, Nashville residents, and government and business leaders. In Hill's study,
music industry leaders are cast not as creative figures, but as business leaders who are trying to make space for
themselves and their colleagues in a city that was hesitant to embrace the developing creative economy. Specifically,
Hill positions industry leaders as active agents of change who "shape[d] the built environment of Nashville and
create[d] a visible home for the industry there," situating their activities within "a larger set of ideas about the
country, the city, the suburbs, and music's relationship to all three" (p. 2). Moreover, Hill revisits a longstanding
debate in the country music literature about the relationship between country music as a musical product and the
place that it purports to represent, arguing that "the genre has gained increasing cultural power (measured in terms of
both commercial success and politico-cultural clout) as it de-territorialized the space of country, transforming it into a
state of mind rather than a specific physical space, and simultaneously rewriting the definitions of categories such as
'ordinary folks' and 'the people,' which have always served as powerful markers of the music's appeal and fan base"
(pp. 3-4, emphasis in the original).
To understand Nashville's complicated relationship with the country music industry, one must trace its emergence to
the first inklings of country music activity there, namely, the Grand Ole Opry, a barn dance program broadcast from
Nashville radio station WSM since 1925. The book's first chapter retraces sociologist Richard A. Peterson's findings
that many early Opry stars were tasked with "fabricating authenticity" by donning rural garb and adopting ruralsounding
names to perform roles that were markedly different from their professional identities as white-collar
professionals and small business owners (Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997]). Whereas Peterson implies that, in many ways, this costuming was a
ruse perpetrated against radio listeners who genuinely believed that they were listening to bona fide "hillbilly"
musicians, Hill posits that audiences were quite aware of the performative nature of these roles. As such, Hill restores
the agency of performers and audiences alike when he notes that "the musicians' urban connections were hardly a
secret.... Fans who understood that barbers were playing rustic figures also presumably understood that not just any
barber could play a gully jumper, that these particular Opry performers had something unique in their character and
life experiences that allowed them to believably function in both worlds, or at least be able to enact appropriate
performances of each" (pp. 13--14, emphasis in the original).
The opening chapter of Hill's book also lays out the nuanced rhetorical dance that local civic boosters had to learn as
they promoted Nashville simultaneously as a leading center of high culture and education (the "Athens of the South,"
complete with a life-sized replica of the Parthenon) and a national entertainment capital. He indicates that the years
after World War II were a major turning point in the city's embrace of the Grand Ole Upry, as the Chamber of
Commerce and city leaders name-checked the Opry as a symbol of the city's "essential downhome' character" as they
also touted its central geographic location to entice manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and financial
companies to Nashville (p. 17). Moreover, with the postwar rise of the "organization man," Nashville business
leaders increasingly demonstrated their own business acumen through their public images, their financial successes,
and even where they chose to live. Hill points to noted hillbilly singer Roy Acuff. who ran for governor of Tennessee
in 1948 and "presented himself as a singer who could still retain authentic hillbilly character while making
impressive sums of money and competently managing several business operations" (p. 24). Further, he observes that,
like other successful business leaders, Nashville's country musicians did not live near the downtown area (where the
Opry's home, the Ryman Auditorium was located) or near the emerging Music Row neighborhood in the 1950s;
rather, they chose "to own homes in the outer limits of Nashville ... [and] enacted membership in a white-collar
commuting class" (p. 18).
In chapters 2 and Hill traces the development of the Music Row neighborhood, home to the music publishers,
booking agents, and recording studios that helped to make Nashville a national country music center in the late 1950s
and 1960s. It was during this time that Nashville's music industry leaders attempted to capture a share of the postwar
radio and records market, and with the help of the newly formed Country Music Association (CMA), articulated
country music's economic value as well as the sophistication and respectability of country fans to radio-station
owners and potential advertisers (see Pecknold, The Selling Sound). Hill critiques this rhetoric, however, noting that,
just as the CMA crafted a respectable image for country music, it also implicitly reinforced many negative
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stereotypes. The respectability narrative, Hill suggests, "argued that clinging to comical or idyllic visions of the
genre's rural past was holding the genre back commercially. Instead of fully deconstructing the stereotypes, however,
this project ended up reifying them in a way by suggesting that country performers were no longer barefoot, drunken
rubes. This discourse did not dispute the stereotypes but instead displaced them onto the genre's past" (p. 40,
emphasis in the original). This narrative resonated with many country music fans of the era, as they too found
themselves leaving rural farmsteads for urban and suburban jobs. As country music's sounds became more closely
tied to the pop sounds of the day with the addition of background vocals and, in some cases, orchestral strings,
country music producers also reified notions of rural authenticity, promoting "its authentic connection to 'the people'
(a connection often defined in terms of earnest lyrics and natural singing), ... while adding clearly marked urban
accoutrements and openly moving 'uptown'" (p. 46).
As Nashville's music industry leaders were making significant inroads in the radio and records market and were
winning audience share across the country (and, in some cases, globally), they continued to struggle to gain
acceptance by government and civic leaders. This resistance to the music industry is made particularly clear in the
struggle to redevelop the Music Row neighborhood. Hill traces the city's redevelopment efforts throughout the 1950s
