Music: Hoedown on a Harpsichord

Behind frosted glass doors in a ramshackle former Masonic lodge building in Nashville, Tenn., sit the song peddlers. Their product, proclaimed in gilt letters on the door, is variously billed as “Wonder Music” or “Surefire Music” or “Tenn-Tex Music,” but in the industry it is known simply as C. & W. Country and Western. Last week, to the planeloads of disk jockeys descending on Nashville for the ninth annual National Country Music Festival, C. & W. seemed surefire indeed. Its demise has often seemed near, but it is now going stronger than ever, and Nashville has even nosed out Hollywood as the nation’s second biggest (after New York) record-producing center.

Nashville Sound. One out of every five popular hits of the past year was written and recorded in Nashville, e.g., He’ll Have to Go, Stuck On You, Cathy’s Clown, Please Help Me, I’m Falling. The last, say the experts, is the “countriest” of all, a distinction that suggests the difficulty these days of distinguishing a true “country” song from a straight pop number. The basic C. & W. ingredients have always been a tune with folkish overtones, lyrics of Pleistocene simplicity, and a theme preferably proclaiming undying devotion to a faithless loved one. But country music is now wearing city clothes: the traditional fiddle and guitar accompaniment is being replaced by saxophone, drums, violins and even harpsichords. Many a country record is arranged for trio, quartet or even small chorus.

A hoedown on a harpsichord may appeal to pop fans, but it pains oldtime C. & W. lovers: Nashville’s famed Grand Ole Opry radio show still frowns on the use of any instrument other than a fiddle or guitar on its stage. The unsentimental recordmakers, on the other hand, argue that whatever the instrumentation, the essence of C. & W. has been retained in what they like to call the “Nashville Sound.” As nearly as anybody can define it, the Sound is the byproduct of musical illiteracy. “In New York and Los Ange-les,” says Columbia Records’ Don Law, “they let their sound become stereotyped. They write down their arrangements and even read and play the notes.” Nashville enjoys the advantage of having a supply of singer-composers on the spot, most of whom dream up new numbers by idly plucking a guitar until they stumble onto a tune. Armed with this “head arrangement,” they then cut a “demo” (for demonstration) record to peddle to the A. & R. (for Artists and Repertory) men.

First Citizen. Nashville’s $35 million trade in country music is supported by a bureaucracy as complex as a vertical trust. There are more than 100 music publishers in the city, more than 200 songwriters, more than 1,000 instrumentalists. The town swarms with so many agents that, remarks a singer, “they just about have to wear badges to keep from booking each other.” The kingmakers of Nashville are the big A. & R. men, Columbia’s Law, RCA’s Chet Atkins, Decca’s Owen Bradley, but the first citizen these days is Jim Reeves, 35, an ex-baseball player (Houston Buffalos). Singer Reeves has written about 100 songs and recorded more than 200, a surprising number of which, including Mexican Joe, Bimbo and He’ll Have to Go, have been hits. The trick in writing songs, says Reeves, is to “try to use original rhymes and words that have not been beaten to death in other songs.” Sample from Reeves’s favorite creation, Am I Losing You?:

Will the sweet things you do

Be for somebody new?

Tell me what to do?

Am I losing you?