Music

W. C. Handy, African American composer, bandleader, publisher, and "Father of the Blues," combined the contemporary ragtime and Latin rhythms he had encountered in vaudeville, minstrel shows, and extensive travels with the black folk music of his heritage into the…

With a letterpress lineage dating back to Gutenberg, Hatch Show Print began printing posters in 1879 when brothers Charles R. and Herbert H. Hatch opened their small business in Nashville. Their first poster, a six-by-nine-inch handbill advertising a lecture by…

Born August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee, Isaac Hayes has received countless awards for a forty-plus-year career in music, film, television, and radio. His music has influenced funk, soul, and disco, and many artists, rappers included, have emulated his smooth…

Roland Hayes was one of the most popular opera singers of his generation and an important supporter and mentor to such significant African American artists as Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. Born in Curryville in northern Georgia to former slaves…

Hee Haw was a country-themed television variety show filmed in Nashville, Tennessee, for over twenty years. The show featured musical segments and comedy and became a late-twentieth-century cultural icon of Tennessee, the South, and the country. Sam Lovullo, producer of…

From 1978 to 1997, the annual Memphis in May Festival culminated with vocalist James Hyter's performance at the Sunset Symphony. Each year, audiences sang along with Hyter's rendition of the show tune "Ol' Man River" and repeatedly called for encores.…

Rooted in the close relationship many country-music performers develop with their fans, the multi-day series of concerts, autograph sessions, and fan club parties now known as the CMA Music Festival, formerly the International Country Music Fan Fair, is unique to the country music genre.…

Memphis is known for blues and early rock-n-roll traditions, and Nashville is famous for country music, but both also move to the strains of jazz. In no part of Tennessee, however, did jazz ever enjoy commercial or popular success, or…

Bobby Jones, an influential late-twentieth-century gospel music artist and television producer, has played a key role in Nashville's evolution as one of the most important gospel music centers in the United States. He taped his television show, "Bobby Jones Gospel," in Nashville for twenty-five…

In 1871, only four years after the incorporation of Fisk Free School as Fisk University in Nashville, the school for emancipated African Americans faced impending closure. Classrooms and living quarters continued to be housed in the decaying barracks of the…

Brenda Mae Tarpley, later known as Brenda Lee, was born in Atlanta's Emory University Hospital charity ward on December 11, 1944. By the age of three she was already showing a remarkable ability to memorize and sing songs she had…

Influential female country music performer and songwriter and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Loretta Lynn was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, in 1935. She married Oliver V. “Mooney” Lynn in 1948, and soon thereafter the Lynns moved…

Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon was born in Warren County in 1870. He learned the craft of entertainment from vaudeville actors and actresses who boarded at his parents' rooming house in Nashville. After traveling the vaudeville circuit for…

Walter “Brownie” McGhee, an African American musician, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 30, 1915. Raised within a musical family (Brownie’s brother Granville scored a hit with “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” in 1947), McGhee overcame the ravages of polio at…

Memphis has long celebrated a rich musical and cultural heritage. Its rhythm-n-blues, soul, and rock-n-roll foundations are exemplified by Beale Street, Stax Records, and Graceland, respectively, while jazz and gospel have also historically called Memphis home. In the 1940s and…

The musical legacy of the Bluff City is exciting, diverse, and extremely significant in the history of American culture. Today Memphis's best known landmarks are two places--Beale Street and Graceland--intimately associated with the city's place in American music history, especially…

The newest music museum in Tennessee, the Memphis Rock 'n' Soul Museum, opened in 2000. Located in the Beale Street Entertainment District on the second floor of the Gibson Guitar Factory, the museum features six galleries. The primary installation is…

Grace Moore, popular soprano in opera, musical comedy, and film, was born December 6, 1901, in Slabtown, Cocke County, and christened Mary Willie Grace. She spent her youth in Jellico, where she sang in her church choir. After studying briefly…

Folk music expresses the oldest and most basic forms of Tennessee music carried into the region by its earliest settlers and usually passed on from generation to generation by oral tradition. Though instrumental music--especially that of the fiddle and banjo--formed…

The fabled Music Row in Nashville forms a rectangle between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Avenues South and Division and Grand Streets. While tourists may be surprised to find that its outward appearance resembles a neighborhood punctuated by a few corporate office…