An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 18 | COUNTRY MUSIC FROM NASHVILLE TO BAKERSFIELD 457

How could a music founded on notions of rural, traditional authenticity survive

when dressed up in the slick production techniques of the up-to-date record-

ing studio? Different musicians addressed that question in different ways. Two

basic approaches can be seen by comparing the two geographic centers of coun-

try music making in the 1960s: Nashville, Tennessee, and Bakersfi eld, California.

THE NASHVILLE SOUND

Nashville’s importance in country music dates as far back as the beginnings of

the Grand Ole Opry in the 1920s. By the 1950s Nashville was the undisputed capital

of the country music industry, the home of numerous song writers, performers,

publishing houses, and record companies. The city thus played a dominant role

in country music analogous to New York’s position in the Tin Pan Alley years of

mainstream popular music.

The basic elements of the 1960s Nashville music scene were already in place

in 1956, when Elvis Presley arrived there to record “Heartbreak Hotel” for RCA

Victor. Two of the studio musicians who backed him up on that record, guitarist

Chet Atkins and pianist Floyd Cramer, would become principal architects of the

Nashville sound of the 1960s: country-style vocals accompanied by highly pol-

ished studio musicians, downplaying traditional instruments such as fi ddle and

banjo in favor of electric guitar and piano, background singers, and even string

sections in the manner of Frank Sinatra records. The songs, many of them prod-

ucts of songwriting teams that worked regularly on publishers’ payrolls, treated

the time-honored country themes—infi delity, lost love, and wanderlust—with a

fl air for wordplay reminiscent of the classic popular song. And while some fea-

tured artists retained the hard-core country vocal sound of their honky-tonk

backgrounds—singers such as Ray Price, George Jones, and Loretta Lynn—others

modifi ed their styles to match those of mainstream pop singers like Nat King

Cole and Patti Page.

Jim Reeves’s “Welcome to My World” (1962) is a classic example of the Nashville

sound: a gentle aaba love song sung by a mellifl uous baritone, accompanied by a

small combo featuring vibraphone, Cramer’s signature “slip-note” piano in imi-

tation of a guitarist’s hammer-ons, and the soft cooing of the Anita Kerr Sing-

ers. Another record, Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” is fi lled with features that made it a

crossover hit on both country and pop charts in 1961. The trace of rural twang in

Cline’s vocal gives it an individuality distinct from the singing of her models, pop

singers such as Kay Starr and Doris Day. The aaba song, with words and music

by Willie Nelson—at that time a part of the Nashville establishment, years before

developing his Austin outlaw persona—is an homage to Tin Pan Alley songwrit-

ers such as Hoagy Carmichael, whose wide-arcing melodies it emulates. Record

producer Owen Bradley blends piano and organ with brushed drums, elec-

tric bass, and a lightly rhythmic electric guitar backbeat to craft a sound that is

urbane, sophisticated, yet somehow not utterly devoid of country-style sincerity

and authenticity: a pinnacle of the Nashville sound.

THE BAKERSFIELD SOUND

Meanwhile, a new center for country music was developing far to the west

of Nashville: Bakersfi eld, a midsize city in the San Joaquin Valley of southern

California. During the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl ecological crisis had

Patsy Cline, “Crazy”

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