|
View the H-Southern-Music Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Southern-Music's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Southern-Music's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Southern-Music home page.
[Editor's note -- Lance Kinney sent in the following review that he for one of our sister lists. Thanks!] Colleagues, One of my colleagues here at the U of Alabama is the book review editor for _Journalism History_. She asked me to prepare a 750-word review of Havighurst's book. I didn't want to post the review until it was published. Here it is. _Journalism History_, 35(3), 174-175. Havighurst, Craig. Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 320 pp. $29.95 (cloth). Rabid country music fans will immediately recognize WSM-AM 650 radio’s nickname, “Air Castle of the South.” Even casual music fans will likely understand the prominence of the station’s most enduring program, the “Grand Ole Opry.” However, neither rabid nor casual fans are likely to know the role of this pioneering station in developing and using radio broadcast technology, or its influence on early radio and television broadcast regulation. Even fewer readers may be aware of the station’s early public service efforts, or its original mission of broadcasting classical music to a town that considered itself urbane and sophisticated, the veritable “Athens of the South.” Only those most deeply immersed in marketing history are likely to be aware of the station’s astute use of radio programming for marketing purposes. These topics and many more are covered in this history of a station and its impact on a town that grew into an internationally renowned city famed for its music industry. Craig Havighurst, an award-winning music journalist and documentarian, has written the wide-ranging story of one of America’s first broadcasting powerhouses. And while the “Grand Ole Opry” may be the platform that built the station, Havighurst takes the reader inside the organization to understand the personalities, regulatory policies, technological innovations and business management decisions that drove the station and Nashville to international prominence. He explains the reluctance of the city’s elite residents and civic boosters to accept the hillbilly image that developed around Nashville as the city became more prominently known via regional and national broadcasts. He details how the National Life and Accident Insurance Company, a vendor of insurance policies to working class southern families, developed the station to serve as the firm’s marketing arm. The station’s call letters, WSM, were derived from the firm’s advertising slogan, “We Shield Millions.” Agents were directed to walk their territories listening for WSM programs through open windows then follow up with sales pitches. Famous musicians are featured, but only to the extent that they impacted the business of WSM. Readers will likely recognize the names of many of these musicians and their corporate radio sponsors, such as Hank Williams and Mother’s Best Flour, Flatt and Scruggs and Martha White Flour, the “Grand Ole Opry” and Prince Albert Tobacco. Other musicians mentioned might be familiar but not always associated with Nashville. Dinah Shore, for example, began her career as a staff singer for the station. WSM programmed not only country music, but classical, big band and other styles. In fact, WSM was the last station in the country to dismiss its staff orchestra (still performing a daily show into the 1980s). Station personnel developed an extensive industry of music publishing houses, record labels and recording studios. Although music buffs will find more comprehensive music coverage in other publications, Havighurst doesn’t skimp on the glory days of the station in the 1930s and 1940s. WSM enters a slow decline in the 1950s. Performing musicians were replaced by records and disc jockey shows. Country music suffered from the onslaught of rock and roll. Television replaced radio as the preferred leisure broadcast medium. Long-serving station personnel, many of them Nashville residents from the ranks of National Life and Accident, were replaced by personnel who didn’t hold such sentimental ties to the station or the city. WSM re-defined its business model to meet changing consumer tastes and new regulatory demands. Havighurst concludes by detailing the station’s sale to Gaylord Entertainment Company and notes that interests in other broadcast properties (The Nashville Network (TNN) and Country Music Television (CMT)), as well as the Opryland themepark, led to a slow decline in the prominence of the once mighty broadcasting behemoth. Readers may become lost in the tangle of names and position titles of various station performers, managers, engineers, a shortcoming that could be addressed through the use of an appendix. Additionally, a book of this length that surveys so many topics cannot offer significant detail into many of them, so readers could benefit from chapter notes and a modest bibliography allow readers to pursue independent research in these areas. Nevertheless, Havighurst does an excellent of job moving beyond the music to introduce the reader to the station’s cultural, social and technical impact. Historians might find this book useful in courses examining broadcast or business history as as courses stressing the cultural impact of broadcasting on popular culture. ----- Lance Kinney, Ph.D. Associate Professor Advertising and Public Relations Box 870172 University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0172 O: (205) 348-7706 F: (205) 348-2401 kinney@apr.ua.edu
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|