The Heart of Country: How Nashville Became Music City USA

I came to Nashville in 1967 from about 12 years on the road

playing the beer joints.

And I'd always wanted to live in Nashville.

I came to town with a 20 dollar bill and the clutch out of my car

and a wife and a baby and, er, it was, it IS a tough,

competitive town to try to break into.

# It's a crazy town full of neon dreams... #

When I went to Nashville, country music was real music,

like, I guess, white man's soul music.

They were talking about real things, about real emotions

and they talked about drinking and cheating and going to jail.

And eventually I got involved in all of those activities myself!

And wrote about them.

# Cut your teeth in the smoky bars

# And live off the tips from a pickle jar... #

I moved to Nashville and I was very homesick because I'd never

been away from home, and of course when you're on your own,

it's a sickness that you can't hardly bear, that homesickness.

There's nothing to take for it, you know, it's just a lonesome feeling.

But I told my folks I wouldn't be home

until I had something to show for it. And it was some hard times,

but I've had a lot of help from a lot of good people.

# Make all the drunk girls scream and shout... #

I moved to Nashville and I think I just kind of thought

they were going to roll out the red carpet for me once I got here.

Then I got to town and I got knocked off my horse pretty quick.

One year, I can't afford to pay for groceries

and the next year I'm like...

more money than I've ever seen in my life!

# In this crazy town... #

If you want to make it in country music,

you've always had to make it in Nashville, Tennessee.

But this city is more than a Hollywood-style dream factory

with a Southern twang.

Behind the rags-to-riches legends of its stars lies the shifting story

of how Music City has prospered from the struggle

between inspiration and manipulation, music and the market.

The process by which they'd named Nashville "Music City USA"

on the air is a pretty epic story with many characters,

many forces, that have to do with partly the geography,

centrally located in the South, lots of railroad crossings and

so forth, and partly those accidents of history you could never predict.

Many cities in the South used to hold a radio barn dance at weekends.

Nashville's was the best of them.

It started back in 1925, and later settled in the Ryman Auditorium,

a former Methodist chapel.

They called it the Grand Old Opry.

It's been a magnet for performers ever since.

The thing that was great about the Opry was it was just

one act after another.

It knocked your hat in the creek, you know.

I loved it!

# Our eastern states are dandy, so the people always say

# From New York to St Louis and Chicago by the way

# From the hills of Minnesota where the rippling waters fall

# No changes can be taken on the Wabash Cannonball... #

These were songs that mirrored the everyday lives of their audience,

and they were broadcast across the States

by one of the new radio stations.

WSM, the National Life And Accident Insurance Company,

Nashville, Tennessee!

WSM was the broadcasting service

of the Nashville Life and Accident Insurance Company.

I used to say that all the time.

"You are listening to WSM, the broadcasting service

"of the National Life And Accident Insurance Company."

And they created a radio station with 50,000 watts

to broadcast across the land and sell life insurance.

Men in the field wouldn't say, "I'm from Nashville Life",

they would say, "Hello there, I'm from the Grand Ole Opry.

"I'd like to sell you some life insurance."

# When I was just a baby

# My mama told me, "Son"... #

It was so fascinating to discover what a perfect marriage

of art and commerce the world around WSM

and broadcasting at the time represented -

the model of how money and sponsor dollars finance creativity.

# And I let that lonesome whistle

# Blow my blues away #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And now this portion of the Grand Ole Opry is brought to you

by Beechnut Chewing Tobacco -

double picked and double dipped for a cleaner, sweeter-tasting chew.

Beechnut, America's largest selling brand!

It's been said WSM could cover two-thirds of America at night,

and therefore, many, many people, especially before television,

that was their Saturday night's entertainment.

They would sit around the radio and listen to the Opry.

I was listening from Florida because these clear channel radio stations

could travel that far at night.

# I'm hoping and I'm praying as my heart breaks right in two

# Walking the floor over you... #

When we were growing up, being able to get reception

on our battery radio was special to start out with.

But my daddy always tried to have it on on Saturday nights to listen

to the Grand Ole Opry, especially, and it was a big treat.

# There stands the glass

# Set it up to the brim

# Till my troubles grow dim

# It's my first one today. #

My dad and mom used to love the Grand Ole Opry.

Even years before we had electricity, we had a battery radio,

and I remember my dad running out and pouring water on the ground wire

in order to tune in to the Grand Ole Opry!

-# I've gained a reward

-I've gained a reward

# For the land where we never shall die #

The radio was our connection to the rest of the world, really.

It was where we heard whatever music we heard because this was...

even the old phonograph records weren't that great.

But if you had a radio, you could turn the dial

and hear everything that was going on.

It was on all the time, and up until the wee hours of the morning,

and then we'd turn it on early in the morning

and hear the farm reports and listen to it all day and hear the music.

But it was just something we all gathered around - watched the radio!

# Blue moon of Kentucky

# Keep on shinin'

# Shine on the one that's gone and said goodbye... #

First time I came to Nashville, came here with my mom and dad, I think

I was seven years old,

I think actually we came here for my birthday.

I remember the colours, the sounds

that was hitting on the Ryman Auditorium with the steel guitars -

how it would hit up on the ceiling and bounce back down.

You know, it just sounded so great in there, you know.

But I could also remember the smells.

It smelled like an old church.

I could smell the Juicy Fruit chewing gum underneath

the seats, where people had chewed!

But the Opry and its country music was viewed with some disdain

by Nashville society.

This was a city built on insurance, banking and Bible publishing.

It was the buckle of the Bible Belt.

Nashville, always, has been very territorial,

and you don't enter the society here if you don't have

the right silverware and the right chicken salad recipe.

It's almost as if they set a table and they didn't make a place for you.

Nashville's a very proper kind of Southern town

and, certainly in the mid-20th century, a very religious place.

A lot of propriety in Nashville in the local society there, so

I think you could call it generally a conservative environment.

# I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin

# I wouldn't let my dear saviour in... #

The Church and Christian music, Christian morals,

ethics, is a big part of country music.

It's the thread to me,

the red thread, that runs through the fabric of country music.

# I saw the light

# No more darkness, no more night... #

Inspired by the Southern Baptist Church, the tension

between sacred and secular, God and the Devil, pervaded country music.

The temptations of the downtown saloons became a theme of this music

in the late 1940s, and they called it honky-tonk.