and 1960s, revealing that city leaders were more than willing to partner with other industries, especially the city's
universities, to use grant monies to purchase neighboring "blighted" properties and repurpose them for the expansion
of these valuable institutions. Music Row's business leaders sought out similar support to redevelop the neighborhood
where their businesses were located. hoping, Hill suggests, to use these renovations as a platform to demonstrate their
key role in the local economy. But, Hill finds that, even as business leaders, journalists, and some government
officials supported the development of the Edgehill neighborhood, the Metropolitan Council ultimately rejected the
partnership in a 1970 vote'.
Hill makes a particularly powerful argument that Nashville's business and government leaders--including Music
Row's leaders--used community redevelopment funds to systematically marginalize the city's African American
population both geographically and economically. As did many other cities across the United States in the 1960s and
1970s, Nashville received funding to gentrify "blighted" properties and neighborhoods, razing entire neighborhoods.
rezoning them, and encouraging new investments in previously inhabited lands. Hill astutely observes that Nashville,
a city that had been on the forefront of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, was also "one of the first
American cities to take advantage of federal urban renewal dollars" (p. 57). Moreover, aside from a few token
African American artists like Charlie Pride, country music of the Nashville Sound era was conspicuously silent on
the racial struggles that were happening in the music industry's backyard, even as Music Row itself was "constructed
on the cusp of a salient racial boundary" alongside the African American Edgehill neighborhood (p. 60) and as some
of its leading figures campaigned in support of segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace's presidential
campaign in 1968. Hill suggests that the country music industry's silence on racial issues was, in fact, a ploy to
reinforce the genre's racial identity, arguing that "this ideology of ordinariness, and the association with the people or
'everyday folk' that country music figures have often marshalled, became entwined with a renewed emphasis on
country music's whiteness, which manifested itself across multiple texts throughout industry discourse in the late
1960s and early 1970s" (p. 66). As such, the country music industry's efforts to gentrify their neighborhood and the
surrounding properties might be read as its own contribution to enforcing the city's segregation.
Chapter 4 traces country music's place in the redevelopment of the city's Lower Broad neighborhood. In the early
1970s, the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, was in disrepair, and many civic leaders expressed
concern about the dive bars and other unseemly establishments that were located in the city's entertainment district.
To address these issues, the sprawling Opryland, U.S.A. complex, which included a lavish new Opry House and
theme park, was constructed in the northeastern suburbs of the city and opened in 1974. Far from marking a radical
shift in the identity and outlook of Nashville's country music establishment, however, this move, Hill argues, was an
extension of industry leaders' efforts to position "country" as an attitude, not a geographic location, a view that
persists in commercial country to the present day. Chapter 5 explores the decade of the 1990s, when city leaders
focused on the redevelopment of the very Lower Broad neighborhood that the Opry fled in the early 1970s. This
transformation led to the construction of a vast entertainment district that includes a multipurpose arena, the new
Country Music Hall of Fame complex, and a new conference center, as well as a renovated Ryman Auditorium that
hosts Opry broadcasts periodically during the winter months. Hill astutely reads this return of the Opry and the
development of the Lower Broad entertainment district as a sign of a radical transformation of the relationship
between city leaders and the music industry in the four decades since the first recording studios were built on Music
Row and as proof that country music had become central to "the cultural imagination of Nashville" by the 1990s (p.
117).
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Hill's book offers valuable insights into the ways that Nashville became "Music City, U.S.A.," demonstrating that the
music industry's development there is inextricably linked to ongoing debates about the socioeconomic diversity of
the city; industrialization, gentrification, and suburban expansion; and country music's literal and figurative
connections to rural places and ways of life. Particularly impressive is the diversity of source material that he draws
upon in forming this argument, including not only an extensive survey of the scholarly literature on the city and the
country music industry, but perspectives drawn from newspaper reports and individual country songs. Occasionally,
Hill's arguments could be bolstered by additional exegesis, but generally speaking he convincingly argues that
Nashville's deep associations with the country music industry were the result of turbulent debates about a variety of
issues, the least of which were musical in nature.
Jonathan Wynn, in his book Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport,
explores the role that music festivals play in helping cities define themselves as creative musical centers. Focusing on
Nashville's Country Music Association Festival (CMA Fest). Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW), and the Newport
Folk Festival, Wynn offers a nuanced and empirically-grounded study of the ways that city leaders, residents,
musicians, and audiences construct a sense of place through the staging of music festivals and suggests several
strategies by which cities might successfully use festivals for purposes of economic and cultural development.
Examining each of the three festivals in a chapter-length discussion, Wynn demonstrates forcefully that, following
sociologist Hartmut Haussermann, "festivalization ... is a process where cultural activity meets placemaking, but it is
also a cultural policy that cities and communities can adopt" (p. 12, emphasis in the original).
The three music festivals considered in Wynn's study are each shaped by undeniably local histories and attitudes
about the place of music in their respective communities. In Newport, which is discussed in chapter 2, local reception
