The Birth of the Nashville Recording Industry

Abstract 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.