# Well, I'm in love, I'm in love with a beautiful gal

# That's what's the matter with me

# Well I'm in love, I'm in love with a beautiful gal

# But she don't care about me... #

The tormented, whisky-fuelled songs of Hank Williams

became the benchmark by which all others would be judged.

# So now that she is leavin'

# This is all I can say

# I got a feeling called the blues, oh, Lord

# Since my baby... #

The heartbreak was right there in the words,

and in the way he delivered them.

He had the truth and the heart right in his...

in his voice. He sang... he was a soul singer.

# That means he's lost the will to live

# I'm so lonesome I could cry... #

I think I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, to me,

was one of the best-written country songs that there ever was.

One of the lines was,

"The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky,

"and as I wonder where you are

"I'm so lonesome I could cry."

And that's as good as it gets.

# The silence of a falling star

# Lights up a purple sky... #

Hank Williams is the best writer we've ever had in country music

and he wrote more, in a short period of time, and he died when he was 29.

And he would do...

# Today I passed you on the street

# And my heart fell at your feet

# I can't help it if I'm still in love with you. #

So he wrote about it all, from the sad to the happy.

# So I started out drinking for pastime

# Drivin' nails in my coffin over you... #

Honky-tonk was a lament for what was being left behind.

It accompanied a mass exodus from the rural South

in the decades after World War II.

Those migrants' records were among their most treasured possessions.

# I'll be drivin' those nails over you... #

Country music was almost totally in the South

and when the Southern boys took their records with 'em,

and these guys from New York and Pennsylvania and Maryland and places

started listening to it and started,

"Hey, that's pretty good, man, you know."

It kind of got a little bit of spread going there.

It got a little bit more universal than what it...what it was.

And it was like, these guys also found out at the same time,

"These guys may talk slow, but they're just as hip as we are."

-ANNOUNCER:

-It's the Garden Spot Programme,

presenting the songs of Hank Williams!

# Hello, everybody, Garden Spot is on the air

# So just relax and listen in your easy rockin' chair

# Music for the family... #

Country became the voice of the uprooted working class,

and that included women.

They became not just consumers, but creators of honky-tonk,

and the pioneer was Kitty Wells.

# It wasn't God

# Who made honky-tonk angels

# As you said in the words

# Of your song

# Too many time

# Married men think they're still single

# That has caused many a good girl to go wrong... #

Kitty Wells was the answer to the male honky-tonk singers.

She gave voice to the women

who stayed home and raised their children.

It was the first woman who stood up and said,

"Um, you're a jerk and here's why!"

You know? Basically!

# From the start, most every heart that's ever broken

# Was because there always was a man to blame... #

Kitty Wells had some of her records banned, and she was the greatest

lady I've ever known, and yet she had some of her records banned

because of some of the, just realistic material

that was in the songs. So, she fought the fight before any of us.

Though respectable institutions like the Opry and WSM

wouldn't allow that song to be performed,

across town there was a radio station

concerned about reaching a different audience.

This is WLAC Radio, Nashville, 1510 on your dial.

Right now, it's Colonial Bread time.

# You can tell by the flavour it's Colonial Bread

# Colonial is real bread! #

The Nashville sound of rhythm and blues.

WLAC beamed music all across the States.

Though white-controlled, it aimed its programmes at Black America.

# Early in the morning, babe

# You're gonna have to let me be... #

Those songs were heard by people

like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis.

Those songs were critical to the musical education of a whole era

of those who would make rock'n'roll in the 1960s.

# Blue Moon, blue moon... #

Elvis was inspired by the mix of WLAC's rhythm and blues

and WSM's white country.

In 1954, he went to Nashville to record his first album.

On the turntable right now,

everybody's favourite, Little Richard!

You know something, Gene? I goes for the girls with the royal crown look

cos, man, hmmm! She's got it!

When Elvis first hit out of Memphis in '54, people didn't know

what that was that he was doing because it hadn't really existed.

Was it R&B? Was it hillbilly music?

What was this thing that he was doing?

He was singing a song, Blue Moon of Kentucky from Bill Munroe.

# Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shinin'

# Shine on the one that's gone and made me blue... #

And he came to the Grand Ole Opry

and was told that he ought to go back to Memphis and drive a truck.

But Elvis did choose to record in Nashville

and gave the city a new visibility.

There were people who thought he was too crazy, too wild, too weird,

and then there were other people who accepted him as a country artist.

# Well, since my baby left me

# Well, I've found a new place to dwell

# It's down at the end of the road... #

Elvis recorded with local musicians

and was offered a list of conventional pop songs.

But he was headstrong enough to reinvent a country number

that would rock Nashville to its foundations.

# Although it's always crowded

# You still can find some room

# For broken-hearted lovers to cry there in the gloom

# And be so, where they'll be so lonely, baby

# Where they be so lonely... #

Overseeing the session was Elvis' new manager, Colonel Parker.

The colonel introduced a vision of mass-marketing for teenagers

that astonished Nashville

and would devastate the country music business.

He had a tremendous impact on the music scene in Nashville.

They quit using steel guitar players and fiddle players.

Some of those guys left and never came back.

Country was in disarray. Ernest Tubb thought about going

back down to Texas to sell insurance, because the wheels were

coming off, the proceeds were going down and people were frightened.

To compete with rock'n'roll, which had stolen the teenage market,

record companies set about refashioning the music for adults.

They called it, "The Nashville sound".

Studios began removing the country fiddle and steel guitar,

replacing them with an angelic chorus

or mellow strings from the local symphony orchestra.

Corporate folks realised that they could sell records

if they adjusted their template for what country music could

sound like, just a little bit, then they could have access

to a much wider market to sell records to.

But Nashville's studios, in the early '60s,

weren't their own masters.

They were under the commercial thumb of the New York record executives,

who were cashing in on the Nashville sound.

Bless your heart, you're always nice!

Hey, Will! Welcome back to Nashville.

Come on and get in the car. Let's go up town.

The companies really wanted more sales,

and New York RCA put pressure on Nashville RCA,

which made Nashville RCA put pressure on their artists.

They selected local producers like Chet Atkins

to supervise the Nashville sound.

RCA put Chet in charge down here to make money.

To hell with the ideology that "I love Country music",

you got to make some records that sell.

There's a legend about the Nashville sound. What is the Nashville sound?

People ask me that every day, and, ah, I had a German in here

the other day and he said, "Do you know what thee Nashville sound is?"

-and I said, "No!"

-COINS JINGLE

"THAT is the Nashville sound!"