of the resort city's Folk Festival has been decidedly mixed as year-round residents whose livelihoods depend on the
tourist season, seasonal residents who come to Newport to escape their daily lives, and music fans who come to
New-port expecting to relive the heyday of the 1960s folk revival construct competing understandings of Newport's
spaces. As a consequence of what Wynn describes as a "cautious connection between culture and city" (p. 84), the
Newport Folk Festival has had a precarious history, struggling to retain financial solvency while also maintaining the
sense of cultural authenticity that the festival developed during the 1960s. Austin, on the other hand, finds itself
resisting its SXSW festival in a radically different manner, as Wynn discusses in chapter 4. Whereas the Newport
Folk Festival is geographically and culturally marginalized, SXSW has become so fully integrated into Austin's
cultural life that splinter festivals and pop-up events threaten to undermine the integrity of the festival, which is a
corporate entity with strong ties to the global media industry. Wynn notes that SXSW's geographic decentralization
leads to such uncontrollable resistance: "Because SXSW is scattered across the entire downtown area, guerilla
promoters can embed their events literally across the street from the convention center and sap attention and revenue
from the official festival. In the marketing business, the brands that sponsor these alternative events are conducting
predatory or ambush marketing" (p. 154, emphasis in the original).
In light of Hill's historical study of Nashville's fraught relationship with the city's music industry, it might be
surprising to learn that Nashville's CMA Fest--the subject of chapter 3--is the least controversial music festival in
Wynn's study . With the Lower Broad entertainment district redevelopment that Hill documented, city officials
embraced the music industry's presence in the city and have worked to contain music tourism to a relatively limited
geographic space that country music fans have come to invest with great cultural significance. As Wynn observes,
"the strip of Broadway leading down to the Cumberland River and the Metro Riverside Park ... is as close to a
symbolic and geographic hub for this entertainment machine as Las Vegas's old Fremont Street is for the city's
gaming industry, or Bourbon Street is for New Orleans jazz" (p. 87). Moreover, as he learned during his extensive
ethnographic fieldwork at CMA Fest, country music fans in attendance exhibit little anxiety over issues of cultural
authenticity, whether they are manifested in a country music industry that often ignores artists from previous
generations or in a physical environment that is emblazoned with corporate logos. Yet, Wynn observes that while the
city seems to have embraced the festival as a significant contributor to the city's tourism sector and country fans have
embraced the festival as an opportunity to build relationships with recording artists, CM Fest does not adequately
represent the full extent of music making in the city, thereby revealing a different set of cultural tensions at work.
Wynn's analysis of the three festivals under consideration in Music/City is made all the more powerful by his
multifaceted ethnographic research. Not only did he attend the festivals as a music fan, but he also performed at a
SXSW showcase and worked as a volunteer to learn more about the ways that the festival's participants gain access
to music industry insiders who lead networking and mentoring sessions and attend SXSW to recruit new talent to
their enterprises. In addition to participant-observation, Wynn also conducted extensive surveys with festival
attendees to develop a quantitative understanding of their experiences. The level of detail in Wynn's field notes is
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significant, leading him to make powerful arguments about such things as corporate logo placements around festival
venues and the geographic logic of festival spaces. But perhaps even more significant is Wynn's decision to conduct
additional fieldwork following the festivals because, as he notes, "understanding how festivals fit into a city's overall
cultural landscape means knowing what happens not only during the festival, but after it as well" (pp. 167-68). In
chapters 5 and 6, Wynn considers what he describes as "the long-term effects of fleeting moments," exploring the
behind-the-scenes work that is undertaken to ensure a successful festival experience for artists and audiences alike,
the governmental debates about financial, infrastructure, and personnel support for festivals, and the critical reception
of the festivals by year-round residents.
Wynn presents the individual case studies and the theory of festivalization in Music/ City with both an intense care
for detail and nuance and a clarity of prose style that makes this potential theoretical minefield easily approachable,
and were the book to end there, it would be of immediate use to scholars of popular music, urban culture, and the
creative economy. But Wynn--who offers a useful "encore" that lays the foundations for continued work on a
"sociology of occasions" (p. 254)--takes his work one step further by offering a series of arguments for a "festivalbased
policy" of urban development that could be used by urban planners, cultural liaisons, and community leaders
as they incorporate music and other cultural festivals into their efforts to entice the creative class to their cities. As
Wynn notes, "the crafting of temporary cultural and entertainment-based spaces is a serious cultural strategy, and
unlike concrete culture [physical infrastructure such as sports stadiums and museums], festival programming can
more fluidly respond to the changing needs of the city, its residents, and the audience that attends," what he describes
as "liquid culture" (p. 228). Far from suggesting a one-size-fits-all model based on three examples from the United
States, however. Wynn extends his policy discussion to international festivals and neighborhood festivals, suggesting
that a "festival-based policy" of urban development must respond to their individual settings. Moreover, as Wynn
astutely observes, "A festivalized urban cultural policy can be founded upon interpersonal collaborations. ... As
festivals increasingly become strategies for urban stakeholders to compete in the market of places, the costs and
benefits of festivalization must be assessed beyond economic terms" and must consider the intangible values that
such events bring to a community (p. 242).
Read in light of Wynn's thoughtful analysis, theorization, and policy suggestions, sociologist Daniel Cornfield's book
