2. “Wildwood flowers”

Author(s):  
Richard Carlin

“Wildwood flowers” focuses on some of the early country stars, including Fiddlin’ John Carson and Lily May Ledford, along with the two best-known acts of the era: the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. Realizing that a market existed for country music, the primarily New York-based recording industry scrambled to record “authentic” acts. This involved sending producers to the South, who relied on leads from local dealers, newspaper announcements, and word of mouth to produce a string of possible performers. Thanks to this commercial push, many artists were recorded who would have otherwise probably never have been heard on disc.

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-62
Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling

Country music was recorded in Nashville as early as the 1920s, but it was not until the mid-1950s that the city became a significant center for the production of recorded country music. This chapter traces the development of Nashville’s recording studio infrastructure from ad hoc facilities used in the decade following the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, when the city was home to several state-of-the-art permanent recording facilities. This chapter not only explores the business of recording in Nashville, but also examines how new technologies that were deployed within the city’s recording studios changed the ways in which musicians created their work (Horning 2013). Finally, this chapter considers how trade publications, the mainstream press, and films promoted Nashville as both a state-of-the-art recording center and a relaxed, small-town alternative to urban recording industries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.


Author(s):  
Damon J. Phillips

There are over a million jazz recordings, but only a few hundred tunes have been recorded repeatedly. Why did a minority of songs become jazz standards? Why do some songs—and not others—get re-recorded by many musicians? This book answers this question and more, exploring the underappreciated yet crucial roles played by initial production and markets—in particular, organizations and geography—in the development of early twentieth-century jazz. The book considers why places like New York played more important roles as engines of diffusion than as the sources of standards. It demonstrates why and when certain geographical references in tune and group titles were considered more desirable. It also explains why a place like Berlin, which produced jazz abundantly from the 1920s to early 1930s, is now on jazz's historical sidelines. The book shows the key influences of firms in the recording industry, including how record labels and their executives affected what music was recorded, and why major companies would re-release recordings under artistic pseudonyms. It indicates how a recording's appeal was related to the narrative around its creation, and how the identities of its firm and musicians influenced the tune's long-run popularity. Applying fascinating ideas about market emergence to a music's commercialization, the book offers a unique look at the origins of a groundbreaking art form.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebeka Smith ◽  
◽  
Thomas Badamo ◽  
David J. Barclay ◽  
Devorah Crupar ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling

Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City, 1945–1975 is the first history of record production during country music’s so-called Nashville Sound era. This period of country music history produced some of the genre’s most celebrated recording artists, including Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, and Floyd Cramer, and marked the establishment of a recording industry that has come to define Nashville in the national and international consciousness. Yet, despite country music’s overwhelming popularity during this period and the continued legacy of the studios that were built in Nashville during the 1950s and 1960s, little attention has been given to the ways in which recording engineers, session musicians, and record producers shaped the sounds of country music during the time. Drawing upon a rich array of previously unexplored primary sources, Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City, 1945–1975 is the first book to take a global view of record production in Nashville during the three decades that the city’s musicians established the city as the leading center for the production and distribution of country music.


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