-That sweet sound!

-Money!

MUSIC: Golden Memories And Silver Tears by Jim Reeves

The studios were like a well-oiled machine,

with a select group of musicians known as the A Team,

turning out a dozen tunes a day for star crooners.

# My dear, my golden moon

# Has turned to blue

# And all the silver stars are gone with you... #

What developed was a smoother - some people thought way too smooth

and syrupy - brand of music.

But, it was something that saved the recording industry in Nashville.

# Just like a wave... #

The studios had found a winning formula that sold

in millions as it crossed over into the pop market.

# But it was a little too much

# For my poor heart

# Yesterday's memories tore me apart... #

I didn't care whether it was real country music or not.

I was trying to sell records!

Today, I walked down to that little cafe

where we used to go...

It's like a baseball team.

You're supposed to win!

If you don't win, you're out of business.

Well, the Nashville sound has kind of changed back and forth

with commercialism, and what sold yesterday doesn't necessarily mean

it's going to sell tomorrow, and in trying to keep up with what is

and what isn't commercial, they make some horrible blunders up there!

# I'm crazy

# For thinkin' that my love could hold you... #

They even tried turning Willie into a matinee idol.

# I'm crazy for tryin'

# And crazy for cryin'

# And I'm crazy for lovin' you. #

Well, you pretty much put your career in their hands

and you did that voluntarily

when you signed that little piece of paper for four years.

So, you were pretty much locked in.

# Crazy

# I'm crazy... #

But major artists like Patsy Cline did turn Willie's songs into hits.

And she became queen of the Nashville sound.

# I'm crazy

# Crazy for feelin' so blue

# I knew

# You'd love me as long as you wanted

# And then some day

# You'd leave me for somebody new... #

You get the sense from what we know about her

that she couldn't have been stopped.

You know, and I don't think anyone could have said,

"Patsy, you need to sing about this, you don't need to sing that,

"and you need to dress this way, and you need to kind of tone it down."

She seemed like a fireball that was not going to be stopped.

# What in the world did I do?

# I'm crazy... #

Patsy's sound suited the new sophistication

of suburban housewives in the '60s.

That's why they called this music Countrypolitan.

# I'm crazy for trying

# And crazy for crying... #

Patsy Cline was very country and her audience was clearly

rooted in country music, but she also had a broader appeal

outside of it because she was one of those cross-over artists.

She was an enormously sexual woman and there was no hiding it.

It's in her voice and it was in her presentation,

and she made no bones about it.

And I think that also spoke to the time and place of American women

in the late '50s and early '60s.

They were finally emboldened and beginning to talk about

their own sexuality.

Fundamentally, she was just one of the great voices of all time

and there's no getting past that.

# I'm always walking

# After midnight

# Searching for you

# I stopped to see a weeping willow

# Crying on his pillow

# Maybe he's crying for me

# And as the sky turned gloomy

# Night winds whisper to me

# I'm lonesome as I can be... #

Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves are great examples of artists where

the Nashville sound really worked well for the kind of voices

that they had and the kind of material that they had.

And, ultimately, the companies in Nashville who were making those

records realised they could sell them as pop music and make a lot

more money than just selling them to a regional, Southern audience.

They liked to keep the artists making sure they know that

Nashville knows better for you. "We know what's good for you.

"We're going to keep you. Don't worry. Stick with us.

"Sing our songs and we'll keep you, you know, where you're at."

But that's not very welcoming to someone who got into music

because they fell in love with music

and they wanted to put their own mark on it.

One such rebel was Shooter's father, Waylon Jennings,

who arrived from Arizona with a free spirit

that didn't fit in Music City.

MUSIC: Outlaw You by Shooter Jennings

Freedom was hard to come by when I first came to this town.

It was, "You do it our way or walk."

And, erm... I wanted to walk,

but they wouldn't let me do that either.

They'd say, "You're going to stay here. We've got a contract.

"But you're going to do it my way with the Nashville sound."

# Stop the world and let me off... #

Waylon was even forbidden to employ his own musicians.

When they decided not to use us, actually, I was kind of glad

at that point because you could feel it...

You could feel it in the studio

that they didn't really want you there.

And it really got to me, you know?

So I told them, "If they're not welcome, then I'm not welcome".

That's the way it's always been.

Nashville stalwarts like Chet Atkins may have sympathised,

but they continued doing things the Nashville way.

The turnover was like three songs in a session.

There's a three-hour session.

If you didn't get three, you wasn't doing nothing, you know?

It was like a paper mill, man. They were just cranking them out.

# My dreams are shattered, don't you see?

# Now you no longer care for me... #

And Waylon, he was pretty mad about it.

I told him, I said, "Man, just go on and cut," you know?

I said, "Your time's coming.

"We'll get around this."

For now, all Waylon could do was mock the system.

# I've been chasing the big wheels

# All over Nashville

# Waiting for my big break to come

# Living on ketchup soup, homemade crackers and Kool-Aid

# I'll be a star tomorrow

# But today

# I'm a Nashville bum

# I look good in cowboy clothes

# And I sing through my nose

# Webb said, "That's the way to get her done"

# I smoke good old PA like the Opry stars, they say

# I'll be a star tomorrow

# But today

# I'm a Nashville bum... #

Me trying to get that freedom and everything

made it rough on Chet and made it rough on everybody around

because I think they thought I wanted something else, just power,

or that I was out to destroy something,

and actually I was out to survive.

# Well, here's a song I wrote by myself, note for note

# With a lot of help, it make number one

# You can change a word or two and I'll give half of it to you

# I'll be a star tomorrow

# But today

# I'm a Nashville bum. #

Sounds pretty good to me.

Just make sure he's got that Nashville sound.

Oh, that's a built-in feature of our musicians and singers,

there won't be any problem at all.

Good. Good.

The musicians that Waylon and others were forced to use

came from a select team of Nashville insiders.

They were revered for their musical skills

but the demanding studio schedules wore them down.

Actually, being a studio musician at that time

was like being on a merry-go-round.

So, we had no time off. It was idiotic.

There were some times we did five sessions in a day

and what happened was, we would end up at one o'clock in the morning,

and then start another session

and those were the days that I would sleep in the drum booth

because it would take an hour to drive home and an hour to drive back

so I just got more sleep and more rest sacking out in the drum booth.

But, you know, we had a few of those.

They had been beaten to death.

They were doing four sessions a day, sometimes more...

fast.

An unbelievable amount of music.