Beyond the Bent: Musicians Building Community in Nashville offers significant insights into the ways that
individuals and the relationships they build and maintain can drive cultural development in a single community.
Focusing on the diverse music scene of contemporary Nashville, Cornfield works to "develop a new sociological
theory of artist activism that addresses how artists of any expressive occupation envision, assume, and enact their
activist roles in strengthening their peer communities" (p. x). Drawing upon extensive interviews with "artist
activists" in the Nashville community, Cornfield situates Nashville's musicians within the context of an increasingly
challenging musical marketplace, a significantly weakened musicians' union, and a musically diverse community that
is often overshadowed by the city's strong country music-oriented brand. As such, he notes, these "artist activists are
re-creating a musician community in Nashville" (p. 1, emphasis mine) and must work constantly to develop and
maintain formal institutions and informal relationships to ensure that they can live economically and creatively
sustainable lives. Like the Nashville Sound-era entrepreneurs who built Music Row in the 1950s and 1960s,
Cornfield suggests, today's artist activists are taking it upon themselves to build an environment in which they can
thrive.
Cornfield identifies three types of artist activists--"enterprising artists," "artistic social entrepreneurs," and "artist
advocates"--each of which have different motivations and aspirations. He suggests a correlation between each of
these three types and an individual's early upbringing as a creative person, noting "a patterned relationship between
an individual's self-proclaimed source of original career inspiration and how an artist activist enacted ... his role as an
artist activist" (p. 28). Furthermore, each type tends to be motivated by different goals and "risk orientations," what
Cornfield describes as "the artist activist's perception of the source of the risk of joblessness" (p. 24). "Enterprising
artists" in Nashville often bring a college education (often in music or music industry) and support from family,
friends, and someone in the Nashville community, and they also tend to view their own shortcomings as musicians,
businesspeople, and social networkers as the most significant roadblock to their success. By contrast, "artistic social
entrepreneurs"--a group that Cornfield divides into "organizational entrepreneurs" who focus their attention on one
major project and "portfolio entrepreneurs" who manage many projects simultaneously (p. 94)--focus on the strength
of their social networks and use their connections to advocate for the work of other musicians in their network.
Finally, "artist advocates," Cornfield suggests, often use their energies to mobilize organizations such as musicians'
unions to support artists as they try to earn their livelihoods and express themselves creatively.
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In Nashville, Cornfield suggests in the book's final chapter, radical shifts in the ways that music is produced,
distributed, and consumed in the past two decades has necessitated the rise of these three types of artist activists.
With the decline of major studios, the rise of internet distribution, and the growth of the city's artistic population,
Nashville's musical community works under very different conditions today than it did during the heyday of the
"corporate and culturally homogenous" decades of the mid-to-late twentieth century (p. 150). Yet, Cornfield argues,
Nashville is not an isolated example. Rather, he asserts that "the advent of a diverse, entrepreneurial, and indie artist
community in Nashville is microcosmic of changes in expressive occupations in the United States" (p. 154) in the
twenty-first century. Cornfield argues persuasively that the rise of the "gig economy"--the freelance work that
increasingly dominates the economic lives of the creative class--has required that individuals band together to
develop support systems, whether formal or informal, that make a particular community a safe place to live and
work. As such, a successful creative community cannot rely simply on collaborations between government, civic, and
industry leaders, as it did during the period of time that Hill traces, but must be built and sustained by the individuals
who have the greatest stake in the community's success: the artists themselves.
Taken as a whole, the three books under review here offer interesting insights into specific case studies that might
help us understand life in some of the most important musical centers of the United States, and for those
contributions alone, each of these books is a significant contribution to its respective fields and to popular music
studies, more generally. However, when read in conjunction with one another, they also proffer new perspectives on
the ways that members of Florida's "creative class" can transform a given community and. at the same time, find
themselves without adequate support to continue doing the creative work that they enjoy and are equipped to do.
Hill's book, for instance, is a cautionary tale for community leaders in deindustrialized towns throughout the
Appalachian coalfields and the U.S. Midwest who might find themselves stuck in outmoded ways of thinking about
their local economies and who might prefer to lament the loss of mining and manufacturing jobs than to welcome a
new creative economy. Wynn's study of music festivals offers clear policy suggestions that, if implemented in a
manner that is sensitive to the individual community, may help to create a more vibrant and inclusive community that
thrives as a consequence of mutual respect. And Cornfield's analysis indicates that greater attention--and perhaps
official support--needs to be paid to those people who work in unofficial capacities to support the mutual welfare of
their creative neighbors. As civic leaders throughout the United States strive to achieve a stronger sense of
community identity, cohesion, and well-being amid ongoing socioeconomic struggles, these studies do not put
forward outlandish proposals, but instead offer much-needed commonsense guidance to achieve measurable
improvements on a local level.
TRAVIS D. STIMELING
West Virginia University
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Stimeling, Travis D. "Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry and the Transformation of Nashville." Notes, vol.
73, no. 3, 2017, p. 518+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483930459&it=r&asid=f31f7aeb20876ff3ad40b4d5a619f1f2.
Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A483930459

