Ray Stevens' Nashville

Ray Stevens' Nashville
Author: Ray Stevens
Publisher:
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2014-08-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781935802228

Ray Stevens' Nashville is a Nashville you will love, too. Ray takes you behind the scenes into the recording sessions and into the dressing rooms and shares his Nashville with us in a very entertaining way. It's fun, informative and funny. If you are a fan of Ray Stevens, country or pop music, or the city of Nashville, you will love Ray Stevens' Nashville. Ray Stevens was recently described in the Nashville Tennessean newspaper as the most talented man on Music Row. Not bad for a guy who moved to town in 1962 with all of his worldly possessions in the smallest U-Haul trailer available at the time, and as he'll tell you, "It wasn't full." A Hall of Fame songwriter, Grammy award winning vocalist and arranger with numerous Gold and Platinum Records, and nine consecutive Comedian of the Year statuettes, Ray says he is a 'piano man in a guitar town,' which makes the career of this imaginative and prolific musician even more notable. Many Nashville recording artists have a couple of country hits, buy a few new flashy cars and a hillbilly bus and go off performing around the country to make room for, you know, "the new kid in town," the "next big thing." But Ray Stevens didn't have a couple of hits, he had a string of them and he didn't buy a bus and leave town, he rented a plane so he could fly home and sleep in his own bed every night. He didn't view his success as a fast burn, but simply the natural result of doing his job well, and he never got tired of that job. His is an American dream story of humble beginnings, talent, and hard work. He has always gotten up every day and gone to work, just like his folks taught him to do, and the way his mill employee father modeled for him. Part of the answer of his long success is that he has never comfortable with being a Star. In fact, he is a very reluctant celebrity, always shunning limos, presidential suites, and the star treatment in general. When told a production company would send a limo for him he replied, "Just tell me the address, I have a car and I've been driving since I was 16." He loves Nashville, it's his adopted hometown. He likes breakfast with old friends every Saturday morning at a small neighborhood restaurant, and being able to be at work after just a 15 minute drive. He loves the architecture, the people, the business, and being surrounded by the best musicians in the world that he can call on at a moment's notice to come to one of his state of the art recording studios and help him create that most elusive of all things-- a Hit Record.

Ray Stevens' Nashville

Ray Stevens' Nashville
Author: Ray Stevens
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2014-03
Genre: Comedians
ISBN: 9780578138862

"Ray Stevens' Nashville" is much more than an extensive and entertaining biography of a Comedy Music Legend who brought us multimillion selling hits like "The Streak" and "Gitarzan" or the Grammy winning cultural classics "Misty" and "Everything Is Beautiful" along with the all-time top selling "Comedy Video Classics." It is the story of how the sleepy southern city of Nashville grew and blossomed into the international music mecca that it is today. Ray Stevens was there as it all came together, whether playing on recording sessions with Elvis and singing backup for Waylon Jennings or as a part-time substitute background singer with the famous Jordanaires among many others. All of this in addition to winning the "Comedian of the Year" Award, for his unique comedy music 9 years in a row. "Ray Stevens' Nashville" is an entertaining insider's behind the scenes look at Nashville with one of the architects and laborers who built it and constructed the world famous "Nashville Sound." This is a fun and informative read that will have you laughing and learning with the turn of every page.

Ray Stevens' Nashville

Ray Stevens' Nashville
Author: Ray Stevens
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2014-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9780615993089

"Ray Stevens' Nashville" is much more than an extensive and entertaining biography of a Comedy Music Legend who brought us multimillion selling hits like "The Streak" and "Gitarzan" or the Grammy winning cultural classics "Misty" and "Everything is Beautiful" along with the all-time top selling "Comedy Video Classics." It is the story of how the sleepy southern city of Nashville grew and blossomed into the international music mecca that it is today. Ray Stevens was there as it all came together, whether playing on recording sessions with Elvis and singing backup for Waylon Jennings or as a part-time substitute background singer with the famous Jordanaires among many others. All of this in addition to winning the "Comedian of the Year" award, for his unique comedy music 9 years in a row. "Ray Stevens' Nashville" is an entertaining insider's behind the scenes look at Nashville with one of the architects and laborers who built it and constructed the world famous "Nashville Sound." This is a fun and informative read that will have you laughing and learning with the turn of every page.