Five, six, sometimes seven days a week.

This town, when we came here in the '60s, ran on amphetamines.

Everybody sounded like a...

drug store walking, you know?

They had so many pills in their pocket, just trying to keep up.

Then, after a while, you were dependent upon them.

Many musicians acquired their amphetamines from the infamous

Dr Snap.

Dr Snap was a physician who would write...

prescriptions for what we'd call Old Yellers - amphetamines.

And they were...

little yellow pills.

And they became terribly popular among the music people.

And, you know, guys would get pilled up and then write songs.

And for some people, it really wired them

into being creative.

And I said one time, I think I was being facetious,

I said, "You know, BMI should give Dr Snap some awards

"for all the songs he's written!"

But Nashville musicians were encouraged

to escape from their studios on one particular day each year.

At the DJ Convention, they got to meet the disc jockeys

who spun their records on air, as well as the visiting fans.

Hello, little lady.

These conventions united all the vital components

of the country music business.

The PR people and the publishers, the regional bosses and fan clubs,

the DJs and artists,

keeping it all in the Nashville family.

# When he comes home from a hard day's work

# He's probably tired and dirty

# Don't let him find this latchy queen

# Have your castle looking pretty

# There's a lot of things that you shouldn't do

# But there's just as many that you should do too

# To make a man feel like a man

# You got to show him you're a woman... #

Loretta was already a major name

but her relationship with some disc jockeys remained tetchy.

Though no-one spoke the word "payola", the truth was that

country artists sometimes had to pay to get their records heard.

About the time that the Disc Jockey Convention got really going

and the payola scandals had broken,

there was clearly a scenario going on in popular music in general

where the labels would pay disc jockeys to play a record.

# I sat down by the sea... #

Loretta toured radio stations throughout the South

to get her records played.

Though freed from many of the prejudices

that earlier singers confronted, she still faced obstacles.

I took my record and this disc jockey said, I felt so bad,

I said, "I've got a brand-new record.

"It's called Honky Tonk Girl. And my name is Loretta Lynn.

"I'm from Custer, Washington. Would you please play it for me?"

And he said, "How much money do you have?"

And I said, "Huh?"

"How much money do you have?" I said, "I don't have none."

He said, "Well, how do you expect to get your record played?"

I said, "We just had enough money to get out here

"to get this record to you."

And I picked it up and left.

Local radio mushroomed from 80 to 600 stations through the '60s,

still targeting white listeners and dictating who got the hits.

# Oh, the snakes crawl at night

# That's what they say... #

But now Southern cities like Nashville found the old order

under threat.

Country music came out of white America and the white South,

so it didn't have a lot of opportunities for cross-pollination

with black music, and nobody was looking for it in Nashville.

And nobody was looking for it in country music.

But issues of race played out in the city of Nashville,

lunch-counter sit-ins and the newspapers and the radio

either covering it or not covering it,

and WSM leaned away from covering

racial movement in the city.

Whatever was happening in the world outside,

WSM and the Opry stayed intent on keeping their sponsors happy.

But the makers of Goo Goo never compromise on quality.

-# Go get a Goo Goo, it's good. #

-That's right.

Their cautious response to the social unrest beyond their doors

was to invite the first black cowboy to play the Opry.

My career was right smack bang in the middle

of the civil rights movement.

There was a coloured side and a white side in every town,

especially in the South.

I just stayed within the bounds of, erm...

what segregation meant at that time.

Mr Charley Pride! Here he comes!

The reaction that I got was that it shocked the people

because if you put me behind the curtain when I was singing

you'd think I was the same colour as the rest of the country singers,

until I walk out.

# Before you take another step... #

But I didn't have any hoot calls from the audience.

When I started going on stage,

they didn't care whether I was green or pink.

They wanted to hear me sing and that's the way it turned out,

even though I was right in the middle of the civil rights.

# And there'll be no mansion

# Waiting on the hill

# With crystal chandeliers

# And there'll be no fancy clothes

# For you to wear

# Everything I have

# Is standing here

# In front of you to see

# All I have to offer you is me... #

The first time he went on in the Opry, you could hear a pin drop.

Charley walked out and he said,

"Well, folks, I'm originally from Mississippi".

He said, "Since I was an itty-bitty tot,

"I listened to the Grand Ole Opry.

"It's my music and I love it better than anything in the world".

# But make sure that's what you want

# While you're still free... #

Country artists and the studios on Music Row

persevered with the Nashville sound all through the '60s.

But they weren't their own masters.

The New York suits remained the arbiters of country taste,

often editing and remixing tapes from the Nashville sessions.

New York didn't want its cutting-edge stars

messing with hillbillies.

Least of all their king of the counter-culture - Bob Dylan.

# Keep a clean nose Watch the plain clothes

# You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows... #

Get it established, the fiddle is first.

'I told Dylan one day, we were standing in the studio,

'the Chairman and the President was there,'

"Some day you've got to go to Nashville.

"I fixed a studio down there. They got no phones, they got nothing.

"They got a great engineer and this place is ready.

"It's just ready any time." I was talking about that.

And they came over to me and they said,

"You ever mention Nashville again to Bob Dylan, you're fired."

I said, "Why?" They said, "Because they don't know what they're doing.

"You're going to have good luck here. Just stay here and do this."

And I said, "Yes, sir, you're the boss."

About, I don't know, two months, three months later,

I took him to Nashville and I never said anything to anybody.

Ironically, Dylan would transform Nashville

in ways its own rebels had never managed.

Bob Dylan has had one of the most singular impacts

of anyone in musical history on Nashville and on country music.

Dylan's appearance in Nashville

and decision to record three albums here did that tenfold.

It boosted Nashville's respect on a popular level across the world.

And it let other performers outside of country know that this was

a place you could come and not just make a country record.

It was a place where things could happen.

Here in Nashville you would always do three or four songs

in a three hour session. I mean it was just the way it was.

And, erm, Dylan showed up at six o'clock - 6pm,

and said, "I haven't finished writing the first song",

and we started recording at 4am the next morning.

You know, everybody's on the clock.

And after midnight they're being paid premium.

So, it took a little while to get it together.

Take One. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan - Thousand Miles Behind. Take One.

Dylan made three Nashville albums in a row.

From Blonde-on-Blonde to Nashville Skyline,

where he met up with Johnny Cash.