Stimeling, Travis D. "Country Comes to Town: The Music Industry and the Transformation of Nashville." Notes, vol. 73, no. 3, 2017, p. 518+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483930459&it=r. Accessed 1 Aug. 2017.

• Pop Matters
  http://www.popmatters.com/review/country-comes-to-town-illuminates-nashvilles-and-countrys-struggles/
  Word count: 1553

  'Country Comes to Town' Illuminates Nashville's and Country Music's Internal Struggles
  BY JEDD BEAUDOIN
  6 July 2016
  A FASCINATING PIECE OF ANALYSIS ABOUT MUSIC CITY, USA, JEREMY HILL'S BOOK IS A THOUGHTFUL AND THOROUGH URBAN SCHOLARSHIP ON ORIGINS AND AUTHENTICITY, AMONG OTHER THINGS.
  cover art
  COUNTRY COMES TO TOWN: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF NASHVILLE
  JEREMY HILL
  (UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS)
  US: JAN 2016

  AMAZON
  UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
  Jeremy Hill’s Country Comes to Town traces the rise of country music in its various sounds and styles and how the idea of what country is and was transformed with various cultural, historical and even financial revolutions. Hill’s tone and knack for cultural and historical context help create a narrative that is illuminating and rich in detail. He dispels some long-held myths about country, but also shows how country music has at times worked to uphold those myths.

