Producing Country Analysis

Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings. By Michael Jarrett. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2014. 287 pp (softcover). ISBN 978-0-8195-7464-0.
A Life on Nashville’s Music Row. By Bobby Braddock. Nashville, Tennessee: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press, 2015. 375 pp (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-8265-2082-1.
Rhythm Makers: The Drumming Legends of Nashville in Their Own Words. By Tony Artimisi. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 179 pp (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-4422-4011-7.

While the city of Nashville struggles with the opposing forces of rapid growth and a desire to preserve the sites of significance in the history of country and popular music, it is nice to see a concerted
effort to tell the stories of the songs and recordings that made the city famous. Michael Jarrett’s Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings is a compendium of inside recollections or historical analysis behind many of country music and Nashville’s most significant recordings.
Jarrett’s focus is a chronological oral history accounting of the art and act of record production. First, though, Jarrett offers many of the field’s most accomplished practitioners attempts to define the role of record producer, though the author remains silent and does not synthesize these voices into any kind of coherent single definition. This lack of a singular definition maybe the author’s intent after all. Jarrett then begins with many pre-war historical sessions highlighted by Ralph Peer’s Bristol sessions and Don Law’s Robert Johnson and Bob Wills recordings when the A&R man served as the recordings “producer.” While Jarrett does not access primary oral accountings, he finds very capable narrators in Don Law Jr, Chet Atkins, and Bob Irwin. Jarrett next ventures into the post war country honky tonk era when the records were still cut live. While mainstay country recordings by Kitty Wells, Hank Williams, Hank Snow, and Merle Travis are explored, Jarrett effectively argues for the inclusion of country-influenced recordings by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles. This effective methodology carries forward into the next two sections dealing with the multi-track and modern country music industry. Producing Country is an excellent walk through the history of not only country music recording but the craft of record production that can be read either from front to back or used as a reference book. However, it could have been even more effective with the inclusion of some discographical information, such as exact recording dates and studio names, as Jarrett points the reader to a reissue rather than the original recordings. Since these are one to two page narratives, a detailed bibliography of more thorough accountings of the producer and
artist’s careers as well as the recording sessions covered also merits space in the text. Bobby Braddock is one of country music’s most storied and successful songwriters who penned such classics as “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and “Golden Ring.” Buddy Killen and Curly Putnam at Tree Publishing Company represented him for most of his storied career, and Braddock played a significant role in the discovery and development of Blake Shelton. A Life on Nashville’s Music Row benefits from Braddock’s discipline in keeping a detailed diary throughout his career. Where most autobiographies struggle to recount and recollect past events, Braddock is able to credibly bring the reader into the events and conversations throughout his life and provides both his reaction and thoughts in the moment and with a fresh perspective and analysis created while he penned his autobiography. Braddock details his evolution from a member of Marty Robbins touring band to his transformation into both a successful songwriter and recording artist in the heart and heyday of Nashville’s Music Row. Braddock’s book also recollects much of his personal life with the honesty and wit you expect to find in his songs. However, many times the book gets bogged down in his various personal entanglements with the various women in his life. In addition to following his life and career, the most interesting component of his book is following Braddock’s various evolutions in thought and theory about life and humanity. For as his 1990 song “Time Marches On” states, “The only thing that stays the same is everything changes” (1). It is this open-minded self-awareness that no doubt served his ability to cultivate a nearly fifty-year career in Nashville that led to his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2011. Much of Nashville’s sound recordings are made using professional studio musicians to help create the artist’s and producer’s vision and Winston Salem State University music professor, Tony Artimisi, interviews five of Nashville’s accomplished drummers in Rhythm Makers: The Drumming Legends of Nashville in their Own Words. After a brief introduction recounting the history of Nashville as a music city, Artimisi reprints his long form interviews with Eddie Bayer Jr (Dolly Parton, George Jones, Garth Brooks, and thirteen time ACM drummer of the year), Jerry Kroon (George Strait, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson), Kenny Malone (Dobie Gray, Johnny Cash, Alison Krauss), Tom Roady (The Dixie Chicks, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs), and Tommy Wells (Ray Stevens, Charlie Daniels, Ricky Van Shelton). While there are some advantages to the interview form over a narrative based one, it is often hard to follow though Artimisi works hard to keep the dialog linear and on track. Granted this book’s primary audience appears to be drummers and unedited oral histories are interesting, I believe an opportunity to make this book relevant for music historians and fans was sorely missed. Each drummer’s chapter needed a more thorough artist biography and a brief discography to better acquaint the reader with the musician before embarking upon the interview. These three books do their part to keep the history of Nashville’s music industry and most importantly its Music Row both alive and relevant, so lets hope the same can be said in the immediate future for many of the places these three authors detail.

Charlie B. Dahan has been a Professor in the Recording Industry Department at Middle Tennessee State University since 2007 and is a twenty-year veteran of record and concert industry. He is currently working on a PhD in the Public History program at MTSU. He serves on the National Advisory Board for the Starr-Gennett Foundation in Richmond, Indiana and on the Online Media Board for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. He and Linda Gennett Irmscher are co-authoring the book “Images of America: Gennett Records and Starr Piano” schedule for release in September. But his favorite job was the six years he spent operating the scoreboard and sound for the Detroit Tigers single A affiliate in Oneonta, NY.