# Down the street the dogs are barking

# And the day is getting dark

# When the night begins to fall

# Then the dogs will lose their bark

# And the silent night will shatter

# From the sounds inside my mind

# And I'm just one too many mornings

# And a thousand

# Miles behind

# From the crossroads of my doorstep

# My eyes, they begin to fade

# And I turn my head back to the room

# Where my love and I have laid

# And I gaze back to the street

# The sidewalk and the sign

# And I'm one too many mornings

# And a thousand

# Miles behind... #

It opened so many doors to artists who would never come here before.

And when Dylan went here, it validated Nashville in their minds.

Bob came to Nashville to make Nashville Skyline with Bob Johnston,

the producer, and my Dad was, you know, a part of his life.

They were friends.

They did a lot of laughing together. They had light senses of humour.

My dad loved Bob as a friend, like a brother.

Back in the '60s, they creatively bounced off each other.

-# And a thousand miles

-And a thousand...

-#

Dad was...he was always breaking new ground.

Hello. I'm Johnny Cash.

Cash continued to break new ground with his network TV Show,

inviting guests from all genres of music.

Television was now taking country into people's homes.

When he had that vision come into place,

the one spot that made sense to him was the Ryman Auditorium.

Here was the birthplace of country music in many different ways.

The mother church of country music.

And so he went to the Ryman for this television show - for live TV.

# No, the circle won't be broke

# By and by, Lord

# By and by... #

Cash performed secular and sacred songs side-by-side

in Nashville's mother church.

# In the sky, Lord, in the sky... #

My father, first and foremost, was a man of God.

He had his addictions, he had his trials.

He had his pains that he carried around with him.

He struggled through his life, of course. you know, with...

with this darkness that, erm...

that would...would try to envelope him.

But my father, first and foremost, was a man of God.

Even in the darker times.

# In the sky, Lord

# In the sky. #

Cash, in a lot of ways he does embody what Nashville was,

and in some ways what Nashville is now.

He could be kind and soulful.

And he could be lost, and he could be dark,

and he could be all these things at once.

# Cos life goes on and so will I... #

Most of all - recklessly, restlessly creative.

This was an era when the Nashville stars would lay bare their lives

as they struggled with their personal demons,

and with Music City's institutions.

There were several artists who chaffed at the restrictions

on their creativity. Johnny Cash is one.

Dolly Parton, another person who famously tussled with the establishment of Nashville.

To succeed in Music City required a mix of determination and subterfuge.

Dolly Parton appeared a simple country girl,

but she knew exactly how to play Nashville and win.

Being a poor southern woman, and a very smart woman,

she was able to hide behind that

Southern Belle thing.

It's used as a weapon.

'Direct from Nashville, Tennessee...'

She persuaded Porter Wagoner,

a heavyweight in the Country Music scene,

to put her on his top-rated TV show.

But that was by no means the limit of her ambitions.

'Now, today's special guest star, Miss Dolly Parton!'

APPLAUSE

I had come to Nashville to be my own artist, to have my own band,

and did have a little, you know, group.

And I was... I'd had a couple of top ten records when Porter saw me.

But his show was going to send me on out there to be a big artist

and I said, "I want to be my own star."

I said to her one time, "You know, Dolly, I'd hate

"to be between you and something you really wanted."

She said, "Well, I'd run over you,

"but you're so nice, I'd run over you easy."

So, she was determined to get what she wanted.

Dolly's persistence was matched

by her talent as a singer and songwriter.

She seduced audiences with her down-home country values

and her unquenchable spirit.

# But if you try to control me Then you won't ever know me

# And I'll be moving on when Possession gets too strong... #

Occasionally, we would have a little run-in about something,

but I always won, because I always would, because I'm the boss.

I'm the one that signs the cheque,

and I'm the one that does the working in that area.

Well, she's great at what she does,

and I'm so proud that she learned a lot of that from me.

# I'll be moving on when Possession gets too strong... #

DOLLY PARTON: When I felt "I need to be going now,

"cos I can't spend my whole life being a part of somebody else's group."

So, then I started trying to move myself away,

started talking to him and he wasn't hearing of it.

So we fought a lot, because we were very similar,

we were very headstrong. He knew what he wanted and I knew what I wanted,

and we were both going to get it.

At each other's expense, if that's what we had to do.

So, he was... He was having a real hard time with that.

APPLAUSE

Dolly and Porter revealed the truth in their duets,

a cathartic experience for them

and their TV audience watching in homes across America.

-BOTH:

-# We're holding on Nothing left to hold onto

# I'm so tired Of holding on to nothin'

# The years have shown no kindness

# For the hard times we've been through

# We squeezed the life From every dream

# But we still go right on bluffin'

# With really nothin' left To hold on to

BOTH: # Oh why do we keep holding on

# With nothing left to hold on to?

# Let's be honest with each other

# That's the least that we can do

# I feel guilty when they Envy me and you

# We're holding on with Nothing left to hold on to. #

Dolly Parton had to have a big break with him, law suits,

and ultimately, leaving Nashville for a time to go pursue other things

that she could do - acting and making more pop-orientated music.

Let's pick it up a little bit, honey!

There's all kinds of things to do in Tennessee.

But next time, let's take the pink Cadillac!

Country Music, like every other commercial art form,

recognises success above all other merit.

Demonstrated success means you get the big car, the big money

and the big audience.

Nashville fans lived the dreams and aspirations of their stars.

They shared in their struggles and soul-searching.

That's what made the relationship so special.

# Oh, the faucet started drippin' In the kitchen

# And last night your picture Fell down from the wall... #

I always believed that we touched the working man,

the working family.

And the songs was written about those type of people.

I could feel their hurt in these songs, the way they were written.

And when I would sing them in the studio, they would come off that way

and they could feel that...

that hurt even more powerful from the songs.

# Things have gone to pieces Since you left me

# Nothing turns out half right Now it seems

# There ain't nothing in my pocket

# But three nickels and a dime

# But I'm holding to The pieces of my dream. #

When you hear a song like that and it touches home,

it opens up your mind and your heart and makes it an automatic hit.

But so much of it came from here.

I mean, the sound came from here, but, you know, he just...

It was like he couldn't help it. It was like he'd just sing and this stuff would come out

and you'd say, "Where in the hell is that coming from?"

The way he pronounced his words and the way he made them sound,

and the way he phrased and everything,

it was just totally unique.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together

in the presence of God and these witnesses...

George mirrored his turbulent life in his art.

He even transformed the TV stage into church to marry Tammy Wynette.

