Nashville: A Little History

Nashville's skyline is dominated by the Bell South building, the tallest structure in the city. Known as "Music City", Nashville is a major music recording and production center, with all of the "Big Four" record labels (Sony, EMI, Universal and Warner), as well as numerous independent labels, having offices there.

Ryman auditorium, first opened in 1892 as a venue for gospel revivials, was the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974. Audiences here find themselves seated in the original pews, which has led to the building's nickname of "The Mother Church of Country Music". In December 1945, Grand Ole Opry star Bill Monroe (on mandolin) brought to the stage a band that created a new American musical form. With the banjo style of Earl Scruggs and the guitar of Lester Flatt, the new genre became known as "Bluegrass". Augmented by the fiddle of Chubby Wise and and the bass of Howard Watts (a.k.a. Cedric Rainwater), this ensemble became known as "The Original Bluegrass Band", which became the prototype for groups that followed.

This covered shopping mall, known as the Fifth Avenue Arcade, was built in 1903 and is modeled after an arcade in Italy. One of only a few such arcades that remain in the United States, this site, near the historic black business district, was the center of Nashville's civil rights movement in the 1960's.