  In his introduction, Hill cites the often repeated Hank Williams line that “You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly”, a statement meant to reinforce country’s authenticity but quickly points out that Williams’ statement doesn’t necessarily ring true. Hill adds a quote from Richard Nixon, uttered some years later, that country music was more than just a place but in fact a state of mind. Both these notions underline the difficulty that many have in defining this music and the sense of authenticity as music lovers see it.

  The argument may also be made of country’s cousin, the blues. In that genre, the image of a poor sharecropper banging out chords on an opened-tune guitar somewhere in the American South dominates. But that image, like the image of the hillbilly strumming chords in the bed of his pickup truck has long been outmoded. Both genres found purchase in urban climates and were and continue to be performed by artists whose roots need not be deep in the rich southern dirt. One might argue that to assume that one’s geography, heritage or the time in which they live has something to do with the authenticity of the music or art they create, would then render any performance of classical music inauthentic.

  In order for country music itself to proliferate it required modernity. Bill Monroe and country performers needed electricity to record the music they loved and to reach those who adhered to the values expressed in the music and lyrics they played. The early myth that the Grand Ole Opry radio program provided “Nothing but realism” quickly fades as Hill writes that performances there were not taking places at a rural barn dance but instead were “an urban representation of a rural barn dance” that could be appreciated by listeners in both settings.

  That it borrowed from vaudeville and that many of its performers were well-educated and playing into popular ideals about hillbillies suggests that there was a chasm between the realm and the imagined. Though a chasm it may have been, there could be no mistaking that plenty of people bought into the image of country rubes who could play guitar and sing well despite having little or no education. Moreover, whether the image was authentic or inauthentic could not rob listeners of the sheer enjoyment they felt in the music.

  By the ‘40s many of the performers were eager to counter prevailing stereotypes, including one that suggested the music was “natural” and played by musicians who did not need the conservatory or an appreciation of the classical cannon to perform. There is, of course, no license needed to become a working musician and the debate between schooled and unschooled players permeates discussions of virtually every genre.