# Yes, we take each other

# Forsaking all others

# Together, till death do us part. #

I now pronounce you man and wife.

APPLAUSE

I think, like George Jones, Tammy Wynette was one of those

singers who was all of the aspirations of the working class,

bottled up in one great voice.

# Our little boy is four years old

# And quite a little man

# So we spell out the words We don't want him to understand... #

Tammy's was a voice that touched the soul of conservative America.

My next door neighbour was an aspiring country singer

and he sat out on the front step and us kids were like...

It was like the pied piper.

And he was introducing us

to these songs that seemed really dangerous to us.

You know, he's singing, # D-I-V-O-R-C-E. #

-and we're going...

-SHE GASPS

"You know, guys, I heard Tommy's mom is dating Timmy's dad," you know?

"And that's not supposed to be OK."

And all sorts of stories that were very grown-up at the time.

# I love you both and this will be

# Pure H-E-double-L for me

# Oh, I wish that we could stop

# This D-I-V-O-R-C-E. #

Most of the people who come to Nashville before the '70s,

it's a whole lot better than picking cotton.

They're used to doing incredibly hard work that pays badly.

A lot of them have real problems

when they get successful because it's too easy.

They live in big fancy houses

and they grew up in very humble circumstances.

that's a tough thing for people to adjust to.

Not always, but often they feel like they're getting away with something

and it's going to be taken away from them at any moment.

-What have I done?

-You are drunk.

-I am not!

-Yes, you are.

-No, sir.

If Tammy's husband George was stopped for drunk driving,

which happened quite frequently,

it increased his status as a local hero.

-Hey!

-Come on, now, George!

APPLAUSE

And when No-Show-George missed yet another gig

and got thrown into jail,

the fans just loved his contempt for the rules they had to live by.

But George couldn't handle the pressures of being a country legend.

His life descended into a cycle of addictions and broken relationships.

Memories of Tammy were hard to erase.

# Even though you've been gone A long, long time... #

When they divorced, Jones took it very hard.

He was living in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which is

250 miles from Nashville.

And he would drive from Muscle Shoals,

all the way to Nashville, to what had been his home with Tammy.

And he would drive through the driveway, never stop,

and drive back to Muscle Shoals.

A round-trip drive of 500 miles.

He would do that twice a day, just to go through her driveway.

# You're still here

# In the diary of my mind... #

There's nothing one could do to damage a show business career

that George Jones has not done,

and yet he is the only American recording artist in all genres of recorded music

who's had a number one song in each of the past five decades.

Thanks to the notoriety of Nashville's legends,

by the early '70s,

country was selling 150 million albums a year across the States -

something even presidents could not ignore.

In 1974, mired in the scandal of Watergate,

Nixon used the Opry as a platform to address the nation.

His sponsor was Mrs Grissom's Salad.

# With Mrs Grissom's on the label There's quality on your table

# The name Mrs Grissom Guarantees it's good. #

What country music is,

is that first, it comes from the heart of America,

because this is the heart of America.

It talks about family, it talks about religion,

the faith in God that is so important to our country,

and particularly to our family life.

And, as we all know, country music radiates a love of this nation.

Patriotism.

Country music, therefore, has those combinations which are

so essential to America's character

at a time that America needs character.

But Nixon's Republican values

were not those of a generation of performers

who'd had to cultivate their audience outside of Nashville.

# Stay all night Stay a little longer... #

A transformed Willie Nelson had moved to Texas,

playing his brand of country to tens of thousands of hippies and rockers across the South.

# She lives away down On Shinbone Alley

# And the number on the gate The number on the door

# The next house over Is the grocery store

# You gotta stay all night Stay a little longer

# Dance all night Dance a little longer

# Pull off your coat Throw it in the corner

# Don't see why you don't Stay a little longer... #

To cash in on this emerging audience,

the executives at RCA came up with a money-making scheme -

to market a country album made up of old recordings that were

gathering dust in their vaults.

It was all money to fill somebody's pockets, you know?

They didn't care if there were better songs out there,

so long as they got their piece of the pie.

They went back and put together a bunch of songs that had been

recorded years before and were laying around unreleased.

To tie together that hotchpotch of mostly pre-recorded music,

they went in search of a local publicist.

Well, I worked over at Glaser Sound Studio

and I always kept a dictionary under my desk.

As I reached down, I picked up that dictionary, I opened it up,

and I don't know why I went to the word "outlaw", but I did.

And there was about this much information,

and the very last line said,

"Living on the outside of the written law."

I agreed with her on it, I thought it was a good way to market it.

If you were going to call it anything, call it what it is.

Ironically, this designer collection,

released in 1976, would transform Nashville.

# Honking them tables And generally blowin'

# My heart and pain. #

You know what, that song, and that album,

was the turning point for the whole industry here and the whole thing.

It got away from what they called

everybody doing records with the Nashville Sound.

The people were so hungry for something different

than what was on the radio, that they just ate it up.

I thought, "This is fun!"

We didn't have any idea it was going to do what it did.

You know, it was just great, and it was very...economic.

Very cost-efficient.

I mean, to cut an album for 19,000 and sell quadruple platinum!

And this broke the precedent

of the control of the studios here.

Having won the respect of the major labels with this first

platinum album for country music,

Willie and Waylon were at last their own masters.

They took their Outlaw Country all across the States

and built themselves a mainstream audience - and a rock'n'roll lifestyle.

# Piano rolled blues Danced holes in my shoes

# There weren't another other way to be

# For lovable losers And no-account boozers

# And honky-tonk heroes like me. #

This hillbilly town had never seen anything like the Outlaws.

I mean, they took it and ran with it.

They achieved fame, and they made a lot of money.

They made more money than they'd ever made,

and God bless them for that, cos they sure needed it.

So, that was the beginnings of the Outlaw movement.

It was about creativity and self-expression. At first!

Then you hand it over to the marketing folks and it can be about

cool-looking album covers and what people are wearing.

Hey, hold up!

In the wake of the runaway success of the Outlaw phenomenon,

Hollywood leapt on the cowboy bandwagon.

You a real cowboy?

Well, it depends on what you think a real cowboy is.

I think Urban Cowboy, the movie,

I think it brought a lot of new people in.

Some of them stayed, some of them didn't.

But people in New York City started buying cowboy hats and boots and doing the two-step.

It was a social sort of thing for a while,

but it was a real shot in the arm for country music.

