It’s a city that sings. It sings about love, loss, hope, and even drinking. It even seems to sing about its history. Sitting on the banks of the Cumberland River, my wife and I spent a weekend in one of America’s great cities. Nashville will make you tap your feet, enjoy rich southern food, discover history, and realize people can still be polite. And it is all wrapped in the sound of country music.
As you stroll down Broadway, you can hear music flowing out of the door of every honky tonk. You walk from the bright sunlight of the sidewalk into the warm darkness of music and beer. There will be a sea of cowboy hats on top and cowboys boots on the floor. Young men and women will be crowded onto a small stage singing for tips. You can hear the joy and ache in their hearts and the wail of the fiddle as they sing about the ups and downs of life and love. Places like The Whiskey Bent Saloon where a three hundred pound cowboy, dressed in black, sits at the door behind dark sunglasses checking IDs. He told me he’s been in Nashville for 34 years. He works 60 hours a week at that door. I said you must love the music. He said he couldn’t tell me the last song he just heard. I guess he was very focused on his job. Because the young guy and girl singing were making magic with their voices singing the Garth Brooks song about being “too young to feel this old.”
We stopped in Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge which was packed downstairs and upstairs and listened to a cowboy singer hoping to be discovered. We discovered Yazoo Pale Ale, the local beer that goes down real easy on a Friday afternoon. The big Tequila Cowboy bar was listening to a young woman with a powerful voice backed by a great band. She actually walked around with a plastic bucket to collect tips. She was very thankful, but she deserved much better. You won’t get a better breakfast than at Biscuit Love. The name says it all. You have to wait on line. But after eating some “bonuts” you’ll say it was worth the wait.
Nashville is a city moving into the future, but treasuring its past. There are construction cranes all over downtown raising condos and office buildings. The streets are clean, and there seemed to be a healthy mix of old and new buildings. The Country Music Hall of Fame is a gleaming state of the art facility showcasing the history of Nashville’s heart and soul. It’s a walk through country music history, but also through American history that people from the northeast may not know, but should appreciate. Maybe Nashville’s most important treasure is the Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry. The twenty three hundred seat temple to country music was the home to The Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. It opened in 1892 as the Union Gospel Tabernacle. The Grand Ole Opry debuted there in 1925. It started its live weekly radio broadcast in 1943. Every show was sold out for 31 years. Every country music star performed there. The Opry moved to a bigger 6,000 seat venue in 1974. More about that later.
The center of Nashville’s history is one of the finest state parks in the country. The Bicentennial Capital Mall State Park sits below the sloping emerald lawn of the state capital. It teaches the history of Tennessee. The 1,400 foot Pathway of History traces the history of the state inscribed on a marble like wall beginning in 10 million BC. It’s flanked by the Walkway of Counties where pave stones tell you all about the 95 counties in the state surrounded by flora and rock formations from the three sections of the state. There is a huge public space in the middle where there were events for kids. Every city planner should be required to visit here and see how history and public space can be made educational and beautiful.
We saved the best for last. The crown jewel. The Grand Ole Opry on Saturday night. It’s a high tech music theater and a television and radio studio all in one with giant screen TVs and theater seating. It kept the same design of the Ryman Auditorium, just three times bigger. It’s treated like a church. There is no other place like it in the world. It’s revered by the audience and the performers alike. There is an announcer on stage who introduces the hosts for each half hour, and reads live commericals. The hosts introduce guests. They come on and perform one or two songs, and we move onto the next act. But the artists profess deep respect for the honor of being a member of The Grand Ole Opry. We heard “Thank you” more times in one night than you might hear in a month. Both young and old performers seem humbled by the place. There is a circle of wood flooring in the middle of the stage that is from the original floor of the Ryman Auditorium stage. It is the center of the country music universe. Country star Alan Jackson said, ” You think about people like Hank Williams, who stood on that spot of wood…and, of course, George Jones…That’s what makes you so nervous-to think about the historical part of the Opry and how its played such a part in country music.”
We have a new appreciation for country music, for its history, its meaning for millions of people, and a city that prides itself on preserving that history. Even the name “Music City” has an unusual history. It was first used by WSM-AM radio announcer David Cobb during a 1950 broadcast and it stuck. But a look deeper into history takes us back to 1874. After Queen Victoria of England heard the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville perform, she is reported to have said, “These young people must surely come from a musical city.” The old girl was right.
Leave a Reply