![]() He also co-founded Acuff-Rose, the first music publishing house devoted solely to country music. Roy Acuff was one of the earliest country singers to find nationwide fame with the help of the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts. The roots of the Nashville Sound extend back into the 1930's. ![]() ![]() Nationwide radio broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry, the success of Nashville artists and music publishers and a growing number of first-rate recording studios made this city the place to be for anyone hoping to forge a career in country music. The Nashville Sound sold uncounted millions of records and won an enormous, worldwide audience beginning in the 1950's. For the Nashville Sound that time has come. ''And let's face it, a lot of the established artists who are considered part of the Nashville Sound have been doing the same show, even telling the same jokes for years.''Įvery pop style, every generation of performer reaches a peak and then falls by the wayside when it can no longer keep up with newer trends. ![]() ''It's still possible for new performers to make it in country music, but they have to come across in videos and they have to be really sensational live performers,'' said Bill Carter. Other performers are quick to adapt to changing conditions. As such, their careers may be immune to the crisis in country music's mainstream. Some performers associated with country music have become American legends, figures whose voices are recognized everywhere - Willy Nelson, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles. But Nashville's production-line country music is too slick and pop oriented to appeal to frontier nostalgia.Īmong country artists, this movement's chief beneficiaries are what is known as the ''new traditionalists'' such as Ricky Skaggs and George Strait, who are going back to the roots of country music for inspiration, and making simple, soulful records without the strings and vocal choruses and other commercial clutter so typical of today's Nashville Sound. The United States as a whole seems to be in the grip of a new romantic infatuation with the old West and frontier America, a trend that is evident in the recent commercial success of western fiction and Hollywood's rediscovery of the western movie. These artists appeal to an audience that is growing larger and getting younger. and the four-man band Alabama, for example. And the performers with country roots whose record sales remain healthy are mostly rockers with a country tinge - Hank Williams Jr. Most radio stations now play the same rock records, in rural areas as well as towns and cities. Most rural and small-town youngsters now grow up listening to rock-and-roll. The young audience that should be swelling the ranks of country music fans is looking elsewhere. Tales tell of concerts by country music stars where the entire audience was above 50 years of age. Nashville's music industry, diversifying into rock, pop and other idioms, remains healthy.īut the audience for the Nashville Sound -lovesick laments, tales of marital strife and other plain-spoken lyrics, sung with a rural twang, and often accompanied by arrangements more redolent of Las Vegas than of Southern cotton fields - is dwindling, growing old along with its favorite stars. This decline in sales, according to record industry observers, is not just a temporary trend but the end of an era. Other stars whose record sales have been dropping include Mickey Gilley, who gained fame as co-owner of Gilley's, the Houston honky-tonk featured in the film ''Urban Cowboy'' Barbara Mandrell, one of country music's most recognizable faces, and the ''outlaw'' Waylon Jennings.
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