# She found out what everybody knew

# Too many cooks spoil the stew

# She don't care what nobody thinks

# She's gonna be bad till The whole town stinks. #

Country became a fashion item.

But the sales of Stetson hats and cowgirl boots

did little to excite the Outlaws.

They're wearing the T-shirts,

they're singing the same songs, they're wearing the hats!

You know, and they're mouthing the words,

and I thought, "God, it's missing."

I thought music got dreadfully stale during that period,

because record labels were trying to cross over, cross over.

# Yeah, you gotta step that step

# Walk that walk

# Shake that thing

# And honey, talk that talk. #

Traditional country music really had died, you know?

And because it wasn't getting played on radio any more, they weren't

signing artists in Nashville that was really traditional.

# So, fine, yeah

# My baby so doggone fine... #

The music was pretty cliched.

It was sort of rock influenced, very pop-ish,

sort of sanitised to reach a broad audience.

And there were a lot of critics who thought that

that was the very thing that was wrong with country music at the time.

The need to cross over was satirised in a song that's still

performed in downtown bars.

I think it started out as just a joke in a way.

There's been this murder, you know?

Country music has gotten killed,

someone committed murder on Music Row.

It wasn't just old Hank Williams who couldn't get any airplay.

Almost none of Nashville's legends

could now find a place on country radio's playlists.

The corporate sponsors were targeting a younger audience.

Being a radio guy, you know, I have to...

I have to blame my own industry some for the state of country music.

And the way we have tended to run our business.

And record labels were doing what record labels always do,

which is try to homogenise things

so that they get the broadest common denominator.

And when you do that, you take the personality

and integrity out of art

because you're trying to make it more bland

to appeal to a wider demographic.

The major labels shocked many in Nashville by dropping

the legendary names of the '70s.

The company could come and knock down

all of the blocks that had been built.

I mean, Waylon, Johnny, Willie, Kris.

These were the pillars of that era of country music.

And it was a great grief, you know? An insult.

# Sadly in search of

# And one step in back of

# Themselves and The slow-moving dream. #

Once things get really downhill, desperation can ensue,

and sometimes some interesting stuff comes through the desperation.

In the '80s, some of that interesting stuff was what

Steve Earle called "The great credibility scare".

What Nashville was scared of was that a new

generation of musicians would hammer the last nail

into the coffin of its once-powerful studio system.

# Hey, pretty baby Are you ready for me?

# It's your good rockin' daddy Down from Tennessee

# I'm just out of Austin Bound for San Antone

# With the radio blastin' And the bird dog on

# There's a speed trap up ahead in Selma Town

# But no local yokel gonna shut me down

# Cos me and my boys Got this rig unwound

# And we've come a thousand miles From a guitar town. #

I really genuinely thought at that moment,

that I might be the future of country music.

I based the whole thing on the idea that good country

and good rock'n'roll were the same thing.

And I grew up hearing Buck Owens and The Beatles

and Roger Miller on the same radio station,

so I really didn't know the difference at one point in my life.

You know, I just knew what was good and what I listened to

and what I turned... When I turned the channel.

With Guitar Town, Steve Earle

went straight to the top of the country charts,

by combining '80s rock with country-style story-telling.

I think it's country because it's about the things that

I always found important about country music.

It's about people that...

It's about empathy.

I think that's what great songwriting's about, anyway.

People don't really care about you feeling sorry for yourself

cos you're riding around in a bus that costs more than their house.

The stuff they care about is the stuff they relate to about your life.

It's you miss your kids,

that you miss your wife, that you got your heart broke.

# One of these days I'm gonna settle down

# Take you back with me To a guitar town. #

Steve Earle was treading a path to the future by sweeping away

Nashville's old values with a mix of rock mystique and country sentiment.

People like Steve Earle pointed a lot of people to Nashville

as a place that was doing more than whatever was being

heard on the mainstream radio at the time.

Even opened the mainstream radio up to it for a hot second.

That was also the decade that Ricky Skaggs came out of bluegrass

and started recording traditional country music

and had a string of terrific, very traditional hits.

# Well, these Highway 40 blues

# I've walked holes in Both my shoes... #

Skaggs was searching for a sound that would reawaken the spirit

of the old Ryman Auditorium and the religious roots of

a country music that he felt had been trivialised by the urban cowboys.

When I came to Nashville, I really wanted to try to blend

bluegrass music that I had grown-up with, you know,

try to blend that with traditional country music again.

# I may look like a city slicker Shinin' up through my shoes

# Underneath I'm just A cotton picker

# Picking out a mess of blues

# Show me where I start Find a horse and cart

# I'm just a country boy A country boy at heart. #

I think there was something definitely spiritual

to the call back to bluegrass.

I feel like I was at a place in my life where

I really wanted to grow spiritually.

# God sent in his love On the wings of a dove... #

Well, I've referred to myself as a "musicianary" a lot of times.

I think a musicianary is kind of,

in a way, kind of a missionary that plays music.

But I have an evangelistic heart, you know?

I love God and I love the Bible,

I love the truth that's in the Bible.

I'm not ashamed to say "Jesus" from the stage

Evangelism had never been far from the Nashville stage.

And in the early '90s, Garth Brooks combined it

with the religious fervour of Ricky Skaggs and the rock posture of Steve Earle

to become the biggest selling country act of all time.

What I do is divine intervention.

It's a gift from God.

And when God gave me the gift,

God did not put any restrictions on it.

"You can only sell this many units, you can only sing in these places."

So, I don't think it's fair for me to put restrictions on it.

The point is, I must take it to the people.

So, here goes.

# We all came here For a party tonight

# And you gonna get left If you don't get right

# So, forget your troubles And forget the news... #

He was winning back the youth market that Elvis

had stolen from Nashville some 40 years earlier.

# And if your tie's too tight Then adjust the noose

# Cos if you're gonna hang tight Cut loose... #

Garth changed performance.

Garth went out and he had fire shooting up.

One show he got on the wire

and came all the way down the Texas Stadium to the stage.

I didn't want to see it.

I had him insured,

but you couldn't insure him for what he was worth!

But he did all this crazy stuff that he loved

and was influenced by as he was growing up.

He made the performance a bigger deal.

When you walk out on stage, it just comes from somewhere else.

And you just feel it, you can taste it. You can smell it.

And all of a sudden, man, it's just there.

And no matter how tired you were, no matter how...

How much you had on your mind about one thing or another, it's all gone!

And now the fun starts.

