Product Description
by Travis D. Stimeling (Author)
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, rightalongside the remarkable musicians who made it happen.
Author Biography
Travis D. Stimeling is Associate Professor of Musicology at the West Virginia University School of Music, where he also directs the WVU Bluegrass and Old-Time Bands. He is the author of Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin's Progressive Country Scene (OUP, 2011) and The Country Music Reader (OUP, 2015), and edited The Oxford Handbook of Country Music (OUP, 2017).