  Roy Acuff capitalized on the rural image, creating big business around the music and its origins, building entertainment complexes and a lucrative publishing business that also suggested that one did not need a Harvard education to become a success in the world of commerce. Minnie Pearl, despite coming from a refined background and attempting to distance herself from the image of the rube was never allowed to stray too far from that image. Decades later, the dominant image of Garth Brooks was that of a good ol’ country boy from Oklahoma, despite his college education and marketing degree and incredible acumen in that field.

  By the ‘60s, the climate had changed and the book’s titular chapter chronicles how the Nashville sound homogenized the music, treating it as a commodity that could be brokered for tourism and branding. Pop music, with its sophisticated orchestrations and urbane images, cornered Nashville, in a way, and many industry leaders scrambled to find a way to suggest that the rural roots were appreciated but no longer necessary.

  Hill points to the formation of the Country Music Association and its need to develop a real rather than imagined sense of leadership. Tex Ritter would suggest that country music had “grown up” and become the “big time entertainer” who was on par with the stars of Hollywood. With concerted effort, the music and the CMA favored the idea of the urban over the rural. As this happened, instrumentation changed. The banjo and fiddle were no longer the most prominent instruments in the country sound and some might have struggled to tell the difference in some cases between country and pop.

  There were dissenting voices, of course, but the march of time and style persisted even when image remained of utmost importance. In the ‘70s, Willie Nelson had great difficulty finding acceptance in the Nashville community and so retreated to Austin, where his “outlaw” ways were embraced and gave rise to a genre that no doubt reinvigorated interest in what some had come to see as music for squares.

  The city itself struggled with urban renewal and rebranded itself as a safe place, moving the physical location of the Opry to heavily-acred land where music lovers could dine and enjoy performances without concern about some of the more unsavory elements in town. Country had not just gone from rural to urban, it had gone from urban to suburban.

  Hill tells of this progression in masterfully paced chapters that are well-researched and thought-provoking. He also delves into country music’s longstanding issues with race, it’s belittling of African American performers in both intended and unintended ways. The currency of “You sound like us but look like them” carried a painfully thin veneer of racism, as did the industry’s rejection of Ray Charles’ now classic foray into the sounds of country and western.

  Nashville is not unique in many of these regards. One can point to Los Angeles and New York or any major metropolitan area that has sought to reimagine itself and/or struggle with race, but Nashville’s marriage to the music industry and the specific image the industry crafted offers the difference. The city would go through its own period of remaking, as those who once flocked away from the city found reason to come back to its center, embracing a remade Ryman Auditorium and the rich history the place held.

  By the ‘90s the idea of the country rube had largely faded, or was beginning too. Meteoric sales and the arrival of the likes of Brooks helped move the city and its music forward. Some feared that the rise of Lower Broad in the city, the creation of district where tourists could flock and where foot traffic would remain heavy would somehow sully the town’s past. In many areas around the nation such districts trade on the image of the past becoming modern. Chain restaurants are housed in old warehouses and exposed brick becomes the chief aesthetic choice.

  Hill points out that the fears many people had have, in many ways, not come to pass. There’s some sense of the old Nashville still there, and there’s an appreciation for its origins. It has become a city that was built on fiddles and banjos, instruments that remain central to its mythology. Universities and complex healthcare systems have moved in alongside the music industry and each year aging rockers relocate there from Boston, London and L.A. But who and what are there now can’t dampen the glimmer of history that remains. At least for the time being.

  That Hill can capture these various twists and turns in the plot of a city and the genre that has long called that city home is praiseworthy. That he can do so in a way that makes the reader want to read and experience more about the subject goes beyond what one might typically ask of such a volume.

  COUNTRY COMES TO TOWN: THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF NASHVILLE
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  Jedd Beaudoin is host of the eclectic syndicated music show Strange Currency and frequent arts reporter for Wichita Public Radio. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University, where he is an adjunct faculty member in the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries.

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