And I swear to God, his eyes are this big when he's on stage.

40 rows back, you have the same feeling from him

as you did in the first five or six rows.

and that thing just poured off of him.

And I turned around to my wife and I said,

"My God, woman, this is the biggest one ever!"

Garth's crossover success had been ignited by a controversial video

aimed at the Nashville network.

The Thunder Rolls was co-written by his friend Pat Alger.

I didn't start out looking for some universal theme, you know,

that's going to change the world.

I'm writing about what I see before me,

and sometimes out of that will come a universal theme,

and I think somewhat that happened in The Thunder Rolls.

I think that was a universal issue got brought up

just as a sideline, but it wasn't what we intended.

# He's heading back from somewhere that he never should have been

# And the thunder rolls... #

And the idea was, what about a guy who's cheating on his wife

and every time he does, the thunder rolls.

What kind of a better metaphor could there be, really?

You know, you're caught, and the thunder rolls.

# And the thunder rolls... #

And Garth had to sort of face up to some of that in his own life, you know?

# And the thunder rolls... #

He shows you this controversial situation

of a cheating husband who's also an abusive husband.

And that got a negative reaction.

Somebody called me from the office saying,

"Hey, the video's about to play in about five minutes, so turn your set on."

So I turned it on, and then I called back and said,

"Wow, that was incredible."

He said, "Well, I hope you enjoyed it cos they just banned it, so you're not going to see it again!"

# As the storm blows on Out of control... #

But the Nashville network didn't reckon with record boss Jimmy Bowen

turning a local disaster into a national triumph.

I had my publicity person, and I said, "Get in here quick!

"I want you to hire publicity people all over this country,

"every city of 50,000 or up. And I want you to go after this."

And I got a call from Bowen late one night. He was laughing.

And then I was scared, because I didn't like the situation,

I don't like the whole thing of people banning stuff.

And I said, "Man, why are you laughing?"

He says, "Don't you understand? What would have taken us

"four years to do is going to happen in about four days now.

"You'll become a household name."

He did more than that. He out-sold every act in America.

Every generation just has a few acts that can happen so big

and so fast that they have to take away from other artists

on their label, and other labels for airplay.

Garth soon leapfrogged all his competitors.

Smaller country acts found their careers threatened.

I had no idea if I would get cut. I know they cut...

They probably cut at least 30 artists

from the roster right off the bat.

And so I was nervous, and I kind of had, you know,

a vision of him being sort of the devil in my mind.

Radio didn't want to hear about anybody else, just Garth, Garth, Garth.

Everywhere we went, just Garth. It's a double-edged sword.

And, we did an album, Jimmy didn't even release it.

I felt like I was going to go down the toilet.

I really felt like I was going to fall into the black hole of artists.

Though Suzy had some major hits in the years that followed,

the black hole swallowed many of Nashville's legends,

as they tried to keep faith with their fans in their twilight years.

# I hurt myself today

# To see if I still feel

# I focus on the pain

# The only thing that's real... #

It was, you know, just two weeks before he died

when he recorded his last song. And, um...

That... I just don't think he ever stopped.

I think his energy and his love for his music kept him going.

And his energy for life and spreading the joy that he had.

# But I remember everything... #

Battling persistent ill-health and the demands of her fans,

Tammy Wynette travelled ceaselessly

with an increasing dependence on her helpers.

Tammy Wynette had a problem with substance abuse.

It became very pronounced and her reputation became very widespread.

She would play towns and she would feign an injury so that she

could go to an emergency room and be given painkillers to get high.

George Jones used his status as a country legend to do what they'd

been doing since the earliest days of the Opry - selling stuff.

That's one of my all-time favourites.

They're all good, that's why their hits.

But you know, I'm about to come out with the greatest line I ever have.

'Introducing George Jones Country Gold dog food,

'George's own line of 100% complete and balanced foods.'

You thought I was talking about a new song, didn't you?

The city that inspired those departed stars is still

a magnet for thousands of young hopefuls, repeating the same cycle,

toughing it out in the same bars their heroes did.

# A three-minute positive Not too country up-tempo love song

# A way for me to tell a little lover And it can't be too long

# There be no drinkin', no cheatin' No lyin', no leavin'... #

Many who visit these bars are themselves budding artists

and songwriters.

I wanted to carve my own path and I knew that that

I would have to do that,

I just didn't realise how hard, when I first got here,

how hard it was going to be.

I mean, when you're by yourself and you don't know anyone,

but then you realise you have to have a team behind you

to accomplish what you want.

I mean, it was daunting at first, for sure.

Shanna's teamed up with veteran songwriter Pat Alger,

to improve her chances.

We deal with real life as...

As my buddy Garth Brooks said one time about my songwriting.

Real life's good enough, we don't have to invent too much.

You just have to find a poetic way to write about it.

Instead of saying "This song is for you", say,

# This is your song. #

# This is your song

This song's for you. #

OK, yeah...

Shanna and I have been writing for about six months now.

You could say she's a seasoned novice.

She's written a lot of songs.

# Frozen in time

# I see... #

-Yeah.

-That sounded good.

Did songs used to be like that?

Because I listen back to, like,

Hank Williams Jr and Hanks Williams Sr,

and, like, there's no hook. Like, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,

there's the hook, but you think of like...

-Yeah.

-It's changed so much.

-Well, if you look at a lot of those songs, they're only eight lines long.

-Right!

-They just sing them over and over.

-Yeah.

# This one's for you

# This song's for you

# Da da da dee da

# Da da da dee. #

-Something like...

-# Da da da da da. #

-Yeah.

As Nashville songwriters have always been aware,

creating a song is one thing, but getting it played is another.

And it's not getting easier.

There's a prevailing philosophy in programming

that audiences tune out when you play something new

and it's become much more ruled by caution

and fear, and the fear of tune-out and keeping a very predictable

demographic that you can...

Tuned in so you can deliver those people to advertisers.

# It was still getting colder When she made it to the shoulder

# And the car came to a stop

# She cried when she saw that Baby in the back seat

# Sleeping like a rock... #

If you're going to play the game of I Want To Be A Star,

I want to sell millions and millions of records and I want to be

on country radio, then you have to play within their rules.

There's a tempo they want, there's a sound quality they want,

there are subjects that they won't air,

and you'd better produce those kinds of singles.

And as long as you do that,

and as long as you're successful, they'll play your records.

There's so much more things for people to do now than there were

when I was kind of coming up in the business, you know?