Nashville Cats

Nashville Cats
Author: Travis D. Stimeling
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-04-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0197502822

The Nashville Cats bounced from studio to studio along the city's Music Row, delivering instrumental backing tracks for countless recordings throughout the mid-20th century. Music industry titans like Chet Atkins, Anita Kerr, and Charlie McCoy were among this group of extraordinarily versatile session musicians who defined the era of the "Nashville Sound," and helped establish the city of Nashville as the renowned hub of the record industry it is today. Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City is the first account of these talented musicians and the behind-the-scenes role they played to shape the sounds of country music. Many of the genre's most celebrated artists-Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Floyd Cramer, and others immortalized in the Country Music Hall of Fame and musicians from outside the genre's ranks, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, heard the call of the Nashville Sound and followed it to the city's studios, recording song after song that resonated with the brilliance of the Cats. Author Travis D. Stimeling investigates how the Nashville system came to be, how musicians worked within it, and how the desires of an ever-growing and diversifying audience affected the practices of record production. Drawing on a rich array of recently uncovered primary sources and original oral histories,Âinterviews with key players, and close exploration of hit songs, Nashville Cats brings us back into the studios of this famous era, right alongside the remarkable musicians who made it happen.

Billboard

Billboard
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 96
Release: 1998-11-21
Genre:
ISBN:

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Billboard

Billboard
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 96
Release: 1975-11-15
Genre:
ISBN:

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Nashville's Songwriting Sweethearts

Nashville's Songwriting Sweethearts
Author: Bobbie Malone
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0806166355

“The story of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant is the story of towering artistic achievement wrapped in a love story so deep and so complete that the two are their own country song. Bobbie and Bill Malone are precisely the right match to tell this tale of love and genius.”—Ken Burns, Director, Country Music You might not know the names of Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, but you know their music. Arriving in Nashville in 1950, the songwriting duo became the first full-time independent songwriters in that musical city. In the course of their long careers, they created classic hits that pushed the boundaries of country music into the realms of pop and rock. Songs like “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Love Hurts,” and “Rocky Top” inspired young musicians everywhere. Here, for the first time, is a complete biography of Nashville’s power songwriting couple. In Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts, authors Bobbie Malone and Bill C. Malone recount how Boudleaux and Felice, married in 1945, began their partnership as itinerant musicians living in a trailer home and writing their first songs together. In Nashville the couple had to deal with racism, classism, and in Felice’s case, sexism. Yet through hard work and business acumen—and a dose of good luck—they overcame these obstacles and rose to national prominence. By the late 1990s, the Bryants had written as many as 6,000 songs and had sold more than 350 million copies worldwide. They were inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, and in 1991 they became members of the Country Music Hall of Fame—a rare occurrence for songwriters who were not also performers. In 1982 their composition “Rocky Top” was adopted as one of the official state songs of Tennessee. The Bryants were lucky enough to arrive in the right place at the right time. Their emergence in the early fifties coincided with the rise of Nashville as Music City, USA. And their prolific collaboration with the Everly Brothers, beginning in 1957, sparked a fusion between country and pop music that endures to this day.

Crooked River City

Crooked River City
Author: Terry Wait Klefstad
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-08-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496818652

A pianist, arranger, and composer, William Pursell is a mainstay of the Nashville music scene. He has played jazz in Nashville’s Printer’s Alley with Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley, recorded with Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, performed with the Nashville Symphony, and composed and arranged popular and classical music. Pursell’s career, winding like a crooked river between classical and popular genres, encompasses a striking diversity of musical experiences. A series of key choices sent him down different paths, whether it was reenrolling with the Air Force for a second tour of duty, leaving the prestigious Eastman School of Music to tour with an R&B band, or refusing to sign with the Beatles’ agent Sid Bernstein. The story of his life as a working musician is unlike any other—he is not a country musician nor a popular musician nor a classical musician but, instead, an artist who refused to be limited by traditional categories. Crooked River City is driven by a series of recollections and personal anecdotes Terry Wait Klefstad assembled over a three-year period of interviews with Pursell. His story is one not only of talent, but of dedication and hard work, and of the ins and outs of a working musician in America. This biography fills a crucial gap in Nashville music history for both scholars and music fans.

How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A.

How Nashville Became Music City, U.S.A.
Author: Michael Kosser
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780634098062

How did a Southern town become one of the most important music centers in America? This fascinating book explains it all and includes a full-length CD with 12 recordings of some of Nashville's most famous artists from the early days of Music City.

Billboard

Billboard
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 104
Release: 1996-11-23
Genre:
ISBN:

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.